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THE

CABINET PORTRAIT GALLERY

BRITISH WORTHIES.

VOLUME VI.

LONDON:
CHARLES KNIGHT & CO., LUDGATE STREET.

1846.

London: Printed by W. Clowes and Sons, Stamford Street.

PROSPECTUS.

'The Penny Magazine' has now been in the course of publication for fourteen years; and during the whole period the duties of Editor have been discharged by Mr. Knight, 'under the superintendence of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.' The time has arrived when that 'superintendence' has merged in the individual responsibility of the Editor.

Of the unexampled popularity of 'The Penny Magazine' it is unnecessary here to speak. It has especially had the distinction of being the first to diffuse, throughout the community, a source of enjoyment formerly inaccessible except to the rich; it has made the productions of Art cheap. The literature of 'The Penny Magazine' has invariably maintained its ruling character,—that of dealing with general subjects in a grave and earnest tone. Desirous only of advancing knowledge, it has laid no claims to meretricious brilliancy. It has avoided, rather than sought, the topics of the day. It has been a safe Miscellany, in which all classes might find much information and some amusement.

The circulation of 'The Penny Magazine' is very large; its reputation is unimpaired. But fourteen volumes having been completed in accordance with the original intention of the work, which was to combine miscellaneous information with expensive pictorial embellishment, circumstances now point to the necessity of some essential modification of plan. Left to his individual responsibility in the conduct of the work, the Editor deems it his public duty to take a new position, to enable him to carry out his views of what should now be the character of a widely circulated and eminently cheap Miscellany. Such a periodical Work may command as high and as various literary talents as the most lofty of its contemporaries: and the best talents and acquirements may now be fitly employed in the service of the people, instead of addressing themselves only to readers of wealth and leisure. 'Knight's Penny Magazine' is intended to be for the People of 1846 what 'The Penny Magazine of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge' was for the people of 1832.

Without any change in the objects for which 'The Penny Magazine' was established—'to enlarge the range of observation, to add to the store of facts, to awaken the reason, and to lead the imagination into agreeable and innocent trains of thought,'—a new Penny Magazine may be able to do much which its predecessor has, from the nature of its plan, of necessity left undone. Essentially a continuation of 'The Penny Magazine' under the same Editorship,—expecting the continued support of the constant friends of that Miscellany,—it seeks a more extensive circulation by aiming at a wider range and a more varied character. It will henceforth be chiefly a Magazine of Reading. Woodcuts will no longer continue to be the prominent feature of the work; but will be frequently used as necessary illustrations and as specimens of Art. As compared with 'The Penny Magazine,' the work now announced will be printed on a larger sheet, but a smaller page; it will consist of sixteen pages instead of eight; and will contain a much greater amount of reading. It will be printed in the best style, in a very clear Type; and the form being that of a HANDSOME PORTABLE BOOK, it will bind in convenient Volumes four times a year, so as to constitute an important addition to a 'Library for all Readers.'

This change of plan will allow not only increased variety, but general expansion. The articles will for the most part be longer, permitting more scope to individual writers. The connexion with Authors of Eminence will be diligently sought, in the endeavour to unite the highest excellence with the lowest price,—a combination of which no reasonable man now doubts the practicability. To the one great object of diffusing useful knowledge will be added the constant desire to make that knowledge interesting. The intention not to disregard some topics of the day will be subjected to the duty of treating such topics with reference to a permanent utility. Important subjects of information will have their place in company with amusing narrative, real or fictitious. Light sketches of passing manners may freely range with sober essays on permanent morals; and the highest obligations of sacred truths may be enforced in a cheerful spirit. Old books, our most precious legacies, may be analyzed and quoted, while the novelties of literature, foreign as well as English, are exhibited with honest praise or considerate blame. Whilst the means of enjoyment within the reach of all, by the cultivation of innocent and unexpensive pleasures,—the love and study of nature, horticulture, music, a taste for art,—will be pointed out and enlarged upon as some counterbalance to the inequalities of society, the great practical objects of social improvement, which require the stimulus of governments and associations to accomplish, will be earnestly advocated. With reference to public questions, it is scarcely necessary for the Editor to declare that he will avoid, as carefully as ever, all party or polemical discussion; at the same time not shrinking from the examination of opinions which he thinks delusive and mischievous. An earnest desire for the advancement of the great body of the people in knowledge and virtue, and therefore in power and happiness, without violent changes in the constitution of society, may be as efficient for good as the tawdry sentimentality which holds all the high few to be oppressive, and the sickly exclusiveness which believes all the humble many to be dangerous.

'Knight's Penny Magazine' will be published, as previously indicated, in a Weekly Sheet, a Monthly Part, and a Quarterly Volume: and in all these forms it may hope to become a Fireside and a Travelling Companion, as universally sought as "in the most high and palmy" days of 'The Penny Magazine of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.'

⁂ Number I. was published on Saturday, January 3, 1846; Part I. will be published on the 31st January; and Volume I. on the 31st March.

CONTENTS.

CABINET PORTRAIT GALLERY
OF
BRITISH WORTHIES.

The reign of Charles the First stands out by itself from all the other English reigns since the beginning of the monarchy. We have had civil wars in other reigns; but only in this a civil war of principles. Opposite principles have struggled for the ascendancy in other reigns, but only in this with the sword. Here is the only decided turning-point, or hinge, as we may call it, in the progressive movement of the constitution; the changes it has undergone at all other times have been made gradually, and as it were by a bending process; at this crisis it was forced, as if by a fracture, to develop [Pg 6] itself in altogether a new direction. The twenty years, indeed, from 1640 to 1660, do make such a disruption as occurs nowhere else in our history: they lie like a gulf beyond which everything is old; on this side of which everything is comparatively new or modern. Our original political system closes with the reign of Charles I.; that system was then seen for the last time in its integrity. It never was rebuilt from the ruin that then overtook it. For it is a great mistake to suppose that even the Restoration was a restoration of the spirit and actuating principle of that old system—that even the misgovernment of the twenty-eight years which preceded, the Revolution was at all a thing of the same nature with the monarchism which prevailed before the meeting of the Long Parliament. Only think of a House of Commons debating the exclusion of the next heir to the throne under either Elizabeth or James I.! The truth is, that down to the civil war the prerogative was, in the theory of the constitution, above the law. It is not possible to deny it. There was nothing short of the destruction of life (if even that was an exception) that might not have been constitutionally done by the crown of its own authority. The liberty of the subject was entirely at the mercy of the crown; any man might at any time be apprehended and thrown into prison by the government, and detained there without being brought to trial, for as long as it chose. Men's property was scarcely better protected from rights of purveyance, claims of wardship, and other arbitrary exactions; if it was even held, which it scarcely was, that the crown had no right of levying taxes in any circumstances by its own authority. But upon that question we might refer to the decision of the judges in the case of ship-money, and the arguments upon which it was founded. Then, for security of person, any man might be charged with a state crime, and in the absence of all evidence might thereupon be put to the rack. Torture, indeed, was illegal, or contrary to law; but it was according to prerogative, and it was in constant use, because the prerogative, as we have said, was above the law. All this [Pg 7] ended with the reign of Charles I. He was our last prerogative, or, in plain words, theoretically absolute, king.

He was the third son of the first of the Stewart kings of England, James I., and of his wife Anne, daughter of Frederic II., king of Denmark, whom James married in her sixteenth year, in 1589: he himself being then twenty-three. Charles's two elder brothers were Henry (or Henry Frederic), who was born in 1594, and died in 1612; and Robert, of whom the genealogists only tell us that he died in infancy before his father succeeded to the English crown. Charles was born at Dunfermline, in Fife, on the 19th of November, 1600. Of four daughters born to James and Anne, two were also older than Charles: Elizabeth, who was born in 1596, and became the Electress Palatine and nominal Queen of Bohemia; and Margaret, who was born in 1598, and died young. The others, the only children whom James had after he came to England, were Mary, who was born in 1605, and died in 1607; and Sophia, who was born in 1606, and only lived two days. Charles, therefore, was the youngest of the family who grew up, and, after the death of his brother Henry, he and his sister Elizabeth, four years older than himself, were all that remained to James of his seven children.

Spotswood says that "his christening was hastened because of the weakness of the child, and that his death was much feared;" and, as no authentic account makes mention of any bishop or even episcopally ordained clergyman who officiated on the occasion, it has been questioned whether he was really admitted with the usual ceremonies into that church of which he is the only authoritatively recognised saint and martyr. Be this as it may, when the family came to England, "Baby Charles," by which designation and no other his father spoke and wrote to him and of him to the end of his life, was committed to the care of the lady of Sir Robert Cary, he who, having taken horse on the instant, had brought James the first tidings of the death of Elizabeth, and who was created Baron Cary in 1622, [Pg 8] and Earl of Monmouth in 1626. On the 6th of January, 1604, the child was created Duke of York (the last person who bore that title having been Henry VIII. in the lifetime of his elder brother Arthur), and was at the same time made a Knight of the Bath. About two years after this, he was put to be educated into the hands of Mr. Thomas Murray, who in 1621 was appointed Provost of Eton College, and died in 1623, when his place was applied for by Bacon, recently deprived of his office of lord chancellor, but was given to Sir Henry Wotton. It is remarkable that this tutor of the future champion of the church was considered to be by no means a very sound Episcopalian. They tried to get him to take orders when he was made provost of Eton, as had been usual with persons holding that place; but he fought shy. This is stated in a letter to Buckingham by Bishop Williams, then lord keeper; and he adds in a postscript, "I schooled him soundly against Puritanism, which he disavows, though somewhat faintly." Charles is said to have proved an apt scholar. It is told that one day when a number of the nobility and bishops were assembled in the privy chamber, waiting for the king coming out, the Prince of Wales took Archbishop Abbot's cap and put it on his brother's head, saying, that if he was a good boy and minded his book, he would one day make him Archbishop of Canterbury. Here again we are reminded of Henry VIII., whose original destination is also said to have been the church. Of the two Charles would certainly have made the more suitable primate.

Charles became heir to the throne by the death of his elder brother, at an age very little later than Henry VIII., or before he had completed his twelfth year. But while Henry was created Prince of Wales almost immediately, it was not till about four years after, or on the 4th of November, 1616, that Charles was raised to that dignity. He succeeded to the Dukedom of Cornwall, however, on his brother's death.

We hear scarcely any thing more of him till he became king, except his famous scamper off to Spain with Buckingham [Pg 9] in 1623. George Villiers, a younger son of Sir Edward Villiers, of Brookesby, in Leicestershire, had purchased the office of cup-bearer, and had come to court as such in 1614. Early in the following year a plan was entered into, by the principal persons about the king, for setting up the new-comer, whose handsome person and elegant address had already excited the admiration of his majesty, as a rival to the favourite Somerset. The king parted with Somerset, with all his usual demonstrations of affection, on the 1st of August, 1615, and never saw him more. Meanwhile, on the previous 23rd of April, Villiers had been made a gentleman of the Privy Chamber, and on the following day had received the honour of knighthood. After Somerset's dismissal and ruin, Villiers rose rapidly to the height of greatness. In August, 1616, he was created Baron Whaddon and Viscount Villiers; in January, 1617, Earl of Buckingham; and Marquis of Buckingham in the beginning of the following year. Meanwhile he had been made a Privy Counsellor and a Knight of the Garter; and had been elevated to the office first of Master of the Horse, and subsequently to that of Lord High Admiral. In July, 1618, also, his mother had been created Countess of Buckingham for life. But his honours and offices, rapid as their accumulation had been, very faintly indicate his real power. Not only at court, but in every department of the government, and in the church as well as in the state, he was as nearly supreme as the royal favour could make him, at a time when the king could do almost any thing he chose. All offices and dignities were at his disposal; even causes at law were determined by the judges in all the courts this way or that at his order; men of all ranks were supplicants for his protection and patronage. Charles is said to have at first, naturally enough, disliked Buckingham, but James succeeded in making them friends. The affair of the Spanish match, as it was called, began much about the same time with Buckingham's career at court; and it was the chief public business that occupied James's attention during the next seven or eight years. He probably did not consider [Pg 10] any other public object to be of equal importance with that of procuring a daughter of one of the royal houses of the first rank to be a wife for his son. The negotiation for the hand of the Infanta Maria, sister of Philip IV., the reigning king of Spain, was still in a somewhat uncertain though promising state, when Charles and Buckingham set out, with James's consent, on their extraordinary expedition. They left London privately on the 18th of February, 1623, travelled through France in disguise, under the names of John and Thomas Smith, and arrived unannounced in the dusk of the evening of the 7th of March at the residence of the Earl of Bristol at Madrid. Abundant particulars of this adventure are detailed in Clarendon, in Howell's Letters, in the correspondence of the king with his son and Buckingham published in the Hardwicke State Papers, and in other books. It appears that the affair had been gone about with such characteristic imprudence, that their departure was blown abroad a few hours after they had left London; this we learn from a long letter written by James on the 26th of February, beginning, "My sweet boys, and adventurous knights, worthy to be put in a new romanso;" and concluding, "Your poor old Dad is lamer than ever he was, both of his right knee and foot, and writes all this out of his naked bed." "Dad," it is to be observed, is the reverential title by which Buckingham always addresses his majesty; whose name of endearment, on the other hand, for the favourite is Steenie, the Scotch diminutive of Stephen, suggested, it is supposed, by Buckingham's resemblance to the conventional representations of the young and handsome martyr. Their arrival at Madrid is thus related by Howell, who was there at the time:—"They alighted at my Lord of Bristol's house, and the Marquis (Mr. Thomas Smith) came in first with a portmanteau under his arm; then (Mr. John Smith) the prince was sent for, who staid a while on t'other side of the street in the dark. My Lord of Bristol, in a kind of astonishment, brought him up to his bed-chamber, where he presently called for pen and ink, and dispatched a post that night to England, to acquaint [Pg 11] his majesty how in less than sixteen days he was come safely to the court of Spain; that post went lightly laden, for he carried but three letters. The next day came Sir Francis Cottington and Mr. Porter, and dark rumours ran in every corner how some great man was come from England; and some would not stick to say among the vulgar it was the king. But towards the evening on Saturday the marquis went in a close coach to court, where he had private audience of this king, who sent Olivarez to accompany him back to the prince, where he kneeled and kissed his hands and hugged his thighs, and delivered how unmeasurably glad his Catholic majesty was of his coming, with other high compliments, which Mr. Porter did interpret. About ten o'clock that night the king himself came in a close coach with intent to visit the prince, who, hearing of it, met him half-way; and, after salutations and divers embraces, which passed in the first interview, they parted late. . . . On Sunday following the king in the afternoon came abroad to take the air, with the queen, his two brothers, and the Infanta, who were all in one coach; but the Infanta sat in the boot, with a blue ribbon about her arm, of purpose that the prince might distinguish her; there were above twenty coaches besides, of grandees, noblemen, and ladies, that attended them. And now it was publicly known among the vulgar that it was the Prince of Wales who was come; and the confluence of people before my Lord of Bristol's house was so great and greedy to see the prince, that, to clear the way, Sir Lewis Dives went out and took coach, and all the crowd of people went after him. So the prince himself, a little while after, took coach, wherein there were the Earl of Bristol, Sir Walter Ashton, and Count Gondomar, and so went to the Prado, a place hard by, of purpose to take the air, where they staid till the king passed by. As soon as the Infanta saw the prince, her colour rose very high, which we hold to be an impression of love and affection; for the face is oftentimes a true index of the heart." The possession of the prince, however, as ought to have been foreseen, raised the demands of the Spanish court; and it was now [Pg 12] proposed that before the marriage took place the King of England should not only promise certain concessions to his Roman Catholic subjects, but make some sort of acknowledgment of the supremacy or special power of the Pope. In a letter written to his "sweet boys," on the 17th of March, James observes that it has ever been his way to go with the Church of Rome usque ad aras—literally, as far as the altar, the meaning perhaps being that what he principally stuck at was the dogma of transubstantiation. He then runs on in the following curious and characteristic strain:—"I send you also your robes of the order, which ye must not forget to wear upon St. George's day, and dine together in them, if they can come in time, which I pray God they may, for it will be a goodly sight for the Spaniards to see my two boys dine in them. I send you also the jewels, as I promised, some of mine, and such of yours, I mean both of you, as are worth the sending. For my Baby's presenting his mistress, I send him an old double cross of Lorrain, not so rich as ancient, and yet not contemptible for the value; a good looking-glass, with my picture in it, to be hung at her girdle, which ye must tell her ye have caused it so to be enchanted by art magic, as, whensoever she shall be pleased to look in it, she shall see the fairest lady that either her brother or your father's dominions can afford. Ye shall present her with two fair long diamonds set like an anchor, and a fair pendant diamond hanging at them; ye shall give her a goodly rope of pearls; ye shall give her a carguant or collar, thirteen great balls rubies, and thirteen knots or conques of pearls; and ye shall give her a head-dressing of two and twenty great pear pearls; and ye shall give her three goodly peak pendant diamonds, whereof the biggest to be worn at a needle in the midst of her forehead, and one in every ear. And for my Baby's own wearing, ye have two good jewels of your own, your round brooch of diamonds, and your triangle diamond with the great round pearl; and I send you for your wearing the three brethren, that ye know full well, but newly set; and the mirror of France, the fellow of the Portugal diamond, which I would wish you to wear alone [Pg 13] in your hat with a little black feather; ye have also good diamond buttons of your own, to be set to a doublet or jerkin. . . . . And now for the form of my Baby's presenting of his jewels to his mistress, I leave that to himself, with Steenie's advice and my lord of Bristol's; only I would not have them presented all at once, but at the more sundry times the better, and I would have the rarest and richest kept hindmost." Meanwhile matters seemed to be going on as was to be desired in what ought to have been considered the main respect. Here is an extract from another letter of Howell's, addressed to Captain Thomas Porter, and dated the 10th of July:—"I have seen the prince have his eyes immoveably fixed upon the Infanta half an hour together in a thoughtful speculative posture, which sure would needs be tedious unless affection did sweeten it: it was no handsome comparison of Olivarez, that he watched her as a cat doth a mouse. Not long since, the prince, understanding that the Infanta was used to go some mornings to the Casa de Campo, a summer-house the king hath on t'other side the river, to gather May-dew, he rose betimes and went thither, taking your brother (Endymion Porter) with him. They were let into the house, and into the garden, but the Infanta was in the orchard; and there being a high partition wall between, and the door doubly bolted, the prince got on the top of the wall, and sprung down a great height, and so made towards her. But she spying him first of all, the rest gave a shriek and ran back. The old marquis that was then her guardian came towards the prince and fell on his knees, conjuring his highness to retire, in regard he hazarded his head if he admitted any to her company. So the door was opened, and he came out under that wall over which he had got in." Howell adds that he has seen him watch a long hour together in a close coach in the open street to see the Infanta as she went abroad. Yet he cannot affirm that they have ever talked together in private; and whenever they have conversed in public, not only his excellency, the English ambassador, has always necessarily been present as interpreter, but King Philip too has taken his seat hard by [Pg 14] and overheard everything. A most uncomfortable courtship. Among other attractions that the English Prince brought with him, or that were sent after him, was, it appears, the court fool or jester. "Our cousin Archy," says Howell, "hath more privilege than any, for he always goes with his fool's coat where the Infanta is with her meninas and ladies of honour, and keeps a blowing and blustering among them, and flurts out what he lists."

Jester and jewellery, however, romantic expedition and Romanistic concessions, all in the end availed nothing. The only person who seems to have acted throughout with steadiness and sincerity was the Earl of Bristol. James, much as his heart had long been set upon this Spanish match, had hardly given his consent to the project of the prince's journey when he repented, and in the absence of his son and the favourite he was like a child deprived of its playthings. His letters soon began to express the greatest impatience for their return. On the 11th of May he had been weak enough to send the prince, at the request of the latter, a warrant in the following terms:—"We do hereby promise, by the word of a king, that whatsoever you, our son, shall promise in our name, we shall punctually perform." "It were a strange trust," he writes in the accompanying letter to the prince and Buckingham (by this time elevated to the rank of a duke), "it were a strange trust that I would refuse to put upon my only son, and upon my best servant. I know such two ye are will never promise in my name but what may stand with my conscience, honour, and safety, and all these I do fully trust with any one of you two: my former letter will show you my conceit [conception of matters], and now I put the full power in your hands, with God's blessing on you both, praying him still, that, after a happy success there, ye may speedily and happily return, and light in the arms of your dear Dad." But even their success or failure speedily becomes a matter of no consequence, so that he may have them back. Writing again on the 14th of June he urges them, if they can by any means [Pg 15] contrive to get leave, to come away, in any case, and give over all treaty, at once. "And this," he adds, "I speak without respect of any security they can offer you, except ye never look to see your old Dad again, whom I fear ye shall never see, if you see him not before winter. Alas, I now repent me sore that ever I suffered you to go away. I care for match nor nothing, so I may once have you in my arms again; God grant it—God grant it—God grant it! Amen—amen—amen! I protest ye shall be as heartily welcome as if ye had done all things ye went for, so that I may once have you in my arms again; and God bless you both, my only sweet son, and my only best sweet servant, and let me hear from you quickly with all speed, as ye love my life. And so God send you a happy and joyful meeting in the arms of your dear Dad." Again, on the 5th of August, he writes, "I have no more to say, but if you hasten you not home, I apprehend I shall never see you, for my extreme longing will kill me." But it had already been determined by Buckingham that the affair should not go on. He and the Spanish prime minister or favourite, Olivarez, had quarrelled; and, instead of a matrimonial alliance, it had now become the desire of both to bring about a war between the two countries. It was arranged therefore that James should send a formal order commanding his son to return home, which he did on the 10th of August. On its arrival at Madrid, Charles immediately intimated his intention of obeying it, but proposed to leave full powers with the Earl of Bristol to have the marriage solemnized by proxy as soon as a dispensation should come from the new pope, for the death of Gregory XV. was held to render the one already obtained from him inoperative. After promising upon oath that Bristol should act upon the said powers within ten days after the dispensation should make its appearance, Charles parted from the Spanish king, on the 9th of September, with every profession of affectionate regard on both sides. The poor Infanta now assumed the title of Princess of England, and had a court formed for her as such. Nevertheless, soon after Charles and Buckingham got [Pg 16] home, express orders were sent to Bristol to proceed no further in the business; and the enmity of Spain and the late solemn contract were equally set at defiance.

This first public transaction in which Charles figured was not calculated to strike the world with admiration of the openness and sincerity of his nature. Besides the part he acted in making his escape from Spain and from the match, it may be doubted if even his apparent attachment to Buckingham was more than a show and a pretence. Their characters were so dissimilar, or rather so opposite, that any real regard or sympathy between them seems impossible. Or, if Charles, with his outward decorum of life and professed principles of religion and virtue, did consort intimately with so reckless a libertine as Buckingham, he must have been a great dissembler. But what perhaps gives us the worst impression of him is his treatment of the lady. Notwithstanding all his elaborate ostentation of gallantry, it cannot be believed, looking to his hollow and heartless leave-taking, that he had ever cared for her. But he had assumed the character of a lover, and he thought that to sit for half an hour in a thoughtful speculative posture with his eyes fixed upon the object of his pretended passion, like a cat watching a mouse, was the way to perform such a part. We do not recollect that in his letters to his father he ever expresses any admiration of the Infanta. It is not improbable that he had already been captivated or at least prepossessed by the superior attractions of the French Princess, Henrietta Maria, daughter of Henry IV., and sister of the reigning king, Louis XIII., whom, it is said, he and Buckingham had seen at a ball as they passed through Paris on their way to Spain. At all events, as soon as the Spanish Infanta had been shaken off, a negotiation was opened for the hand of this daughter of France; and, after some difficulties and delays, the marriage was at last agreed upon, in November of the following year, 1624. The marriage was celebrated at Paris on the 1st of May, 1625, the Duke of Chevreuse acting as proxy for the bridegroom; and the bride arrived in England on the 12th of June. Our epistolary [Pg 17] friend Howell, who saw her at her landing, describes her as "in true beauty beyond the long-wooed Infanta;" "for she," he proceeds, "was of a fading flaxen hair, big-lipped, and somewhat heavy-eyed; but this daughter of France, this youngest branch of Bourbon, is of a more lovely and lasting complexion, a dark brown. She hath eyes that sparkle like stars; and, for her physiognomy, she may be said to be a mirror of perfection." And Lord Kensington, who had been sent to negotiate the marriage, thus writes to the prince from Paris, on the 26th of February, 1625, in a letter which is preserved in the Cabala:—"You will find a lady of as much loveliness and sweetness to deserve your affection as any creature under heaven can do. And, Sir, by all her fashions since my being here, and by what I hear from the ladies, it is most visible to me, her infinite value and respect unto you. Sir, I say not this to betray your belief, but from a true observation and knowledge of this to be so. I tell you this, and must somewhat more in way of admiration of the person of Madame; for the impressions I had of her were but ordinary, but the amazement extraordinary to find her, as I protest to God I did, the sweetest creature in France. Her growth is very little short of her age, and her wisdom infinitely beyond it. I heard her discourse with her mother, and the ladies about her, with extraordinary discretion and quickness. She dances (the which I am a witness of) as well as ever I saw any creature. They say she sings most sweetly. I am sure she looks so." Even the austere Sir Symonds d'Ewes, when he saw her at dinner at Whitehall after her marriage, thought her "a most absolute delicate creature." "Besides," adds the strait-laced Puritan, "her deportment amongst her women was so sweet and humble, and her speech and looks to her other servants so mild and gracious, as I could not abstain from divers deep-fetched sighs, to consider that she wanted the knowledge of the true religion." Her eye in particular has been celebrated in Waller's verse, where it is said that it might

And in truth it was soon found that the lightning would sometimes become rather too fierce, and that the little woman could upon occasion put on a scowl worthy of Juno herself.

But before the actual celebration of his marriage, though after the affair had been finally arranged, Charles had lost his father. James died on the 27th of March, 1625; and Charles became king. Before presenting such a rapid summary as our limits will permit of the history of his reign, we will advert for a moment longer to those personal and domestic matters which come more properly within the scope of biography.

The union of Charles and his queen was by no means a harmonious one for some time at first. For this there would appear to have been two principal causes: on the one side, the influence of her French attendants, clergy, women, and others, with Henrietta; on the other, the equal ascendancy maintained over her husband by Buckingham. There are two letters in the Hardwicke State Papers, from Charles to Buckingham, then at Paris, both dated from Hampton Court on the same day, the 20th of November, 1625, less than six months after the queen's arrival in England, in the first of which he intimates his intention of cashiering or dismissing her monsieurs, on the ground of their attempting to steal away his wife (perhaps the meaning is, to steal away her affections), and of their making feuds with his own subjects; and in the second of which he says, "You know what patience I have had with the unkind usages of my wife, grounded upon a belief that it was not in her nature, but made by ill instruments, and overcome by your persuasions to me that my kind usages would be able to rectify those misunderstandings. I hope my ground may be true, but I am sure you have erred in your opinion; for I find daily worse and worse effects of ill offices done between us, my kind usages having no power to mend anything. Now necessity urges me to vent myself to you in [Pg 19] this particular, for grief is eased being told to a friend;" &c. But the most detailed account we have of his grievances, from the unfortunate husband, is in a letter of instructions despatched by him from Wanstead, on the 12th of July, in this same year, to Lord Carlton, then English ambassador at the French court, a copy of which was found in his own hand among his papers taken by the parliamentary army at Naseby, in 1645, and soon after printed under the title of 'The King's Cabinet Opened.' This curious statement is far too long to be given in full; but two or three sentences may be quoted. His majesty begins by referring to the knowledge which both the French king and his mother already have of the unkindness and distastes which had fallen out between his wife and himself, "which hitherto," he continues, "I have borne with great patience (as all the world knows), ever expecting and hoping an amendment; knowing her to be but young, and perceiving it to be the ill crafty counsels of her servants for advancing of their own ends, rather than her own inclination." Their quarrelling began a very short time after their marriage. "Madame St. George," says his majesty, "taking a distaste because I would not let her ride with us in the coach, when there was women of better quality to fill her room, claiming it as her due (which in England we think a strange thing), set my wife in such an humour of distaste against me, as, from that very hour to this, no man can say that ever she used me two days together with so much respect as I deserved of her." And then he relates various instances of her contumacy and violence; concluding, "Thus having so long patience with the disturbance of that that should be one of my greatest contentments, I can no longer suffer those that I know to be the cause and fomenters of these humours to be about my wife any longer; which I must do, if it were but for one action they made my wife do, which is, to make her go to Tyburn in devotion to pray; which action can have no greater invective made against [it] than the relation." The affair here referred to was a pilgrimage which Queen Henrietta's confessor made her perform one morning, barefoot, all [Pg 20] the way across Hyde-park, to the gallows at Tyburn, on arriving at which she knelt and prayed to the Roman Catholic sufferers who had been executed there in the two preceding reigns, as so many saints and martyrs. [A] It was an act certainly for which Charles might have been justified in locking her up as gone out of her senses. But he satisfied himself with a milder course. He had already, on the 1st of July, gone to Somerset House, where the queen's foreign establishment was lodged, and had told the monsieurs and madames that he neither could nor would any longer endure their conduct; but finding they would take no hint, he was obliged a few weeks after to employ stronger measures. We find him on the 7th of August writing to Buckingham, in a letter printed by Sir Henry Ellis, "Force them away, drive them away, like so many wild beasts, and so the devil go with them." Accordingly they were all sent off a few days after in a string of about forty coaches to Dover, which they reached after a journey of four days, and whence they were transported to France on the 12th of August. The Roman Catholic account is that there were only sixty of them, and this appears to have been their original number; but they are said to have received large accessions while here, and one enumeration makes them to have amounted, when they were turned off, to four hundred and forty in all, besides children. It is affirmed that the keeping of them cost 240l. a day; and that the payment of their debts, and of some presents and pensions bestowed upon them at their departure, absorbed not less than 50,000l. Queen Henrietta became a manageable wife after she was thus taken out of the hands of her French priests and waiting-women; nay, she came, as was generally believed, to manage her husband, who acquired for the rest of his life the reputation [Pg 21] of extreme uxoriousness, or obsequiousness to the counsels and wishes of his wife. But in how far she is chargeable with having been, as has been represented, the instigator of some of his worst mistakes, or of those parts of his conduct which would seem to have principally occasioned his misfortunes and eventual ruin, may be doubted. There was enough in Charles's own character, and indeed almost in his position, whatever his character had been, to occasion and to account for all that happened.

At his accession circumstances and the minds of men were ripe for a renewal of that struggle between the popular and the monarchical principles of the constitution, which his predecessor had with difficulty put down when it broke out in the parliament assembled in 1621. Charles began his reign by retaining as his chief adviser the unpopular, unprincipled, and incapable Buckingham. And Buckingham's first proceeding was to commence hostilities against Spain, and thus to involve his master in pecuniary difficulties, which offered to the popular party an opportunity of pursuing their objects too promising to be neglected.

The reign commenced accordingly with a contest between the king and the parliament, the latter firmly refusing to grant the supplies demanded by his majesty until they had obtained both a redress of grievances and a limitation of the prerogative. Charles on his part met the resistance of the parliament both by insisting upon preserving the prerogative entire and by boldly putting it in force. In the course of this first contest three parliaments were successively called together and dismissed. The first met on the 18th of June, 1625, and was dissolved the 12th of August, in the same year; the second met the 6th of February, 1626, and was dissolved, before it had passed a single act, the 15th of June; the third met the 17th of March, 1628, was suddenly prorogued the 26th of June, was called together for a second session the 20th of January, 1629, and was finally dissolved the 10th of March of the same year. All this time the proceedings of the king continued to [Pg 22] be of the most arbitrary character. Money was collected from the people by force; the influence of the crown was exercised in the most open manner to overawe the judges, in cases in which the liberty of the subject was concerned; the first privilege of parliament itself was violated by the seizure of members of the House of Commons, and their commitment to prison, for words alleged to have been spoken by them in debate. Nor is Charles free from the charge of having resorted to manœuvring and subterfuge to escape from the demands with which he was pressed. He is especially exposed to the charge of such insincerity and indirectness by his conduct in the affair of the Petition of Right, which was passed in the first session of his third parliament, and to which he was eventually compelled to give his assent. This was the greatest, indeed it may be said the only, victory obtained by the popular party in the course of the struggle; and it was rendered ineffectual for the present, by the temporary success of the king in the plan which he at length adopted of governing without parliaments. Immediately before entering on this line of policy, he wisely made peace, first, on the 14th of April, 1629, with France, with which power he had entered (in July, 1626) into a foolish war, every operation in which was a disgraceful failure; and secondly, on the 5th of November, 1630, with Spain, the war with which had not been more creditable to his arms. Meanwhile also, the assassination of Buckingham, on the 23rd of August, 1628, had rid him of that evil adviser.

His principal advisers now were the queen, Bishop Laud, and Wentworth, created Earl of Strafford. The state of things now established, and which may be described as the complete subjugation of the constitution by the prerogative of the crown, lasted for nearly eight years. The only memorable attempt at resistance was that made by Hampden, who refused to pay his assessment of ship-money, and whose case was argued before the twelve judges, in April, 1637, and decided in favour of the crown. Meantime, however, the opposition of [Pg 23] the people of Scotland to the episcopal form of church government, which had for some time been established among them, suddenly burst out into a flame. The first disturbances took place at Edinburgh, in the end of July, 1637; and by the beginning of the following year the whole country was in a state of insurrection against the royal authority. In these circumstances Charles called together his fourth parliament, which met on the 13th of April, 1640. The temper which the members showed, however, induced him to dissolve it on the 5th of May following. But the Scotch army having entered England on the 20th of August, he again found himself forced to have recourse to the representatives of the people. The result was, the meeting, on the 3rd of November, of a fifth parliament, which is generally known under the name of the Long Parliament.

The first proceedings of this assembly amounted to entering into a complete alliance with the Scottish insurgents. By one bill after another, the king was stripped of all the most objectionable of his prerogatives. The commons also voted that no bishop should have any vote in parliament nor bear any sway in temporal affairs, and that no clergyman should be in the commission of the peace. Of his advisers, Laud was sent to the Tower, and Strafford was executed, in conformity with an act of attainder, his assenting to which has always been regarded as one of the greatest stains on the character of Charles. Laud also, as is more particularly related in a subsequent page, was executed after he had remained a prisoner in the Tower more than four years. After having yielded everything else, however, Charles refused his assent to the Militia Bill, which was presented to him in February, 1642, the object of which was to transfer all the military power of the kingdom into the hands of the parliament. The first blood drawn in the civil war which followed was at the indecisive battle of Edgehill, fought on Sunday, the 23rd of October, in that year. After this the war extended itself over the whole kingdom. For some time success seemed to incline to the royal side, and at the beginning of the year [Pg 24] 1644, throughout both the west and the north of England, all opposition to the king was nearly subdued. In February of that year, however, another Scottish army crossed the border, and on the 2nd of July, at Marston Moor, the royalists sustained a defeat from the combined Scottish and parliamentary forces, which proved a fatal blow to the king's affairs. The brilliant exploits of the Marquis of Montrose in Scotland, at the end of this year and the beginning of the next, were thrown away in the circumstances in which his royal master now was. At length, on the 14th of June, 1645, was fought the battle of Naseby, which may be said to have finished the war. On the 5th of May, 1646, Charles delivered himself up to the Scotch army encamped before Newark, who, on the 30th of January, 1647, gave him up to the commissioners of the English parliament. On the 3rd of June he was forcibly taken by Cornet Joyce out of the hands of the commissioners, and carried to the army then lying at Triplow Heath, and now in open rebellion against their old masters of the parliament. On the 16th of August he was brought by the army to Hampton Court, from which he made his escape on the 11th of November, and eventually sought refuge with Hammond, the parliamentary governor of the Isle of Wight. Here he was detained a close prisoner in Carisbrook Castle till the 30th of November, 1648, when he was seized by Colonel Ewer, and carried to Hurst Castle, on the opposite coast of Hampshire, by an order of the council of officers in the army. Meanwhile risings in his favour, which had been attempted in various parts of the kingdom, were all suppressed without difficulty by the now dominant army. An army in the Presbyterian interest, which was advancing from Scotland under the conduct of the Duke of Hamilton, was met on the 17th of August, at Langdale, near Preston, by Cromwell, who, after completely routing it, penetrated as far as Edinburgh, and reduced everything to subjection in that quarter. On the 6th of December, Colonel Pride took possession of the House of Commons, with a strong detachment of soldiers, and cleared it by force of all the [Pg 25] members, except the minority of about a hundred and fifty, who were in the Independent interest. On the 23rd the king was brought in custody to Windsor, and on the 15th of January, 1649, to St. James's. On the 20th, he was brought to trial in Westminster Hall, before what was designated the High Court of Justice. Sentence of death was pronounced against him on the 27th, and he was executed by decapitation, on a scaffold erected in front of the Banqueting House at Whitehall, at two in the afternoon of the 30th.

Charles I. had eight children by Queen Henrietta, of whom six survived him; namely, Charles, Prince of Wales, and James, Duke of York, afterwards Kings of England; Henry, created, in 1659, Duke of Gloucester; Mary, married to William, Prince of Orange, by whom she became mother of William, afterwards King of England; Elizabeth, who died a prisoner in Carisbrook Castle, September 8th, 1650, in her fifteenth year; and Henrietta Maria, who married Philip, Duke of Orleans, from whom, through a daughter, is descended the Royal family of Sardinia.

The literary works attributed to King Charles have been collected and published under the title of 'Reliquiæ Sacræ Carolinæ.' A list of them may be found in Horace Walpole's 'Royal and Noble Authors.' They consist chiefly of letters and a few state papers, and of the famous 'Eikon Basilike,' which first appeared immediately after the death of the king; but his claim to the authorship of this work has been much disputed, and is now generally considered to have been disproved. His majesty, however, was master of an easy and occasionally forcible English style, and he was a great friend to the fine arts, which he encouraged in the early part of his reign.

The original authorities for the history of the reign of Charles I. are very numerous. Among those of greatest importance may be mentioned Rushworth's 'Historical Collections;' Whitelock's 'Memorials of English Affairs;' Clarendon's 'History of the Grand Rebellion;' and May's 'History of the (Long) Parliament.' The [Pg 26] general reader will find a sufficiently ample detail of the events of the time in the histories of Rapin, Hume, and Lingard. The most important of the recent works on the reign of Charles I. are those of Brodie, Godwin, and D'Israeli. The subject of the authorship of the 'Eikon Basilike' has been re-agitated of late by Dr. Christopher Wordsworth, Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, in a work in which he contends that the book was the production of King Charles.

Footnote

[A] Dr. Lingard, after professing, in a note, to examine the evidence upon which this charge rests, comes to the conclusion that it was a mere fiction invented by the enemies of the queen and her religion; but he takes no notice of the passage quoted in the text from the king's own letter.

Thomas Wentworth, afterwards Earl of Strafford, was born in Chancery-lane, London, on the 13th of April, 1593. He was the eldest son of Sir William Wentworth, of Wentworth Woodhouse, in the county of York, where his family are said to have been settled since the time of the Conquest. His family was one of the most opulent as well as ancient of the class known in England under the name of gentry, and had frequently intermarried with the higher aristocracy. The estate which Wentworth inherited from his father was worth 6000l. a year, a very large sum at that time, probably equal to more than three times the amount in the present day. ('Strafford's Letters and Dispatches,' vol. ii., pp. 105, 106, folio edition, London, 1739, and Dr. Knowler's Dedication, prefixed to them.) He received part of his education at St. John's College, Cambridge. In 1611 he married the Lady Margaret Clifford, the eldest daughter of Francis, earl of Cumberland. The [Pg 28] accuracy of this date as that of his first marriage, given by his friend Sir George Radcliffe, appears to be established by a letter dated 11th January, 1611, from Sir Peter Frechevile to his father Sir William Wentworth; although the compilers of his Life in the 'Biographia Britannica' have chosen, in direct opposition to the statement of Radcliffe, the old and intimate friend of Wentworth, to place his marriage after his return from the Continent, towards the end of 1612 (by the old mode of reckoning, according to which the legal year began on the 25th of March, but by the new about the beginning of 1613), instead of in 1611, before his going abroad.

The same letter also shows that he was from his early years of studious and regular habits. He appears to have taken almost as much pains as Cicero recommends for the education of an orator. Sir George Radcliffe informs us that the excellence possessed by him in speaking and writing he attained first by reading well-penned authors in French, English, and Latin, and observing their expressions; secondly, by hearing of eloquent men, which he did diligently in their sermons and public speeches; thirdly, by a very great care and industry, which he used when he was young in penning his epistles and missives of what subject soever; but above all, he had a natural quickness of wit and fancy, with great clearness of judgment, and much practice, without which his other helps of reading and hearing would not have brought him to that great perfection which he had obtained. "I learned one rule of him," adds Sir George, "which I think worthy to be remembered; when he met with a well-penned oration or tract upon any subject or question, he framed a speech upon the same argument, inventing and disposing what seemed fit to be said upon that subject before he read the book; then reading the book, compare his own with the author, and note his own defects, and the author's art and fullness; whereby he observed all that was in the author more strictly, and might better judge of his own wants to supply them." ('Strafford's Letters and Dispatches,' vol. ii. p. 435.)

In some of Strafford's earlier letters, particularly those [Pg 29] to Sir George Calvert, principal secretary of state in the time of James I., there is, though no marks of profound scholarship, a somewhat pedantic display of trite Latin quotations. From these however, though we may judge so far of the extent of Strafford's scholarship, it would be incorrect to estimate his abilities, for they are mostly confined to his early letters, and, among them, to his letters to courtiers.

Upon his early habits still further light is thrown by some advice which he gives to his nephew, Sir William Savile, in a letter dated "Dublin Castle, 29th September, 1633." Advising him to "distrust himself and fortify his youth by the counsel of his more aged friends before he undertakes any thing of consequence;" he adds, "It was the course that I governed myself by after my father's death, with great advantage to myself and affairs, and yet my breeding abroad had shown me more of the world than yours hath done; and I had natural reason like other men, only I confess I did in all things distrust myself, wherein you shall do, as I said, extremely well if you do so too." ('Letters and Dispatches,' vol. i. p. 169.)

The letter from which the above quotation is made contains so much good advice, so well and so weightily expressed, that it may bear a comparison with Burleigh's celebrated 'Advice to his Son;' the resemblance in some passages is striking. With respect to the greater part of this advice, particularly what regards economy and regularity in the management of his private affairs, temperance in drinking, and abstinence from gaming, it was the rule by which Wentworth shaped his own conduct, and to which, according to Radcliffe, he strictly adhered. The part of the advice to which he himself least adhered was that recommending calmness and courtesy of demeanour; for even his most intimate friend Sir George Radcliffe admits that "he was naturally exceeding cholerick," and the actions of his life show that in that particular he was never able thoroughly to subdue nature.

In the same year in which he was married Wentworth [Pg 30] went into France, having previously been knighted. He was accompanied by the Rev. Charles Greenwood, fellow of University College, Oxford, as his "governor," or travelling tutor, for whom he entertained the greatest respect and regard to the end of his life. In February, 1613, he returned to England. He was returned and sat for the county of York in the parliament which began April 5th, 1614. Radcliffe's account as to this date, though rejected by the writers in the 'Biographia Britannica,' and Mr. MacDiarmid, is confirmed by Browne Willis's 'Notitia Parliamentaria,' vol. iii. p. 169: "Co. Ebor., Jo. Savile, kt., Thomas Wentworth, kt. and bart., anno 12 Jac. I., began April 5, 1614, and continued till June 7, and was then dissolved." During this short parliament, which continued only two months, Wentworth does not appear to have spoken. Mr. Forster, his latest biographer, says that he has examined the Journals, and finds no trace of Wentworth's speaking on either side in the great struggle that was then going on. ('Life of Strafford,' in the 'Cabinet Cyclopædia;' 'Lives of Eminent British Statesmen,' vol. ii. p. 197.)

In 1615 Wentworth was appointed to the office of custos rotulorum for the west riding of the county of York, in the room of Sir John Savile; an office of which Savile attempted to deprive him about two years after, through the influence of the favourite, Buckingham, but without success, though he succeeded afterwards. The result was a feud between Wentworth and the Saviles, the father and son, Sir John Savile the younger, afterwards Lord Savile.

In 1621 Wentworth was again returned to parliament for the county of York; and this time he brought in Sir George Calvert, one of the secretaries of state, along with him. In Michaelmas term he removed his family from Wentworth Woodhouse to London. He took up his abode in Austin Friars, where in 1622 he had a "great fever." When he began to recover he removed, about July, to Bow, where shortly after his wife the Lady Margaret died. On the 24th of February, 1625, he married the Lady Arabella Hollis, a younger daughter [Pg 31] of the Earl of Clare, a lady, observes Radcliffe, "exceeding comely and beautiful, and yet much more lovely in the endowments of her mind."

Hitherto, though Wentworth had not taken a very prominent part in the proceedings of parliament, still he was considered to have acted with the party that opposed the court, as appears from the fact of his being, on the eve of the calling together of a new parliament, among the number of those whom Buckingham attempted to disable from serving, by having them pricked sheriffs of their respective counties. In November, 1625, Wentworth was made sheriff of Yorkshire. A passage from one of his letters at this time shows that he was never inclined to go the lengths that some others did in resistance to the royal prerogative. ('Strafford's Letters and Dispatches,' vol. i. p. 33.)

In May, 1627, he was committed a prisoner to the Marshalsea by the lords of the council for refusing the royal loan; and about six weeks after, his imprisonment was exchanged for confinement at the town of Dartford in Kent, from which place he was not to go above two miles. About Christmas he was released; and shortly after the third parliament of Charles began, in which Wentworth served as knight for Yorkshire. Wentworth had now resolved to make the court party more aware of the extent of his talents than they yet appeared to be. On the discussion of the general question of grievances he spoke with an ability and spirit which proved to them that he might turn out such an enemy, that he was worth having as a friend. It has been usual to speak of Wentworth as an apostate: but he never appears to have been at heart on the popular, or rather the parliamentary side. His whole conduct, both before and after he became the king's minister, shows that he considered the general movement in modern Europe to be not towards democracy, but towards the establishment of absolute monarchy. The several springs of Wentworth's conduct are now fully laid bare in a manner that they could hardly be to his contemporaries, and in a manner that few men's have ever been to after-ages, by the publication [Pg 32] of the two large folio volumes of his 'Letters and Dispatches,' one of the most valuable collections of papers, both in a political and historical point of view, ever made public. In that collection there are two letters (Strafford, 'Letters and Dispatches,' vol. i. pp. 34, 35) to Sir Richard Weston, chancellor of the exchequer, containing very unequivocal overtures, the non-acceptance of which at the time would seem to have produced the indignant outbreak of patriotic eloquence above alluded to.

In June, 1628, the parliament ended. In July, Sir Thomas Wentworth, having been reconciled to Buckingham, was created Baron Wentworth. The death of Buckingham, soon after, removed the only obstacle to higher honours. In Michaelmas term he was made Viscount Wentworth, Lord President of the North, and a privy councillor.

The establishment of the Council of the North originated in the frequent northern rebellions which followed Henry VIII.'s suppression of the lesser monasteries, and extended over the counties of York, Northumberland, Cumberland, Westmoreland, and Durham. The commission, though apparently only one of oyer and terminer, contained a clause authorising the commissioners to hear all causes real and personal, when either of the parties was poor, and decide according to sound discretion. This clause was declared by all the judges to be illegal. James issued a new commission, by which the commissioners were not ordered to inquire "per sacramentum bonorum et legalium hominum" (by the oath of good and lawful men), or to be controlled by forms of law, but were merely referred to certain secret instructions which were sent down to the council. Against this, however, the judges had the courage to protest, and to issue prohibitions on demand to the president and council; and the instructions were ordered to be enrolled, that the people might have some chance of knowing them.

Dr. Knowler, the editor of the 'Strafford Papers,' in the adulatory dedication of them to his patron, the grandson [Pg 33] of the Earl of Strafford, gravely observes that "Sir Thomas Wentworth, who was a true friend to episcopal government in the church, and to a limited monarchy in the state, could have no reason, when the Petition of Right was granted, to refuse to bear his share of toil and pains in the service of the public, or to withstand the offer of those honours his majesty was graciously pleased to make him, especially when it gave him an opportunity of setting an example of a wise and just and steady administration." Wentworth's acceptance of the office of president of this council was a flagrant violation of the fundamental principle of the Petition of Right. His career in the office too did not belie the promise of its acceptance. One of his first acts was to declare that he would lay any man by the heels who ventured to sue out a prohibition in the courts at Westminster. (Rushworth, vol. ii. p. 159.) And one of the judges (Vernon), who had the courage to resist these encroachments on the ancient laws of the land, Wentworth tried hard to have removed from his office. (Strafford, 'Letters and Dispatches,' vol. i. pp. 129, 130.) Indeed, like his friend and coadjutor Laud, Wentworth never let slip an opportunity of expressing his bitter dislike of the interference of the judges and common lawyers with his scheme of governing, not by the laws of England, but according to "sound discretion."

In January, 1631, Wentworth was made lord deputy of Ireland. The principle on which he set about governing there was in substance the same as that of his government in the presidency of York. "These lawyers," he writes to the lord marshal, "would monopolise to themselves all judicature, as if no honour or justice could be rightly administered but under one of their bencher's gowns." (Strafford, 'Letters and Dispatches,' vol. i. p. 223.) And he adds, a line or two after, "Therefore if your lordship's judgment approve of my reasons, I beseech you to assist me therein, or rather the king's service, and I shall be answerable with my head."

It is remarkable how frequently he alludes to this last as the test of the soundness of the policy of his measures. [Pg 34] They were in the end so tested, and being found wanting, he was taken at his word; he was called upon to pay, and paid the forfeit. One of the principal means by which Wentworth sought to squeeze money out of the people of Ireland was by holding a parliament.

Wentworth's political economy was not very sound, yet he saw far enough to discover that to enrich the king, the way was, to begin by enriching the people. "For this is a ground," he says, "I take with me, that to serve your majesty completely well in Ireland we must not only endeavour to enrich them, but make sure still to hold them dependent upon the crown, and not able to subsist without us." ('Strafford's Letters and Dispatches,' vol. i. p. 93.) But the plan he proposed does not seem certainly very well adapted for enriching the people. "Which will be effected," he proceeds, "by wholly laying aside the manufacture of wools into cloth or stuff there, and by furnishing them from this kingdom; and then making your majesty sole merchant of all salts on that side; for thus shall they not only have their clothing, the improvement of all their native commodities (which are principally preserved by salt), and their victual itself from hence (strong ties and enforcements upon their allegiance and obedience to your majesty); but a means found, I trust, much to advance your majesty's revenue upon salt, and to improve your customs. The wools there grown, and the cloths there worn, thus paying double duties to your crown in both kingdoms; and the salt outward here, both inward and outward there." He thus sums up the advantages of the measures proposed:—"Holding them from the manufacture of wool (which, unless otherwise directed, I shall by all means discourage), and thus enforcing them to fetch their clothing from thence, and to take their salt from the king (being that which preserves and gives value to all their native staple commodities), how can they depart from us without nakedness and beggary? Which in itself is so weighty a consideration, as a small profit should not bear it down." ('Letters and Dispatches,' vol. i. p. 193.)

[Pg 35] In one particular he did benefit Ireland. At his own risk he imported and sowed a quantity of superior flaxseed. The first crop having succeeded, he next year laid out 1000l. on the undertaking, set up a number of looms, procuring workmen from France and Flanders, and sent a ship to Spain freighted with linen at his own risk. Thus began the linen manufacture of Ireland, which in some measure verified Wentworth's prediction that it would greatly benefit that country. (Strafford, 'Letters and Dispatches,' vol. i. p. 473.)

Wentworth appears to have been of very infirm health, which, taken with the general course of his education and his position in society, will in part account for the acerbity and irritability of temper, and the impatience of any opposition to his will, which throughout his career involved him in so many personal quarrels. The number of powerful personal enemies which Wentworth thus arrayed against himself appears to us to be a proof of the want of real political talent of a high order. A really wise politician, such as Oliver Cromwell for example, does not raise up such a host of powerful personal enemies. Laud gives a good hint about this in one of his letters. "And yet, my lord," he says, "if you could find way do all these great services and decline these storms, I think it would be excellent well thought on." (Strafford, 'Letters and Dispatches,' vol. i. p. 479.)

In 1639 Charles raised Wentworth to the dignity of an earl, which he had in vain solicited formerly. He was created Earl of Strafford and Baron of Raby, and invested with the title of lord-lieutenant, or lieutenant-general of Ireland—a title which had not been borne since the time of Essex.

In 1640 the earl of Northumberland being attacked by severe illness, the king appointed Strafford in his place, to the command of the army against the Scots. He does not appear to have performed anything here to make good either his own high pretensions or the character for valour given him by some writers. Of his impeachment at the opening of the Long Parliament, [Pg 36] Clarendon gives the following account:—"It was about three of the clock in the afternoon [of November 11, 1640] when the Earl of Strafford (being infirm, and not well-disposed in health, and so not having stirred out of his house that morning), hearing that both houses still sate, thought fit to go thither. It was believed by some (upon what ground was never clear enough) that he made that haste there to accuse the Lord Say, and some others, of having induced the Scots to invade the kingdom; but he was scarce entered into the House of Peers, when the message from the House of Commons was called in, and when Mr. Pym at the bar, and in the name of all the Commons of England, impeached Thomas, earl of Strafford (with the addition of all his other titles), of high treason."

On the 25th of November (1640), at a conference between the two houses in reference to the subject of this impeachment, Mr. Pym made a speech, in which he attempted, with considerable though unsuccessful ingenuity, to prove that the earl of Strafford was guilty of treason, on the ground that "other treasons are against the rule of the law, but this is against the being of the law." The laws against treason in England having been made to protect the king, not the subject, it would be in vain to look in the Statute of Treasons, the 25th Edward III. st. 5, c. 2, which at that time constituted the English law of treason (the statutes of Henry VIII., making so many new treasons, having been repealed by 1 Mary, c. 1), for any definition or description, or even any mention of that of which Strafford was accused, viz., an attempt to increase the power of the king, and to depress that of a subject. Pym was partly aware of this, and he endeavoured to meet it by saying that this treason, of which he speaks, "is enlarged beyond the limits of any description or definition." But though it was not to be supposed or expected that the Statute of Treasons of Edward III. (25 Edward III. st. 5, c. 2), being made to protect the king, not the subject, would provide specially for the punishment of such attempts as those of Strafford; it does nevertheless appear that Strafford was [Pg 37] punishable for having become the instrument for administering the government of the Council of the North, carried on in direct violation of the Petition of Right, which during the time of Strafford's being president of that council was the law of the land. However the Commons changed their course and introduced a bill of attainder, which was passed on the 21st of April, in the Commons, and soon after in the Lords. The king with tears in his eyes, and other demonstrations of weakness characteristic of him, signed a commission for giving the royal assent to the bill, and then made some feeble and unavailing efforts to save the life of his obnoxious minister. "The resort to the bill of attainder," observes Mr. Forster ('Life of Strafford,' p. 404), "arose from no failure of the impeachment, as has been frequently alleged, but because in the course of that impeachment circumstances arose which suggested to the great leader of the popular cause the greater safety of fixing this case upon wider grounds. Without stretching to the slightest extent the boundaries of any statute, they thought it better at once to bring Strafford's treason to the condemnation of the sources of all law."

Strafford was beheaded on Tower-hill on the 12th of May, 1641. In his walk from the Tower to the place of execution his step and manner are described by Rushworth as being those of "a general marching at the head of an army, to breathe victory, rather than those of a condemned man, to undergo the sentence of death." Within a few weeks after his death, the parliament mitigated the penalties of their sentence to his children. In the succeeding reign, the attainder was reversed, and his son was restored to the earldom.

John Hampden, one of the most distinguished of the patriots of England, was the head and representative of an ancient and opulent family, which had received the lands of Hampden, in Buckinghamshire, from Edward the Confessor, and boasted to have transmitted its wealth, honours, and influence, unimpaired and increasing, in direct male succession, down to this the most illustrious name of the house. He was the eldest son of William Hampden, of Hampden, and of his wife Elizabeth, second daughter of Sir Henry Cromwell, of Hinchinbrooke, in Huntingdonshire, and aunt of the Protector, Cromwell. John Hampden was born in London in 1594, and at the age of three years came, by the death of his father, into possession of the family estates, which, besides the ancient seat and extensive domain in Buckinghamshire, comprehended large possessions in Essex, Oxfordshire, and Berkshire. He was brought up at the free grammar-school of Thame, in Oxfordshire; [Pg 39] entered as a commoner at Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1609; and was admitted student of the Inner Temple in 1613, where he made considerable progress in the knowledge of common law. His classical attainments also seem to have been respectable, since he was associated, oddly enough, with Laud, then Master of St. John's, in writing the Oxford gratulatory poems on the marriage of the Elector Palatine and the Princess Elizabeth; from which sprung Prince Rupert, who led the Royalist troops when Hampden received his death-wound. In 1619 he married, at Pyrton, in Oxfordshire, his first wife Elizabeth Symeon, only daughter of Edward Symeon. Inheriting a noble property, he devoted himself, without suffering his literary habits to fall into desuetude, principally to the business and amusements of a country life, having, says Lord Clarendon, "on a sudden retired from a life of great pleasure and license, to extraordinary sobriety and strictness, and yet retained his usual cheerfulness and affability." His first entrance into public life was in January, 1620–1, when he took his seat in the Parliament then convened, for Grampound, at that time a borough of wealth and importance: a prevalent error, that he sat for the first time in the first Parliament summoned by Charles I. in 1625, is corrected Lord Nugent, who in his 'Memorials' of Hampden has shown that he sat in the Parliaments of 1621 and 1624; that he was active and diligent in his attendance, and intimately connected himself with Selden, Pym, St. John, and other leaders of the popular party; and that, though he seldom spoke, his capacity for business was known and respected, as appears from the employments in committees and conferences imposed on him by the House.

In the first Parliament of Charles I., Hampden sat for Wendover, an ancient borough of Buckinghamshire, which with two others had lately regained their dormant privilege of returning members, chiefly by his exertions and at his expense. In this and in the following Parliament summoned in February, 1627, Hampden still appears to have taken no leading part; but his influence, both in and out of parliament, gradually increased, especially [Pg 40] in his native county of Buckingham. After the dissolution of the latter parliament, Charles began to put in force his threat of raising supplies by unusual means, and required a general loan, to which Hampden was called upon to contribute. This he refused to do, and was in consequence imprisoned for a time in the Gate House, and then sent, still under restraint, to reside in Hampshire. The order for his release, with seventy-six others, is dated March, 1627–8. On this occasion, he made the remarkable reply to the demand, why he would not contribute to the king's necessities, that "he could be content to lend as well as others, but feared to draw upon himself that curse in Magna Charta, which should be read twice a-year against those who infringe it."

In the new Parliament which met in March, 1628, Hampden again sat for Wendover, and having become more generally known by the part which he had taken in resisting the demands of the crown, from this time forward, says Lord Nugent, "scarcely was a bill prepared, or an inquiry begun, upon any subject, however remotely affecting any one of the three great matters at issue—privilege, religion, or the supplies—but he was thought fit to be associated with St. John, Selden, Coke, and Pym, on the committee."

That Parliament, after framing the Petition of Right, voting supplies, and taking resolute steps towards procuring a redress of grievances, was hastily and angrily dissolved in May, 1629. Previous to this, Hampden, "although retaining his seat for Wendover, had retired to his estate in Buckinghamshire, to live in entire privacy, without display, but not inactive; contemplating from a distance the madness of the Government, the luxury and insolence of the courtiers, and the portentous apathy of the people, who, amazed by the late measures, and by the prospect of uninterruptedly increasing violence, saw no hope from petition or complaint, and watched, in confusion and silence, the inevitable advance of an open rupture between the King and the Parliament. The literary acquirements of his youth he now carefully improved; increasing that stock of general knowledge which had [Pg 41] already gained him the reputation of being one of the most learned and accomplished men of his age; and directing his attention chiefly to writers on history and politics. Davila's 'History of the Civil Wars of France' became his favourite study, his vade-mecum, as Sir Philip Warwick styles it; as if, forecasting from afar the course of the storm which hung over his own country, he already saw the sad parallel it was likely to afford to the story of that work. In his retirement, he bent the whole force of his capacious mind to the most effectual means by which the abuses of ecclesiastical authority were to be corrected, and the tide of headlong prerogative checked, whenever the slumbering spirit of the country should be roused to deal with those duties to which he was preparing to devote himself." ('Memorials of Hampden,' p. 175.) It may here be added that Hampden's religious opinions were those of the Independent party, who were honourably distinguished, no less from the Presbyterians than the Episcopalians, by granting to all persons that freedom of conscience and full toleration which they claimed for themselves. While thus awaiting, with study and patient observation, the time when the active service of a real patriot might benefit his country, his domestic happiness received a severe blow by the death of his wife, August 20, 1634. She left nine children, three sons and six daughters.

In the same autumn the scheme of raising a revenue by ship-money was devised. Confined in the first instance to sea-port towns, it proved so profitable, that the levy was soon extended to inland places. In 1636 the charge was laid, by order of council, upon all counties, cities, and corporate towns, and the sheriffs were required, in case of refusal or delay, to proceed by distress. Here Hampden resolved to make a stand. The sum demanded of him was but thirty-one shillings and sixpence; but the very smallness of the sum served to show that his opposition was directed against the principle of the exaction, and rested on no ground of personal inconvenience or individual injustice. In 1637, proceedings being instituted in the Exchequer for recovery of the money, the [Pg 42] case was solemnly argued for twelve days in the Exchequer chamber before the twelve judges, who severally delivered their opinions, and by a majority of eight to four determined in favour of the crown. "But the judgment," says Lord Clarendon, "infinitely more advanced him, Mr. Hampden, than the service for which it was given. He was rather of reputation in his own county, than of public discourse or fame in the kingdom, before the business of ship-money: but then he grew the argument of all tongues, every man inquiring who or what he was that durst at his own charge support the liberty and property of the country, as he thought, from being made a prey to the court. His carriage throughout this agitation was with that rare temper and modesty, that they who watched him narrowly to find some advantage against his person, to make him less resolute in his cause, were compelled to give him a just testimony."

These measures, which placed at the king's disposal the property of the country, were accompanied by equally stringent attacks on its liberties. Tutored by the lofty spirit of Wentworth, Charles resolved, and seemed likely to succeed, to rule independently of Parliaments; and in the sycophancy of the judges, and the unlimited and illegal severities of the courts of the Star-Chamber and High Commission, he had ample means of suppressing murmur and punishing the refractory. We need not dwell upon the state to which the country was reduced, during the eleven years which elapsed without the meeting of a Parliament: so unpromising did it appear, that even the most resolute of that party comprehended by the Royalists under the general name of Puritans had already begun to withdraw from the tyranny of the court. The government, in various ways, had rendered itself so odious, that thousands of men of all ranks had already separated themselves from their native land, and twelve millions of property was said to have been thus withdrawn from the country. These emigrations, however, were forbidden by an order in council, dated April 6, 1638, by which masters of ships were prohibited to carry passengers to America, without special licence. It has [Pg 43] often been dwelt on as a very remarkable circumstance, that Hampden, his cousin Oliver Cromwell, and Pym, were at this time actually embarked for New England on board one of eight ships then lying in the river Thames and freighted with emigrants, and that these eight ships were specially ordered to be detained.

A dawn of better times appeared, when in consequence of the king's rash attempt to impose the English ritual upon Scotland, and restore Episcopacy, that country rose in rebellion. The expenses of the war rendered it imperative to obtain supplies; and Charles, fearing at this juncture to resort to fresh impositions, saw no resource except in summoning that which is commonly called the Short Parliament, which met in April, 1640. Hampden was returned for Buckinghamshire. About this time he had married his second wife, Letitia Vachell, daughter of Mr. Vachell, of Coley, near Reading, in Berkshire, but the quiet happiness of his home was henceforth entirely broken up by the disturbances of the times, and he never returned to any settled residence at his paternal mansion. In the short and energetic session of this spring he displayed his usual diligence and activity; and his influence was much increased in consequence of his resistance to the demand of ship-money, which had attracted such notice, that Clarendon, in speaking of the opening of the Long Parliament, in November following, observes, "The eyes of all men were fixed upon him as their Pater Patriæ, and the pilot that must steer the vessel through the tempests and rocks which threatened it. And I am persuaded his power and interest, at that time, was greater to do good or hurt, than any man in the kingdom, or than any man of his rank hath held in any time; for his reputation of honesty was universal, and his affections seemed so publicly guided, that no corrupt or private ends could bias them."

The causes of the dissolution of the Short Parliament, and the history of the second Scottish war which compelled Charles I. to summon the Long Parliament, hardly form a part of our subject: it is to be observed, however, that during the summer and autumn, Hampden, [Pg 44] with other leading persons of the popular party, was engaged in active correspondence with the leaders of the Scottish insurrection, in whose success, as tending to the further embarrassment of the king, they placed their best hope of obtaining security for the maintenance of the liberties and privileges of the English people. Of the first great act of that Parliament, the impeachment of Strafford, he was a zealous supporter, and a member of the committee of twelve appointed to arrange the evidence, and to conduct that memorable trial. After the Commons, for reasons which have never been satisfactorily explained, thought fit to change the method of proceeding by introducing a bill of attainder, the name of Hampden appears in none of the records; and it is probable that he abstained from taking any part in the business. It is important to keep this in mind, because the censure which has justly been cast upon the proceedings of the House of Commons against Lord Strafford applies solely to the attainder, not to the impeachment. To the question, why, if Hampden disapproved of the attainder, he did not as resolutely oppose it as he had supported the impeachment, the following hypothetical answer is supplied by Lord Nugent:—"In a case doubtful to him only as matter of precedent, but clear to him in respect of the guilt of the accused person; in a case in which the accused person, in his estimation, deserved death, and in which all law, except that of the sceptre and the sword, was at an end, if he had escaped it; when all the ordinary protection of law to the subject throughout the country was suspended, and suspended mainly by the counsels of Strafford himself, Hampden was not prepared to heroically immolate the liberties of England in order to save the life of him who would have destroyed them. Hampden probably considered the bill which took away Strafford's life (and indeed it must in fairness be so considered) as a revolutionary act undertaken for the defence of the Commonwealth."

He was an active supporter of two important measures which occupied the Parliament simultaneously with Strafford's impeachment, the Triennial Bill, for securing [Pg 45] the convocation of Parliaments, and the bill for excluding bishops from the House of Lords. After the rejection of the latter, he adopted the views of that more violent party who urged the necessity of abolishing Episcopacy altogether. But, notwithstanding his recognised position as a leader of his party, and his known weight in determining the line of conduct to be pursued by it, he was not a frequent speaker, and his name therefore occurs less frequently than would be expected in the records of this eventful period. "His practice was usually to reserve himself until near the close of a debate; and then, having watched its progress, to endeavour to moderate the redundancies of his friends, to weaken the impression produced by its opponents, to confirm the timid, and to reconcile the reluctant. And this he did, according to the testimony of his opponents themselves, with a modesty, gentleness, and apparent diffidence in his own judgment, which generally brought men round to his conclusions." ('Memorials of Hampden,' ii. 47.) He was one of the five members accused of treason, and who were demanded by Charles in person in the House of Commons, January 6, 1642, "and from this time," says Clarendon, "his nature and carriage seemed much fiercer than it did before." Unquestionably the ill-advised step was not likely to conciliate those whose life was aimed at, but it is also clear that before that event the party with whom he acted were preparing for a struggle more serious than that in which they were as yet engaged. A Committee of Public Safety was formed, of which Hampden was a member, the power of the sword was claimed by the Ordinance of Militia, the king on his part issued his Commission of Array, and at last raised his standard at Nottingham, August 22, 1642.

In the military events of the first year of the war Hampden took an active but subordinate share, as colonel of a regiment of infantry which he himself raised in Buckinghamshire. Nor did he intermit, as the exigencies of war allowed him, to continue his attendance in Parliament, and to urge there that decisive course of action which he knew to be necessary to the success of [Pg 46] the cause, and which he laboured in vain to impress upon the Earl of Essex, the Parliamentary general. At the battle of Brentford, his troops, and those of Lord Brook, in support of the London regiment under Hollis, bore the brunt of the day against superior numbers, until the army arrived from London in the evening; and on this occasion (as before at Edge Hill, where he arrived too late to take part in the fight) he in vain urged Essex to convert, by a decisive forward movement, the doubtful issue of the day into a victory. During the winter months, while the king held his court at Oxford, and a Parliamentary army lay between London and that city, Hampden's regiment was quartered in Buckinghamshire, and his own time was divided between the seat of war and the House of Commons.

To this period also is to be referred the association of six midland counties for the purposes of the war, Bedford, Buckingham, Hertford, Cambridge, Huntingdon, and Northampton; a step which proved of material service in giving strength and union to the Parliamentary cause, and which probably would not have been carried into operation but for Hampden's peculiar talent of allaying jealousies, reconciling conflicting interests, and smoothing away the obstacles to any business which he undertook.

From March 1, to April 15, 1643, a cessation of arms was agreed to in Oxfordshire and Bucks, while an attempt was made to arrange terms of pacification. This treaty having been broken off, war recommenced with an incessant and generally successful series of predatory incursions, conducted by Prince Rupert, on the Parliamentary outposts, which lay widely dispersed in the intricate country on the borders of Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire. In this district, with which his early habits of the chace had made him familiar, Hampden's regiment was quartered. He had laboured incessantly, but in vain, to promote some great enterprise, which might give lustre to the seemingly declining cause, and confidence to the adherents of the Parliament. Failing in this, he manifested no less alacrity in performing his duty than if his views and his suggestions had been adopted: indeed [Pg 47] it would be consonant to his character to suppose, that a strict sense of what is due to military discipline, and a desire to avoid even the appearance of slighting his commanding officer, led him to still more zealous exertions. It was in a matter beyond the strict line of his duty that He received his death-wound. On the evening of the 17th of June, Rupert set out from Oxford with about 2000 men, and surprised and burnt two villages, Postcombe and Chinnor, which were occupied by the Parliamentary troops. When the alarm reached Hampden, he instantly set out at the head of a small party of cavalry, which volunteered to follow him, in hopes of being able to delay the Royalists sufficiently to enable Essex to occupy the passes of the Cherwell, and cut them off from Oxford. Strengthened by the accession of four troops of horse, he overtook Prince Rupert, who drew up to receive the attack on Chalgrove-field, June 18, 1643. Early in the action Hampden received two bullets in the shoulder, which shattered the bone, and in an agony of pain he rode off the field; "a thing," says Clarendon, "he never used to do, and from which it was concluded he was hurt." Two others of the chief Parliamentary officers present were killed or taken, and the Royalists made good their retreat. Hampden expired at Thame, in Oxfordshire, after six days' severe suffering. His last words are thus given from a contemporary publication:—"O Lord God of Hosts, great is thy mercy, just and holy are thy dealings unto us sinful men. Save me, O Lord, if it be thy good will, from the jaws of death. Pardon my manifold transgressions; O Lord, save my bleeding country. Have these realms in thy especial keeping. Confound and level in the dust those who would rob the people of their liberty and lawful prerogative. Let the king see his error, and turn the hearts of his wicked counsellors from the malice and wickedness of their designs. Lord Jesu, receive my soul!" He then mournfully uttered, "O Lord, save my country—O Lord, be merciful to" . . . . and here his speech failed him. He fell back in the bed, and expired.

His death, according to Sir Philip Warwick, was regretted [Pg 48] even by the king, "who looked on his interest, if he could gain his affections, as a powerful means of begetting a right understanding between him and the two Houses." To his own party it was irreparable. It removed the fittest person for the chief command of their troops, which it is not unreasonable to suppose would, upon the removal of Essex, have been vested in him; deprived them of a leader and adviser, who, of all, was the most likely to have confined his wishes to the establishment of a secure peace, on the basis of a strictly limited monarchy; and opened the way to the ambition of Cromwell, which probably would never have been developed if Hampden had lived to direct the counsels of the Parliament.

A portion of Lord Clarendon's character of Hampden has already been given from the 'History of the Rebellion,' book vii. As to the estimation in which he was held by his countrymen, Clarendon says, "The eyes of all men were fixed upon him as their patriæ pater, and the pilot, that must steer the vessel through the tempests and rocks which threatened it. And I am persuaded, his power and interest at that time were greater to do good or hurt than any man's in the kingdom, or than any man of his rank hath had in any time; for his reputation of honesty was universal, and his affections seemed so publicly guided that no corrupt or private ends would bias them."

Of his ability as a public speaker, Clarendon says, "He was of that rare affability and temper in debate, of that seeming humility and submission of judgment, as if he brought no opinion of his own with him, but a desire of information and instruction; yet he had so subtle a way of interrogating, and under the notion of doubts insinuating his objections, that he infused his own opinions into those from whom he pretended to learn and receive them." "He was indeed a very wise man, and of great parts, and possessed of the most absolute spirit of popularity and the most absolute faculties to govern the people of any man I ever knew." "After he was among those members accused by the king of high treason, he was [Pg 49] much altered, his nature and carriage seeming much fiercer than they did before; and without question when he first drew the sword he threw away the scabbard." Of his personal character and habits Clarendon says, "He was very temperate in diet, and a supreme governor over all his passions and affections, and had thereby a great power over other men's. He was of an industry and vigilance not to be tired out or wearied by the most laborious, and of parts not to be imposed upon by the most subtle and sharp, and of a personal courage equal to his best parts; so that he was an enemy not to be wished wherever he might have been made a friend; and as much to be apprehended where he was so as any man could deserve to be." "What was said of Cinna might well be applied to him, 'He had a head to contrive, and a tongue to persuade, and a head to execute any mischief.'" Clarendon thought that Hampden was engaged in a mischievous cause; those who thought and think differently, instead of 'any mischief' would write 'any benefit.' The political bias of Clarendon is obvious enough, but the character, of which we have only selected certain portions, is drawn with much discrimination and skill.

A later and more elaborate account of this eminent patriot has been given by Lord Nugent, from which the greater part of our memoir is derived. But the memoirs and pamphlets of the time must be intimately studied by those who wish for full information concerning Hampden's parliamentary life.

The history of Laud is in a manner the history both of church and state in England for some twenty or more most memorable years; and if it were to be written with a copiousness corresponding to the quantity of the materials, volumes on volumes might be filled with it. Indeed it does actually stand recorded in several folios. Besides State Trials, and Parliamentary History, and Strafford Letters, and other collections of State Papers, in which he fills much space, there is the history of his 'Life and Death' in one folio volume, by Dr. Peter Heylin, and that of his 'Troubles and Trial' in another, considerably larger, edited from his own papers by the learned Henry Wharton. We have his own Diary, besides many of his letters, and a mass of other authentic documents. The facts of the greater part of his history therefore are before us in extraordinary distinctness. Whatever we may think of him, there he is, the man and his acts, still, if we choose, almost as plainly to be [Pg 51] seen by us as by his contemporaries. Some things respecting him, indeed, we know better than they did. His life was more than most lives passed in the light, and few have had the light so unsparingly let in upon them as he has had even in his deepest privacies. We have his written words intended only for the eye of the most intimate friendship, or for no eye but his own. We ought not to forget, in judging him, this trying ordeal through which it has been his fate to be made to pass.

Curiously enough, in all this plentiful supply of information, nobody appears to know the Christian name of Laud's father. Laud himself has not recorded it in his own Diary, which begins by telling us merely that he was born on the 7th of October, 1573, at Reading, as if he had been literally an autochthon, terræ filius, or "gum of the earth," as one of his brother bishops, Field of Llandaff, calls himself in a begging letter to the universal patron the Duke of Buckingham, which is preserved in the Cabala, and is one of the greatest curiosities which have come down to us from that age. "Myself, a gum of the earth," says Field insinuatingly, "whom some eight years ago you raised out of the dust for raising but a thought so high as to serve your highness." But Laud was not of this self-abasing temper. He had no pleasure in looking back from his elevated fortunes upon the comparative humility of his origin. His biographer Heylin tells us that the libellers, who no doubt knew what would sting him, used frequently to upbraid him in the days of his greatness with his mean birth. Once Heylin found him walking in his garden at Lambeth "with more than ordinary trouble in his countenance," "of which," continues our author, "not having confidence enough to inquire the reason, he showed me a paper in his hand, and told me it was a printed sheet of a scandalous libel which had been stopped at the press, in which he found himself reproached with so base a parentage as if he had been raked out of the dunghill; adding withal, that though he had not the good fortune to be born a gentleman, yet he thanked God he had been born of honest parents, who lived in a plentiful condition, [Pg 52] employed many poor people in their way, and left a good report behind him." After some little time, seeing his countenance beginning to clear up, ready Heylin told him the story of Pope Sixtus the Fifth, who used to say that he was domo natus illustri, "because the sunbeams, passing through the broken walls and ragged roof, illustrated every corner of that homely cottage in which he was born." The Latin words, which would be naturally translated born of an illustrious house or family, will also bear this other interpretation, however strange it may sound to the English reader. And the facetious anecdote, thus aptly applied, quite succeeded, we are assured, in restoring the equanimity of the ruffled prelate.

Laud's father, whatever was his name, was a master cloth-worker, and is described as having been well to do in the world. "He kept," says Heylin, "not only many looms in his house, but many weavers, spinners, and fullers at continual work; living in good esteem and reputation amongst his neighbours to the very last." His son, named William, was his only child; but his wife had been married before to another Reading clothier, John Robinson, by whom she had had a family. She was a Lucy Webb, sister to Sir William Webb, who was lord mayor of London in 1591. Of her children by Robinson, half-brothers and half-sisters of the archbishop, his biographer mentions a William, the youngest son, who became a doctor of divinity, prebend of Westminster, and archdeacon of Nottingham; and two daughters, married, the one to a Dr. Cotsford, the other to a Dr. Layfield. It is possible that these relations of Laud's may have prospered the better in the world for their connection with him; but his uncle at least, the lord mayor, had made his way to eminence long before the great churchman had got upon the ladder of preferment. It is more likely that he may have been of service to some later Webbs and Robinsons: Heylin speaks of a grandson of the lord mayor, also a Sir William Webb, as having died not long before he wrote, that is to say, perhaps, about the time of the Restoration; and his book, published [Pg 53] posthumously, in 1671, is dedicated by his son to a Sir John Robinson, Bart., his majesty's lieutenant of the Tower of London, who is addressed as nearly related to the subject of it, and who may therefore be presumed to have been a descendant of Laud's mother's first husband.

Laud, who appears to have been designed for the church from his boyhood, was sent first to the free grammar-school of his native town; whence, in July, 1589, before he was sixteen, "which," Heylin remarks, "was very early for those times," he was sent to Oxford, and entered a commoner of St. John's. Here his tutor was Mr. Buckridge, one of the fellows, a zealous opponent of Puritanism, which had troubled the church almost from the beginning of the reign of Elizabeth, and, for all that could be done to keep it down, was evidently enough growing stronger every day. Buckridge's teaching was not thrown away upon Laud.

The events noted in his Diary for the next ten or twelve years are: that he was chosen a scholar of his college in June, 1590, and admitted a fellow in June, 1593; that his father died on Wednesday, 11th April, 1594; that he proceeded bachelor of arts in June of that, year; that in 1596 he had a great sickness, and in 1597 another (he had also been brought to death's door by an illness in his infancy); that in July, 1598, he took his degree of master of arts, and the same year was grammar reader; that at the end of that year he fell into another great sickness; that his mother died 24th November, 1600; that on the 4th of January, 1601, he was ordained deacon, and priest on the 5th of April thereafter.

He had already obtained a considerable academic reputation, and, having been admitted in 1602 to read a divinity lecture then maintained in his college, in which he acquitted himself to general satisfaction, he became next year a candidate for the proctorship of the university, and obtained it. In this year, 1603, Heylin says he publicly maintained, either in his divinity lecture or in some other chapel exercise, his famous doctrine of the perpetual visibility of the church, as derived from the [Pg 54] Apostles to the Church of Rome, and continued in that church till the Reformation. The proclamation of these opinions brought him at once into open collision with the dominant party in the University, headed by Dr. George Abbot, Master of University College (afterwards archbishop of Canterbury), who was then vice-chancellor. Abbot did not profess to deny the constant visibility of the church, or the apostolical succession; but he held a different theory of it, "tracing it," says Heylin contemptuously, "as well as he could from the Berengarians to the Albigenses, from the Albigenses to the Wickliffists, from the Wickliffists unto the Hussites, and from the Hussites unto Luther and Calvin." From the two systems sprung what were called High Church and Low Church principles and parties at a later date. Heylin affirms, on the authority of Laud himself, that he was so violently persecuted by Abbot, and so openly branded by him for a papist, or at least one very popishly inclined, "that it was almost made an heresy for any one to be seen in his company, and a misprision of heresy for any one to give him a civil salutation as he walked the streets." He had followed up his lecture or sermon of 1603 by maintaining the next year, in his exercise for bachelor of divinity, the necessity both of baptism and of bishops, and again by a sermon preached in St. Mary's church on the 21st of October, 1606, for which he was called to account by Dr. Airy, then vice-chancellor, as being in some passages a declaration of downright popery; "the good man," says Heylin, "taking all things to be matter of popery which were not held forth unto him in Calvin's Institutes."

But shortly before this Laud had got into a scrape of another kind. Under the year 1605 we find him noting in his Diary: "My cross about the Earl of Devon's marriage," with a very particular specification of the day, as the 26th of December, a Thursday. He had, in September, 1603, been made chaplain to Charles Blount, Lord Mountjoy, recently created Earl of Devon; and had been persuaded on that St. Stephen's day two years after to solemnize a marriage between his noble patron [Pg 55] and the beautiful Lady Rich, divorced from the Lord Rich for adultery with the earl. It is quite clear, whatever Heylin may endeavour to make out, that herein Laud acted against his principles, or convictions of what was right; he confesses as much in the penitential prayer which his apologist quotes: "Behold," he there says, "I am become a reproach to thy holy name, by serving my ambition and the sins of others; which though I did by the persuasion of other men, yet my own conscience did check and upbraid me in it." There can be no reasonable doubt that, in consistency with the rest of his theological system, he held the doctrine of the absolute indissolubility of the sacrament of marriage, and he must therefore be considered to have performed that solemnity between Lord Devon and Lady Rich, and so sanctioned their living together, while he believed her to be the wife of another man. He was afterwards accustomed to observe the festival of St. Stephen as a day of fasting and humiliation; but even from the account of his eulogistic biographer it would rather appear that he did not arrive at this clear sense of his fault till after all his expectations from his noble patron had been brought to an end by the earl's death, which took place before the end of the following year.

Notwithstanding his repentance, too, the affair was long a standing reproach against him, and, his biographer intimates, materially retarded his preferment. Yet he cannot be said to have been entirely neglected. In November, 1607, he was inducted into the vicarage of Stamford, in Northamptonshire; the advowson of North Kilworth, in Leicestershire, was given to him, as he records, in April, 1608, in which year he proceeded Doctor of Divinity, and became chaplain to Neile, Bishop of Rochester; in 1609 he exchanged North Kilworth for West Tilbury, in Essex, to be near his new patron; and in September of the same year he made his début as a courtier, by preaching before the king at Theobalds. In May, 1610, his friend the Bishop of Rochester preferred him to the rectory of Cuckstone, in Kent, which he exchanged in November for Norton, in the [Pg 56] same county, as a healthier residence. Meanwhile Neile had in September been translated to Lichfield, and in October Laud resigned his fellowship, "that so," says his biographer, "he might more fully apply himself to the service of his lord and patron, whose fortunes he was resolved to follow till God should please to provide otherwise for him." Neile had held the Deanery of Westminster in commendam with his late bishopric; and before resigning it he obtained for his friend, from the king, the reversion of a prebend in that church; "which," says Heylin, "though it fell not to him till ten years after, yet it fell at last, and thereby neighboured him to the court." But Neile's translation proved also immediately beneficial to Laud, for the new Bishop of Rochester was his old tutor and steady friend Buckridge, and he had influence, in spite of all that Abbot (now Bishop of London, and within a few months to be elevated to the primacy) could do to prevent it, to get Laud elected his successor in the presidentship of St. John's. He obtained this office in May, 1611, and in November of the same year he was sworn one of his majesty's chaplains in ordinary. It is true that he appears also to have met with some crosses and disappointments in the course of these years; we read in his Diary of his "unfortunateness with T.;" and of his "next unfortunateness with E. M.;" and of a third "unfortunateness by S. B.;" with sundry other notices of stays, and troubles, and fits of sickness. The first entry, under date of 1612, is of another "unfortunateness by S. S.;" and the second, of another with A. D.; in January, 1613, began his "great business with G. B.," which "settled as it could in March;" and April, 1614, was signalized by the beginning of his "great misfortune by M. S.," and also by "a most fierce salt rheum" in his left eye, "like to have endangered it." But on the other side of the account we find him noting that in the same month his friend Neile, now Bishop of Lincoln, gave him the prebend of Bugden in that church. Heylin informs us that the bishop did this "to keep him up in heart and spirit," when he was sinking under the disappointment of his hopes of court preferment; for, it [Pg 57] seems, "whenever any opportunity was offered for his advancement, Archbishop Abbot would be sure to cast somewhat in his dish: sometimes inculpating to him (that is, objecting against him to the king) all his actings at Oxon, and sometimes rubbing up the old sore of his unfortunate business with the Earl of Devonshire." In his despair Laud was upon the point of returning to his college; but Neile prevailed with him to try one year longer, and, for further encouragement, in December, 1615, conferred upon him the archdeaconry of Huntingdon. At last, "before the year of expectation was fully ended," to adopt Heylin's words, "his majesty began to take him into his better thoughts, and for a testimony thereof bestowed upon him the deanery of Gloucester." The king gave him this in November, 1616; and he now resigned his parsonage of Tilbury.

In March, 1617, James set out on a visit to his native kingdom, his main object being to bring the Scots to conformity with the English model in regard to religion; "a matter," observes Heylin, "of consequence and weight, and therefore to be managed by able ministers, such as knew how to wind and turn the Presbyterians of that kingdom, if matters should proceed to a disputation." Laud, esteemed a person of eminent theological learning and polemical ability, was one of those selected to accompany his majesty; but when James came to Edinburgh, "he soon found," says Heylin, "that he might have saved himself a great part of his care, and taken such of his chaplains with him as came next to hand; the Presbyterian Scots not being to be gained by reason, as he had supposed. For he was scarce settled in that city, when the Presbyters, conceiving that his coming was upon design to work a uniformity between the churches of both kingdoms, set up one Struthers to preach against it, who laid so lustily about him in the chief church of Edinburgh, that he not only condemned the rites and ceremonies of the Church of England, but prayed God to save Scotland from the same. Laud, and the rest of the chaplains who had heard the sermon, acquainted his majesty with those passages: but there was [Pg 58] no remedy: the Scots were Scots, and resolved to go their own way, whatsoever came of it." Laud returned in the autumn; and on his way home was inducted into the rectory of Ibstock, in the county of Leicester, a living in the patronage of his friend Bishop Buckridge, who let him have it in exchange for Norton.

He then rested as he was for some time. At last, in January, 1621, he came into the enjoyment of the prebendal stall in Westminster, of which he had secured the reversion ten years before. And greater things followed fast. His own statement is, that on the 3rd of June his majesty made a gracious speech to him concerning his long service, being pleased to say that he had given him nothing but Gloucester, which he well knew was a shell without a kernel; and that the sequel was his receiving a grant of the bishopric of St. David's on the 29th of the same month. But the most particular and curious account of the way in which the affair was managed is given in Bishop Hacket's 'Life of Archbishop Williams.' Williams, who was Dean of Westminster, had recently been made Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, and had soon after been raised to the Bishopric of Lincoln, holding his deanery in commendam, and retaining also his other preferments, of a prebend and residentiary canonship in the cathedral of Lincoln, and the rectory of Walgrave in Northamptonshire; "so that," as Heylin puts it, "he was a perfect diocese within himself; as being bishop, dean, prebend residentiary, and parson, and all these at once." Williams, in this the height of his court favour (for it was the king himself who had selected him for the great seal), was earnestly applied to by Buckingham, to whom Laud, like everybody else, had paid court, to commend the latter to his majesty. Buckingham's instructions to Williams were, not to fear giving offence in urging this suit, and not to desist for a little storm. Having watched his opportunity, "when the king's affections," says Hacker, "were most still and pacificous," Williams besought his majesty to think considerately of his chaplain the doctor, whose merits he urged with much earnestness. "Well," said the king, "I perceive whose [Pg 59] attorney you are; Stenny (Buckingham) hath set you on. You have pleaded the man a good Protestant, and I believe it; neither did that stick in my breast when I stopt his promotion. But was there not a certain lady that forsook her husband, and married a lord that was her paramour? Who tied that knot? Shall I make a man a prelate, one of the angels of my church, who hath a flagrant crime upon him?" Williams declared that the doctor was heartily penitent for his share in this transaction; besides, he asked James who would dare to serve him, good master as he was, if he would not pardon one fault, even if it should be of a scandalous magnitude? "You press well," replied his majesty, "and I hear you with patience; neither will I revive a trespass any more which repentance hath mortified and buried; and because I see I shall not be rid of you unless I tell you my unpublished cogitations, the plain truth is, that I keep Laud back from all place of rule and authority because I find he hath a restless spirit, and cannot see when matters are well, but loves to toss and change, and to bring things to a pitch of reformation floating in his own brain, which may endanger the steadfastness of that which is in a good pass, God be praised. I speak not at random; he hath made himself known to me to be such a one. For when, three years since, I had obtained of the Assembly of Perth to consent to five articles of order and decency in correspondence with this church of England, I gave them promise, by attestation of faith made, that I would try their obedience no farther in ecclesiastic affairs, nor put them out of their own way, which custom has made pleasing unto them, with any new encroachments. Yet this man hath pressed me to invite them to a nearer conjunction with the liturgy and canons of this nation; but I sent him back again with the frivolous draught he had drawn....For all this, he feared not mine anger, but assaulted me again with another ill-fangled platform to make that stubborn kirk stoop more to the English pattern; but I durst not play fast and loose with my word. He knows not the stomach of that people; but I ken the story of my grandmother, the queen-regent, that, [Pg 60] after she was inveigled to break her promise, made to some mutineers at a Perth meeting, she never saw good day, but from thence, being much beloved before, was despised of all the people. And now your importunity hath compelled me to shrive myself thus unto you, I think you are at your farthest, and have no more to say for your client." Williams, however, as he had been instructed, did not allow this characteristic oration to put him down; he still urged that Laud, notwithstanding "the very audacious and very unbecoming attempt" mentioned by his majesty, was "of a great and tractable wit," and if he fell into an error would, at least as soon as any man, find a way to get out of it. And his pertinacity was successful. James, impatiently asking if there was nothing he could say that was not to have its answer, exclaimed, "Here, take him to you, but on my soul you will repent it." "And so," concludes Hacket, "went away in anger, using other fierce and ominous words, which were divulged in the court, and are too tart to be repeated."

Thus was Laud at last made a bishop. He was formally elected by the chapter on the 10th of October, 1621, a few days after entering his forty-ninth year. The king had given him leave to hold the presidentship of St. John's in commendam with his bishopric; "but by reason," he writes in his Diary, "of the strictness of that statute, which I will not violate, nor my oath to it, under any colour, I am resolved before my consecration to leave it." And he did resign it accordingly. It is worth noticing, that Laud's great enemy Prynne, in the edition of the Diary which he very unhandsomely published in September, 1644, while the archbishop yet lived, had the dishonesty to omit all notice of this resignation; so that even Laud's biographer Heylin, who wrote before the Diary was published in its integrity by Wharton, in 1695, represents him as retaining his college office with his bishopric. Laud himself, with all his passion, precipitation, and short-sightedness, never committed anything so thoroughly base as this suppression of the truth by the great Puritan lawyer and patriot.

[Pg 61] In the next year, 1622, Laud obtained much reputation by a conference or disputation which he maintained on the 24th of May, in presence of his majesty and other distinguished personages, with Fisher the Jesuit. Fisher had been for some time attempting to make a Roman Catholic of the Countess of Buckingham, mother of the duke (or rather marquis only, as yet); and it was apprehended that, if he should succeed, her son also would be very likely to go over to the old religion. But both at this public conference, at which the countess and the marquis were present, and in private discourse with the lady, Laud acquitted himself so ably as to satisfy her upon every point, and thus to avert what was looked upon by many as a serious national danger. Buckingham also from this time took him into his most intimate confidence. "Being Whit-Monday," he records, under date of June 9th, "my lord Marquess Buckingham was pleased to enter upon a near respect to me: the particulars are not for paper." And under June 15th he enters, "I became C. to my Lord of Buckingham" (meaning, it is supposed, confessor). All the notices in the Diary of this affair are carefully suppressed by Prynne, one of whose objects was to represent the archbishop as having been all his life a thorough papist. Laud himself published in 1624 an account of his argument with Fisher. He notes that he had not previously appeared in print.

In January, 1623, Laud was inducted into the parsonage of Creeke, in the diocese of Peterborough, which he was permitted to hold in commendam, with his not very well endowed Welch bishopric. But the new reign, which began in March, 1625, when he was in his fifty-second year, was the beginning to him of new fortunes.

Yet his own account informs us that attempts were at first made to prejudice the royal mind against him. Under date of Saturday, 9th of April, he writes, "The Duke of Buckingham, whom, upon all accounts I am bound for ever to honour, signified to me that a certain person, moved through I know not what envy, had blackened my name with his majesty King Charles; laying [Pg 62] hold, for that purpose, of the error into which, by I know not what fate, I had formerly fallen in the business of Charles, Earl of Devonshire, 1605, December 26." [B] He was too strong, however, in the favour of the royal favourite and most powerful man in the kingdom, to be injured now by this stale story. At the coronation, on the 2nd of February, 1626, he officiated as dean of Westminster, in room of Bishop Williams, who had for the present passed into the shade, and whom Charles would not have to take part in the ceremony, so that he was obliged to make Laud, whom he cordially hated, his deputy. On the 6th of March thereafter he resigned his parsonage of Ibstock; on the 20th of June he was nominated to the bishopric of Bath and Wells; in the beginning of October he was appointed to the office of dean of the Chapel Royal, vacant by the death of Bishop Andrews; in the end of April, 1627, he was sworn a privy counsellor, which in those days implied that he was to take an actual share in the government of the kingdom; and in July, 1628, Charles succeeded in having him placed in the see of London, though not till after some months had been spent in getting room made for him by the removal of Bishop Mountain, which proved almost as difficult as if he had been a real mountain that had to be got out of the way. The scheme was that Mountain should go to Durham, from which Neile, Laud's friend, was transferred to succeed Andrews at Winchester; but having spent a great part of his life, as Heylin expresses it, "in the air of the court," he looked upon such a relegation to the cold regions of the North as "the worst kind of banishment, next neighbour to a civil death;" however, before he was Bishop of Durham more than in form, the death of Dr. Toby Matthews, archbishop of York, made another opening for him, with which he was better satisfied; so that he presided over three sees in succession in that year; and he died before the end of it.

Laud had already made himself so unpopular by his [Pg 63] apparent preference of ceremonies to spiritual religion, and his severe, not to say violent measures against puritanism, as well as by his intimate connexion with Buckingham, that when the House of Commons which met in March, 1628, fell upon the duke, voting him to be the great cause of all the grievances in the kingdom, they also drew up a remonstrance to the king, in which, among other matters, they denounced Laud and his friend Neile as unsound in their theological opinions, and the authors or principal promoters of sundry innovations of a Romish character in the services of the church. To this admonition, however, he paid no heed. The parliament rose on the 26th, of June, and on the 23rd of August Buckingham was assassinated. In April, 1630, Laud was chosen their Chancellor by the University of Oxford. A few months later occurred the first of several notorious cases of Laud's ferocity of procedure in the High Commission Court,—that of Dr. Alexander Leighton, "a Scot by birth, a doctor of physic by profession, a fiery Puritan in faction," is Heylin's description of him—who was brought before the court for publishing a tract entitled 'An Appeal to the Parliament; or, Zion's Plea against Prelacy,' and was sentenced to pay a fine of 10,000l., to be twice set in the pillory and whipped, to have his ears cut off and his nose slit, to be branded in the face with the letters S. S. (for Sower of Sedition), and to be imprisoned in the Fleet for the remainder of his life. This barbarous sentence was executed in all its parts; and Leighton (who was the father of the learned, eloquent, and admirable Archbishop Leighton, who held the see of Glasgow in the next age) lay in prison for ten years. On Sunday the 16th of January of the next year, 1630, took place Laud's famous consecration of the church of St. Catherine Cree, London, on the north side of Leadenhall Street, Prynne's satirical and probably somewhat exaggerated account of which, in his 'Canterbury's Doom' (1646), has been in substance incorporated by Hume in his History, and is familiar to most readers. As a sample both of Laud and of Prynne, we will quote the concluding paragraph [Pg 64] in the original words:—"When the bishop approached near the communion-table, he bowed with his nose very near the ground six or seven times; then he came to one of the corners of the table, and there bowed himself three times; then to the second and third, bowing at each three times; but when he came to the side of the table where the bread and wine were, he bowed himself seven times: and then, after the reading of many prayers by himself, and his two fat chaplains which were with him, and all this while upon their knees by him, in their surplices, hoods, and tippets, he himself came near the bread, which was laid in a fine napkin; and then he gently lifted up one of the corners of the napkin, like a boy that peeped into a bird's nest in a bush, and presently clapped it down again, and flew back a step or two, and then bowed very low three times towards it and the table. When he beheld the bread, then he came near, and opened the napkin again, and bowed as before; then he laid his hand upon the gilt cup, which was full of wine, with a cover upon it: so soon as he had pulled the cup a little nearer to him, he let the cup go, flew back, and bowed again three times towards it: then he came near again, and, lifting up the cover of the cup, peeped into it; and seeing the wine, he let fall the cover on it again, flew nimbly back, and bowed as before. After these, and many other apish antic gestures, he himself receded, and then gave the sacrament to some principal men only, they devoutly kneeling near the table; after which more prayers being said, this scene and interlude ended." Impossible as it may be for most modern readers to enter fully into the spirit of the kind of devotion practised on this and other occasions by Laud, and discordant with the reigning popular feeling as it was even in his own day, so that his attempt to revive it was a great miscalculation and blunder, it is to our taste, we confess, at least as respectable as Prynne's wit.

Prynne, however, it must be confessed, had had something to make his bitterness excusable. For his famous 'Histrio-mastyx,' an attack upon stage-plays, in one passage of which he was accused of having reflected upon [Pg 65] the queen, he was, in 1633, sentenced in the court of Star-Chamber to pay a fine of 5000l., to be expelled the University of Oxford, and the society of Lincoln's Inn, to be degraded and for ever disabled from exercising his profession of the law, to stand twice in the pillory, to have both his ears cut off, and to suffer perpetual imprisonment. And after he had had his ears sewed on again, he was a second time brought up before the same court in June, 1637, for a pamphlet which he had published since his incarceration, and sentenced to have them again shorn off, to stand in the pillory as before, and to be branded on both cheeks with the letters S. L. (for Schismatical Libeller). He was accordingly consigned to Caernarvon Castle, whence he was afterwards removed to Mount Orgueil Castle, in the isle of Jersey; and there he lay till he was released, with other victims of the Star Chamber and the Court of High Commission, by an order of the House of Commons, in November, 1640. It was at the same time that Prynne received his second sentence that similar sentences were passed upon Dr. John Bastwick, a physician (who had also been fined and otherwise punished for a former book in 1633), for a publication in which he had reflected upon the bishops; and upon the Rev. Henry Burton, Rector of St. Matthew's Church, Friday-street, London, for two sermons which he had preached, and a pamphlet which, after he had been thrown into prison on account of the sermons, he had published in their vindication. Bastwick lay in one of the Scilly islands, and Burton in the island of Guernsey, until they were released along with Prynne.

Meanwhile Laud had been mounting higher and higher. In June, 1632, he had got his dependant, or at least his intimate friend, Mr. Francis Windbank, made Secretary of State; he notes in his Diary that he had obtained the place for him of the king. We may mention here that Windbank was afterwards charged by the parliament with having been a confederate of Laud's in his tyrannical and papistical system, but escaped destruction by flying to the continent. About three weeks after Windbank's appointment he got another firm ally, [Pg 66] Dr. Juxon, Dean of Worcester, made Clerk of the Closet; he had sued for this, he tells us, that he might have some one whom he could trust near his majesty, if he should himself grow weak and infirm: "as," he adds, "I must have a time." In 1633 he attended the king on his visit to Scotland; on the 15th of June he was sworn of the Privy Council of that country; and on the 4th of August, a few days after his return to London, news came to court of the death that morning of Abbot, Archbishop of Canterbury; on which, he tells us, the king resolved presently to give him the place. "That very morning," he also states, "at Greenwich there came one to me seriously, and that avowed ability to perform it, and offered me to be a cardinal. I went presently to the king, and acquainted him both with the thing and the person." About a fortnight afterwards, this offer was renewed: "but," says he, "my answer again was, that something dwelt within me which would not suffer that till Rome were other than it is." On the 14th of September he was chosen Chancellor of the University of Dublin; and on the 19th of the same month he was translated to the archbishopric and the primacy of the English church.

To these ecclesiastical and academical preferments and honours were added others of a less professional sort. On the 5th of February, 1635, he was made a member of the Committee of Trade and Revenue; on the 14th of March, upon the death of the Lord Treasurer, the Earl of Portland, he was named one of the Commissioners for the Exchequer; and two days after, he was called by the king into the Foreign Committee, that is, into the Committee of the Privy Council for foreign affairs. But his crowning triumph was achieved when, on the 6th of March in the following year, 1636, he got his friend Juxon, already Bishop of London, appointed to the office of lord high treasurer of England. "No churchman," he writes with manifest satisfaction, "had it since Henry VII.'s time. I pray God bless him to carry it so that the church may have honour, and the king and the state service and contentment by it. And now, if the church [Pg 67] will not hold up themselves, under God I can do no more."

But all this greatness was suddenly brought to an end by some of the first proceedings of the ever-memorable parliament which assembled on the 3rd of November, 1640. On the 18th of December, Denzil Hollis, by order of the House of Commons, impeached Laud of high treason and other high crimes and misdemeanours, at the bar of the House of Lords. On the 26th of February, 1641, the articles of impeachment, twenty six in number, were brought up by Sir Harry Vane, the younger. He was specially charged with having advised his majesty that he might levy money on his subjects without consent of parliament; with attempting to establish absolute power not only in the king, but in himself and other bishops, above and against the laws; with perverting the course of justice by bribes and promises to the judges; with the imposition of divers new ecclesiastical canons, containing matters contrary both to the laws and the royal prerogative; with assuming a papal and tyrannical power in matters both ecclesiastical and temporal; with endeavouring to subvert the true religion and to introduce popish superstition; and with being the principal adviser and author of the late war against the Scots. On the 23rd of October, at the instigation of his old enemy Williams, now become a great man again, Laud's archiepiscopal jurisdiction was sequestered by the House of Lords, and made over to his inferior officers. About a year after, all the rents and profits of his archbishopric, in common with those of all other archbishoprics, bishoprics, deaneries, and cathedral offices, were sequestered for the use of the commonwealth. On the 9th of May, 1643, all his goods in Lambeth Palace, his books included, were seized. Soon after, his room and person were searched by Prynne, under the authority of a warrant from the House of Commons, and his Diary and all his other papers taken from him. All this while, with the exception of a few months at first, during which he was left in the custody of Mr. Maxwell, Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod, he had been [Pg 68] confined in the Tower. At last, on the 12th of March, 1644, he was brought to trial before the lords assembled, as usual, in Westminster Hall. Prynne says in his 'History of the Trial,' that "he made as full, as gallant, as pithy a defence of so bad a cause, and spake as much for himself as was possible for the wit of man to invent; and that with much art, sophistry, vivacity, oratory, audacity, and confidence, without the least blush, or acknowledgment of guilt in any thing." It seemed very doubtful if the lords, overawed as they were, would have consented to condemn him; at the end of the trial, which lasted twenty days, they adjourned without coming to a vote on the question of his guilt or innocence; and in this state matters remained till the Commons, abandoning their impeachment, resorted to another method of effecting their object. An ordinance, or bill, for his attainder was brought into the House on the 13th of November, and two days after was passed and immediately sent up to the Lords. They too, at last, passed it in a very thin house, on the 4th of January; and on the 10th Laud was, in conformity with this law overriding all law, beheaded on Tower Hill. He met his death with great firmness.

Thus fell Laud; and, as Heylin observes, the church fell with him. "Of stature," writes that sympathizing, but not indiscriminatingly admiring biographer, towards the close of his narrative, "he was low, but of a strong composition; so short a trunk contained so much excellent treasure. . . . His countenance cheerful and well bloodied: more fleshy, as I have often heard him say, than any other part of his body; which cheerfulness and vivacity he carried with him to the very block, notwithstanding the afflictions of four years' imprisonment, and the infelicity of the times. . . . A gallant spirit being for the most part like the sun, which shows the greater at his setting. . . . Of apprehension he was quick and sudden, of a very sociable wit, and a pleasant humour, and one that knew as well how to put off the gravity of his place and person when he saw occasion, as any living man whatsoever. Accessible enough at all [Pg 69] times, but when he was tired out with multiplicity and vexation of business, which some who did not understand him ascribed unto the natural ruggedness of his disposition." He built an hospital in his native town of Reading, and was a munificent benefactor to the University of Oxford in various ways; and Heylin mentions that these good works exhausted all the fortune he had made himself master of "in so long a time of power and greatness, wherein he had the principal managing of affairs both in church and state."

Archbishop Laud's literary works, besides his account of the conference with Fisher, already mentioned, which has been several times printed, are Seven Sermons, originally published separately in 4to, and then collected and printed together in one 8vo. volume, at London, in 1651; his Diary and History of his Troubles and Trial, together with some other pieces published by Wharton in 1695; and his History of his Chancellorship of Oxford, &c., forming the second volume of that work, published in 1700.

John Selden was born at Salvington, near Worthing, in the county of Sussex, December 16, 1584. His father, according to Wood, "was a sufficient plebeian," who, through some skill in music, obtained as his wife Margaret Baker, a daughter of a knightly family of the county of Kent. The baptism of his eminent son, as well as his own musical talents, are noticed in an existing parish registry in these words: "1584,—Johnne, sonne of John Selden, the minstrell, was baptised the XXX^th day of December." The house in which the family lived was called Lacies, and the estate of the father consisted, in 1606, of eighty-one acres, of the annual value of about twenty-three pounds. John Selden, the son, received his early education at the free grammar-school of Chichester. At the age of fourteen he entered at Hart Hall, Oxford, a foundation since merged in Magdalen Hall, Oxford. After residing four years at the University, he was admitted, in 1602, a member of [Pg 71] Clifford's Inn, London, one of the dependencies of the greater Inns of Court, in which students of law were formerly accustomed to commence their legal education. He removed in May, 1604, to the Inner Temple. His attention appears to have been early drawn to the study of civil and legal history, and antiquities; he did not court the more active business of his profession, and his employment at the bar was limited. In 1607 he prepared for the press his first work, entitled 'Analecton Anglo-Britannicon,' being a collection of civil and ecclesiastical matters relating to Britain, of a date anterior to the Norman Conquest. This was soon followed by three other works of a similar character, and in 1614 he printed his 'Treatise upon Titles of Honour.' The last of these works has been considered in our courts of law to be of great authority, and has been usually spoken of with much commendation. Pursuing his legal inquiries, he edited, in 1616, two treatises, one of Sir John Fortescue, the other of Sir Ralph Hengham, and in the same year wrote a 'Discourse on the Office of Lord Chancellor.' In the next year he printed a work, 'De Diis Syris,' which added to his celebrity, but is not compiled with that attention to the value of the respective authorities cited, so essentially necessary to the accurate consideration of historical questions. His next work was a 'History of Tithes,' printed in 1618, which excited against him the bitter hostility of the clergy. The doctrine of divine right, as the foundation of many ecclesiastical claims, was at this time jealously maintained, and was considered to be peculiarly connected with the right of the clergy to tithes. Selden drew no direct conclusion against the divine nature of the right to tithes, but he had so arranged his authorities as to render such a conclusion inevitable. The nature only of the title was contested, and so far from the clergy having had any reason to look upon Selden as an enemy, he in fact strengthened their claim to tithes by placing it upon the same footing as any ordinary title to property. As soon as the 'History' appeared it was attacked. The High Commission Court summoned Selden before it, and to [Pg 72] this tribunal he was compelled to apologise. The terms of his submission very accurately state the offence, and are expressive of regret that "he had offered any occasion of argument against any right of maintenance jure divino of the ministers of the gospel." The work received several answers, but Selden was forbidden by James I., under a threat of imprisonment, to notice them. "All that will," said he, "have liberty, and some use it, to write and preach what they will against me, to abuse my name, my person, my profession, with as many falsehoods as they please, and my hands are tied: I must not so much as answer their calumnies. I am so far from writing more, that I have scarcely ventured for my own safety so much as to say they abuse me, though I know it."

Hardly had this storm passed, when he became involved in the disputes between the Crown and the House of Commons. One of the earliest steps of that body, upon the convocation of Parliament in 1621, was to present a remonstance on the state of public affairs. This was succeeded by the memorable protestation of December 18, 1621, in which the liberty of the subject was asserted, and the right of the Commons to offer advice to the Crown was insisted on. This protestation was erased from the journals of the House by the King's own hands, and the parliament was dissolved. Selden, whose advice, though he was not then a member, had been requested by the House in this dispute, was in consequence imprisoned, and detained in confinement five weeks. His release was owing to the intercession of Bishop Williams, who represented him to be "a man who hath excellent parts, which might be diverted from an affectation of pleasing idle people, to do some good and useful service to his Majesty." On his release he dedicated to Williams his edition of Eadmer's contemporary 'History of England from the Norman Conquest to the death of Henry I.,' which he had prepared for the press during his confinement.

Selden's first appearance in the House of Commons was as member for Lancaster, for which place he was [Pg 73] returned in the parliament which assembled in 1623, the last Parliament of James I. In this year, on being chosen reader of Lyons Inn, he refused to perform the office, an instance of independence or self-will for which there is no apparent reason. The register of the Inner Temple contains an order passed by the Society in consequence of Selden's refusal, which decided that he should be excluded from ever becoming a bencher. This order, however, was rescinded in 1624.

On the accession of Charles I. a new parliament was called, which assembled at Oxford, but was almost immediately dissolved. In this "parliamentum vanum," as it was called, Selden sat for Great Bedwin. In the next parliament, which was summoned almost immediately afterwards, he again sat for Great Bedwin. The Commons immediately entered upon a consideration of the conduct of the Duke of Buckingham, and his impeachment being resolved on, Selden was one of the members appointed to prepare the articles, and was named a manager for their prosecution. These proceedings were stopped by another dissolution of parliament, in June, 1626. But the necessities of the Crown requiring those supplies which parliament refused without a redress of grievances, forced loans were resorted to in the exercise of certain pretended powers of the prerogative. In several instances these loans were refused; among others by Sir Edward Hampden and four others, who were imprisoned in consequence; and the illegality of their commitment was very ably argued by Selden in the King's Bench. They were brought before the court by a writ of Habeas Corpus, but Selden and his fellow-counsel were unsuccessful in their endeavours to obtain the discharge of the prisoners, who were all remanded on the judgment of Hyde. In the third parliament, called by Charles I. in 1628, Selden sat for the borough of Ludgershall; and in the debates which immediately took place upon illegal commitments, the levy of tonnage and poundage, and the preparation of the Petition of Rights, he took a very active share. The attack upon the Duke of Buckingham [Pg 74] was renewed, and it was proposed by Selden that judgment should be demanded against him upon the impeachment of the former parliament. As affecting a great constitutional question, only finally determined in 1791, of the continuance of impeachments, notwithstanding a dissolution of parliament, the suggestion was remarkable. Further proceedings were, however, stopped by Felton's assassination of the duke.

During the prorogation of parliament Selden again devoted himself to literary pursuits. The Earl of Arundel, a great lover and promoter of the arts, had received from the East many ancient marbles, having on them Greek inscriptions. At the request of Sir Robert Cotton these inscriptions were transcribed under the superintendence of Selden, and were published under the title of 'Marmora Arundeliana.'

In January, 1629, parliament again assembled, and the debates upon public grievances were renewed. The goods of several merchants, in the interval of the meeting of parliament, had been seized by the crown, to satisfy a claim to the duty of tonnage and poundage. Among the sufferers was Rolls, a member of the House. It was moved that the seizure of his goods was a breach of privilege. When the question was to be put, the Speaker said "he durst not, for that the King had commanded to the contrary." Selden immediately rose, and vehemently complained of this conduct: "Dare you not, Mr. Speaker, to put the question when we command you? If you will not put it, we must sit still: thus, we shall never be able to do anything. They that come after you may say that they have the King's commands not to do it. We sit here by the command of the King under the great seal, and you are, by his Majesty, sitting in his royal chair before both houses, appointed for our Speaker, and now refuse to do your office." The House then adjourned in a state of great excitement. When it reassembled the Speaker was called upon to put the question, and again refused. On this Holles and Valentine thrust the Speaker into the chair, and held him down, while Sir Miles Hobart locked the door of the House [Pg 75] and took possession of the key. A declaration was then produced by Sir John Eliot, which Colonel Stroud moved should be read, and himself put the question. The motion was declared to be carried; and the Speaker, refusing to act upon it, was charged by Sir P. Heyman with cutting up the liberty of the subject by the roots. Selden moved that the declaration should be read by the clerk, which was agreed to. The House then adjourned to a day, previous to which the King came to the House of Lords and dissolved the parliament, on account of "the undutiful and seditious carriage of the Lower House," without the attendance of the Commons. Selden, and the other members concerned in the violence offered to the Speaker, were committed to prison. This was his last and most rigorous confinement. For some time he was denied the use of pens, ink, paper, and books. When, after eight months had elapsed, he was brought up with the other prisoners before the King's Bench upon a writ of Habeas Corpus, their discharge was offered upon condition of their finding bail for their good behaviour. "We demand," said Selden, "to be bailed in point of right; and if it be not grantable of right, we do not demand it. But finding sureties for good behaviour is a point of discretion merely, and we cannot assent to it without great offence to the parliament, where these matters, which are surmised by the return, were acted." They were remanded, and remained for a long time in the King's Bench Prison, where Eliot, one of the ablest members of the popular party, fell a victim to his confinement. The restraint, at least as far as Selden was concerned, appears to have been less rigorous than it was previously. This may be inferred from the fact that he was appointed by the students of the Inns of Court to prepare a masque, which they were desirous to represent before the royal family to show their disapprobation of Prynne's 'Histrio-mastix.' The masque left Ely Place, Holborn, in grand procession, and went down Chancery Lane and along the Strand to Whitehall, where it was performed before the King. During his imprisonment he wrote a treatise, 'De Successionibus [Pg 76] in Bona Defuncti secundum Leges Hebræorum, et de Successione in Pontificatum Hebræorum, Libri II.,' which he dedicated to Archbishop Laud; probably upon account of his being indebted to the Archbishop for the loan of books. In 1634 Selden consented to give bail, and was suffered to go at large. A petition to Charles I., to whom Selden appears to have been less obnoxious than most of the others of his party, either through admiration of his learning or from conviction that his natural love of ease and retirement, which Clarendon speaks of, would make him less likely to proceed to violent measures, obtained for him, through the interest of Laud, his entire liberation. He appears soon afterwards to have gained the personal favour of Charles I., and dedicated to him his celebrated essay on the 'Mare Clausum,' an argument in favour of the dominion of the English over the four seas, copies of which were, by order of the Privy Council, directed to be placed in the council chest, the Court of Exchequer, and the Court of Admiralty.

To the Long Parliament, which commenced its sittings in 1640, Selden was unanimously returned by the University of Oxford; but neither this new connexion with the clergy nor the favour of Charles appears to have affected his opinions. Upon the first day of the sitting of parliament he was nominated a member of the committee to inquire into the abuses of the Earl Marshal's Court, and was appointed with others to draw up a remonstrance upon the state of the nation. He also sat upon the committees which conducted the measures preparatory to the impeachment of the Earl of Stratford, but he was not one of the managers before the House of Lords; and his name was posted in Old Palace Yard as one of "the enemies of justice," a title given to those who were regarded as favourable to the Earl. It is not very clear what his opinions upon the impeachment were. That he should have been satisfied with all the steps taken by his party is not possible, for his opinions were undoubtedly moderate, and his studious habits must have checked any disposition to violence. He was also [Pg 77] nominated to frame the articles of impeachment against Laud, and was a party to the resolutions against the legislative powers of the bishops. The court, however, appears to have considered him favourable to its interests, until he spoke against the commission of array. Upon this question Clarendon represents the influence of his opinion upon the public to have been very prejudicial to Charles I. About this time the great seal was offered to him. He declined it, according to Clarendon, on account of his love of ease, and "that he would not have made a journey to York or have been out of his own bed for any preferment." The reason which he himself assigned for refusing it was the impossibility of his rendering any service to the Crown. He sat as member of the Assembly of Divines at Westminster, and took the Covenant; yet he was not well disposed towards the Puritans, and declared that "he was neither mad enough nor fool enough to deserve the name of Puritan." Upon the death of Dr. Eden, Master of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, in August, 1645, Selden was elected his successor, but declined to accept the office. About this time he appears to have gradually withdrawn from public business. His fondness of ease and his increasing age, and the silence he preserved upon many important events, all contribute to leave the inference of his approval or disapproval of much of the conduct of the parliamentary leaders open to adverse parties. He certainly never openly abandoned the popular side, nor does he appear to have forfeited its respect; and yet at the same time he continued to be esteemed by many of the leading Royalists.

The studies of Selden were continued to the latest period of his life, and he was near the age of seventy when his last work was published. The influence he possessed with the parliamentary leaders was frequently exerted in favour of letters. When Archbishop Laud's endowment of the professorship of Arabic in the University of Oxford was seized, on the attainder of that prelate, he procured its restitution. When Archbishop Usher, having preached against the divines of Westminster [Pg 78] and excited their anger, was punished by the confiscation of his library, Selden interfered, and saved it from sale and dispersion. When prelacy was abolished, the library attached to the see of Canterbury was by his efforts transferred to the University of Cambridge, where it remained until the Restoration. Through his entreaties, Whitelocke was induced to accept the charge of the medals and books at St. James's, and thus secured their preservation. The services which he rendered to the University of Oxford were no less valuable, and were acknowledged in grateful terms by that learned body; and it was through his interference that the papers and instruments of Graves, the Professor of Mathematics, which had been seized by a party of soldiers, were restored.

Selden died November 30, 1654, and was buried in the Temple church. He left behind him no immediate relations, and he bequeathed nearly the whole of his fortune, amounting to nearly 40,000l., to his four executors, giving only one hundred pounds to each of the children of his sister, the wife of John Barnard, of Goring. His books and manuscripts he had originally given by his will to the University of Oxford; but that body having demanded of him a heavy bond for the restitution of a book which he desired to borrow from the public library, the bequest was struck out, and they were directed to be placed "in some convenient public library or college in one of the universities." Sir M. Hale and his other executors, considering that they were the executors "of his will, and not of his passion," transferred them to the Bodleian Library at Oxford.

To learned men Selden was liberal and generous; and there is a letter from Casaubon in Parr's 'Life of Archbishop Usher,' in which that distinguished scholar with great feeling says, "I was with Mr. Selden after I had been with your Grace, whom, upon some intimation of my present condition and necessities, I found so noble, as that he did not only presently furnish me with a very considerable sum of money, but was so free and forward in his expressions, as that I could not find in my [Pg 79] heart to tell him much (somewhat I did) of my intention of selling, lest it should sound as a farther pressing upon him of whom I had received so much."

Milton terms Selden "the chief of learned men reputed in this land;" and Whitelocke states, "that his mind was as great as his learning, being very generous and hospitable." He was intimate with Ben Jonson, who addressed a poetical epistle to him, in which he styles his friend "monarch in letters." Clarendon, who could not regard Selden with any political partiality, though he had in early life been on terms of intimacy with him, describes him to have been "a person whom no character can flatter or transmit in any expressions equal to his merit or virtue. He was of so stupendous learning in all kinds and in all languages (as may appear in his excellent and transcendent writings), that a man would have thought he had been entirely conversant among books, and had never spent an hour but in reading and writing; yet his humanity, courtesy, and affability were such, that he would have been thought to have been bred in the best courts, but that his good-nature, charity, and delight in doing good, and in communicating all he knew, exceeded that breeding." Selden's name has been made familiar to the public by a small volume entitled 'Table Talk.' This valuable little collection of acute and learned remarks was first published in 1689, thirty-five years after Selden's death, in a quarto pamphlet with the title of 'Table Talk; being the discourses of John Selden, or his Sense of various matters of Weight and Consequence, relating especially to Religion and State.' The work was compiled by Selden's amanuensis, who states in the dedication that he had the opportunity of hearing Selden's discourses for twenty years together, and that of what is here collected "the sense and notion is wholly his and most of the words."

The motto adopted by Selden was περὶ παντὁς τὴν έλευθερίαν (above all things, liberty), and it is to be found neatly written upon the first page of many of his MSS. Its spirit he extended to religious questions; [Pg 80] and there are many bold and vigorous passages in his writings in which the necessity of freedom of inquiry upon all subjects is strongly insisted on. Noticing upon one occasion a certain class of ancient philosophers, he remarks, "He who takes to himself their liberty of inquiry, is in the only way that, in all kinds of studies, leads and lies open even to the sanctuary of Truth; while others, that are servile to common opinion and vulgar suppositions, can rarely hope to be admitted nearer than into the base-court of her temple, which too speciously often counterfeits her innermost sanctuary." From the nature of his studies his writings are far from being popular, and are now but little read. They obtained, however, for their author, during an age abounding with illustrious and learned men, an honourable reputation, among the most distinguished literary men of continental Europe, as well as among those of his own country. His works were edited by Dr. Wilkins, in 3 vols. folio, in 1726, to which a Latin 'Life of the Author' is prefixed.

Robert Blake was born at the seaport town of Bridgewater, in Somersetshire, in August, 1598. His father, Humphrey Blake, was a merchant at Bridgewater, in which neighbourhood he purchased an estate, having accumulated a considerable fortune in the Spanish trade. Humphrey Blake had several children, of whom Robert was the eldest. He was educated in the free school of Bridgewater, whence he went to Oxford, and became a member of St. Alban's Hall in 1615, whence he removed to Wadham College. In 1617 he took the degree of B. A., and in 1619 was a candidate for a fellowship in Merton College, but was unsuccessful, as he had previously been in standing for a scholarship of Christ Church. He rose early, studied hard, and though he was fond of field sports and other violent exercises, seems to have acquired a fair quantity of scholastic learning. He returned to Bridgewater when about twenty-five years old, and lived quietly on his paternal estate till [Pg 82] 1640, with the character of a blunt, bold man, of ready humour and fearless expression of his sentiments, which, both in politics and religion, were adverse to the pretensions of the court. These qualities gained for him the confidence of the Presbyterian party in Bridgewater, by whom he was returned to the parliament of April, 1640. The speedy dissolution of that assembly gave him no opportunity of trying his powers as a debater; and he lost his election to the Long Parliament. But on the breaking out of the civil war, he displayed his principles by entering the parliamentary army, and was soon made a captain of dragoons.

We have little information concerning his services till 1643, when we find him intrusted with the command of a fort at Bristol, under Colonel Fiennes, when the city was besieged by the Royalists. Here his impetuous temper had nearly brought him to an untimely death; for having maintained his fort and killed some of the king's soldiers after the garrison had surrendered, Prince Rupert was with difficulty induced to spare his life, which was held to have been forfeited by this violation of the laws of war. Blake served afterwards in Somersetshire, as lieutenant-colonel, under Popham, who was governor of Lyme. He took Taunton for the Parliament, by an unexpected attack, and obtained ten pieces of cannon and a large quantity of ammunition. In 1644 he was appointed governor of Taunton, which was a place of great consequence, being the only Parliamentary fortress in that quarter. In that capacity he distinguished himself by the skill, courage and constancy with which, during two successive sieges, he maintained the town against the Royalists in 1645; an important service, for which the parliament voted 2000l. to the garrison, and 500l. to the governor. In 1646 Colonel Blake reduced Doncaster Castle, which was nearly one of the last events of the war. Next to Cromwell, he was probably the ablest and most successful military officer in the Parliamentary army. It is recorded that he disapproved of the extremity to which matters were pushed against Charles, and that he [Pg 83] was heard to say that he would as freely venture his life to save the king's as he had ever done it in the service of the Parliament.

In February, 1649, Colonel Blake, in conjunction with two officers of the same rank, Deane and Popham, was appointed to command the fleet. It may be taken as a proof that, notwithstanding the fame of our early navigators, the king's service at sea had never been treated with much attention; that, down to later times than those of which we now write, the chief command of a fleet seems never to have been given to a man of naval education and habits. It is probable that the sea-service then held out no inducements strong enough to tempt men of high birth to submit to its inconveniences, and that the command of a fleet was esteemed too great a post to be conferred on a man of humble origin. For this new employment Blake showed signal capacity. When the embers of the war were stirred up after the king's death, he was ordered to the Irish Seas in pursuit of Prince Rupert, whom he blockaded in the harbour of Kinsale for several months. Despair of relief induced the prince at last to make a daring effort to break through the parliamentary squadron, in which he succeeded; but with the loss of three ships. Blake pursued him to the Tagus, where being denied liberty to attack his enemy by the King of Portugal, in revenge he captured and sent home a number of ships richly laden, on their way from Brazil. Towards the latter end of 1650, Prince Rupert escaped out of the Tagus, and Blake followed him up the straits, thence to Carthagena, and thence to Malaga, which was a neutral port. In January, 1651, he attacked, and, with the exception of two ships, in one of which Prince Rupert and his brother Prince Maurice escaped, destroyed the royalist fleet, in the harbour; a breach of international law, which can only be justified on the alleged ground that Rupert had destroyed British ships in the same harbour. These services were recompensed by the Parliament with the post of Warden of the Cinque Ports; and in March an act was passed constituting Blake, with his colleagues Deane and Popham, admirals and generals of [Pg 84] the fleet for the year ensuing. In that capacity, he took Jersey, Guernsey, and the Scilly Islands from the royalists; a service for which he was again thanked by parliament. In this year he was elected a member of the Council of State.

March 25, 1652, Blake was appointed sole admiral for nine months, in expectation of a war with Holland. The Dutch United States and England were at this time the two most powerful maritime countries in the world; and it is hard to find any better reason than national rivalry for the bloody war which broke out between them in the spring of this year; a war which seems to have been begun on a point of etiquette, at the discretion of the admirals, without orders for hostilities being known to be given by the governments on either side. On May 18, a fleet of forty-two Dutch ships, commanded by the celebrated Van Tromp, appeared off the Goodwin Sands. Being challenged by Major Bourne, who commanded a squadron in the Downs, they professed to have been driven from their anchorage off Dunkirk by stress of weather; but, instead of drawing off the coast as they were required to do, they sailed to Dover and cast anchor, in a manner which showed the deliberate design of insulting the British flag. Blake lay some distance to the westward in Rye Bay. Intelligence was immediately sent to him, and on his approach the Dutch weighed anchor, and seemed about to retreat; but changing their course, they sailed direct for the English fleet. When within musket-shot, Blake ordered a single gun to be fired at the Dutch admiral's flag, which was done thrice. Van Tromp returned a broadside, and a hot and well-contested action ensued, and was maintained till nightfall. Under cover of the darkness the Dutch retreated, losing two ships (one sunk, the other taken), and leaving the possession of the field and the honour of the victory in the hands of the English. The States appear neither to have authorised nor approved of the conduct of their admiral; for they left no means untried to satisfy the English government; and when they found the demands of the latter so high as to preclude accommodation, they [Pg 85] dismissed Van Tromp, and intrusted the command of their fleet to De Ruyter and De Witt. Meanwhile, Blake's activity was unremitting. He gained a rich harvest of prizes among the Dutch homeward-bound merchantmen, which were pursuing their way without suspicion of danger; and, when he had sent home forty good prizes and effectually cleared the Channel, he sailed to the northward, dispersed the fleet engaged in the herring fishery, and captured a hundred of the vessels composing it, together with a squadron of twelve ships of war sent out to protect them. The hostile fleets again came to an engagement, September 28, in which the advantage was decidedly in favour of the English, the rear-admiral of the Dutch being taken, and three or four of their ships disabled. Night put an end to the action: and though for two days the English maintained the pursuit, the lightness and uncertainty of the wind prevented them from closing with the enemy, who escaped into Goree.

After this battle the drafting off of detachments on various services reduced the English fleet to forty sail, and those, it is said, in consequence of the negligence or jealousy of the executive government, were ill provided with men and ammunition, and other requisite supplies. Thus weakly furnished, Blake lay in the Downs, when Van Tromp again stood over to the English coast, with eighty men-of-war. Of that undaunted spirit which usually prompts the British seaman to refuse no odds, Blake had an ample share; indeed, he did much to infuse that spirit into the service. But there are odds for which no spirit can make up, and as he had a brave and skilful enemy, the result of his rashness was that he was well beaten. The action commenced at two o'clock in the morning of November 29, and lasted till six in the evening. Not more than half the ships on either side were engaged; but out of this small number of English vessels, two of war were taken, and four destroyed; the rest were so shattered that they were glad to run for shelter into the river Thames. The Dutch remained masters of the narrow seas; and Van Tromp, in an idle bravado, sailed through the Channel with a broom at his [Pg 86] mast-head, as if he had swept it clear of English ships. However, neither the admiral nor the nation were of a temper to submit to this indignity. Monk and Deane were joined in the commission with Blake, and the fleet was repaired with such diligence, that, on the 8th of February, 1653, he sailed from Queenborough with sixty ships of war, and was soon joined by twenty more from Portsmouth. On the 18th he fell in with Van Tromp, with nearly equal force, conducting a large convoy of merchantmen up the Channel. A running battle ensued, which was continued during three consecutive days, until, on the 20th, the Dutch ships, which, to suit the nature of their coast, were built with a smaller draught of water than the English, obtained shelter in the shallow waters of Calais. In this long and obstinate fight, the Dutch lost only eleven men-of-war and thirty merchant vessels; but the number killed is said to have amounted to 1500 on either side; a loss of life of most unusual amount in naval engagements.

About the end of April Blake and his colleagues sailed over to the coast of Holland with a fleet of 100 sail. The Dutch fleet took shelter in the Texel, where they were watched by Deane and Monk while Blake sailed to the north. The Dutch fleet however got out, and on the 3rd of June Deane and Monk brought them to an engagement off the North Foreland. On the first day the Dutch seem to have had somewhat the advantage: on the 4th Blake arrived with a reinforcement of eighteen sail; the English gained a complete victory, and if the Dutch had not saved themselves in the shallow waters of Calais the whole fleet would doubtless have been sunk or taken. Ill health obliged him then to quit the sea, so that he was not present at the last great victory of July 29, in which Van Tromp was killed. But out of respect for his services the parliament presented him with a gold chain, as well as the admirals who had actually commanded in the battle. When Cromwell dissolved the Long Parliament in April, 1653, and afterwards assumed the office of Protector, Blake, though in his principles a republican, did not refuse to acknowledge the new administration. [Pg 87] In conjunction with Deane and Monk he published a declaration of their resolution, "notwithstanding the late change, to proceed in the performance of their duties, and the trust reposed in them, against the enemies of the Commonwealth." He is reported to have said to his officers, "It is not our business to mind state-affairs, but to keep foreigners from fooling us." He sat in the two first parliaments summoned by the Protector, who always treated him with great respect. Nor was Cromwell's acknowledged sagacity in the choice of men at fault when he chose Blake to command a strong fleet sent into the Mediterranean in November, 1654, to uphold the honour of the English flag, and to demand reparation for the slights and injuries done to the nation during that stormy period of civil war, when our own discord had made others daring against us. In better hands such a mission could not have been placed. Dutch, French, and Spaniards alike concurred in rendering unusual honours to his flag. The Duke of Tuscany and the Order of Malta made compensation for injuries done to the English commerce. The piratical states of Algiers and Tripoli were terrified into submission, and promised to abstain from further violence. The Dey of Tunis held out, confident in the strength of his fortifications. "Here," he said, "are our castles of Goletta and Porto Ferino: do your worst; do you think we fear your fleet?" Blake took the same course against Tunis as Lord Exmouth did in more recent times against Algiers. He bore right into the bay of Porto Ferino; engaged the fortress within musket-shot, and in less than two hours silenced or dismounted its guns; and sending a detachment of boats into the harbour, burnt the shipping which lay there. This was in March, 1655. After this example he found no more difficulty in dealing with the African states.

War having been declared between Spain and England, in 1656, Blake took his station to blockade the bay of Cadiz. At this period his constitution was much broken, insomuch that, in the expectation of a speedy death, he sent home a request that some person proper to be his successor might be joined in commission with [Pg 88] him. General Montague was accordingly sent out with a strong squadron. Being obliged to quit the coast of Spain in September to obtain water for his fleet, Blake left Captain Stayner with seven ships to watch the enemy. In this interval the Spanish Plate fleet appeared. Stayner captured four ships richly laden with bullion; the rest escaped. Montague conducted the prizes home, so that Blake was again left alone in the Mediterranean. In the ensuing spring, having learnt that another Plate fleet had put into the island of Teneriffe, he sailed thither, and arrived in the road of Santa Cruz, April 20, 1657. The bay was strongly fortified, with a formidable castle at the entrance, and a connected chain of minor forts all round it. The naval force collected there was also considerable, and strongly posted, the smaller vessels being placed under the guns of the forts, the galleons strongly moored with their broadsides to the sea; insomuch that the Spanish governor, a man of courage and ability, felt perfectly at ease as to the security of his charge. The master of a Dutch ship, which was lying in the harbour, was less satisfied, and went to the governor to request leave to quit the harbour; "For I am sure," he said, "that Blake will presently be among you." The governor made a confident reply—"Begone if you will, and let Blake come if he dares." Daring was the last thing wanting; nor did the admiral hesitate, as a wise man might well have done, about the real difficulties of the enterprise in which he was about to engage. The wind blowing into the bay, he sent in Captain Stayner with a squadron to attack the shipping, placed others in such a manner as take off, and, as far as possible, to silence the fire of the castle and the forts, and himself following, assisted Stayner in capturing the galleons, which, though inferior in number, were superior in size and force to the English ships. This was completed by two o'clock in the afternoon, the engagement having commenced at eight in the morning. Hopeless of being able to carry the prizes out of the bay against an adverse wind, and a still active enemy, Blake gave orders to burn them: and it is probable that he himself might have found some difficulty [Pg 89] in beating out of the bay under the fire of the castle, which was still lively, when on a sudden, the wind, which had blown strong into the bay, suddenly veered round to the south-west, and favoured his retreat, as it had favoured his daring approach. Of this, the most remarkable as it was the last exploit of Blake's life, Clarendon says, "The whole action was so incredible, that all men who knew the place wondered that any sober man, with what courage soever endowed, would ever have undertaken it; and they could hardly persuade themselves to believe what they had done: while the Spaniards comforted themselves with the belief, that they were devils and not men who had destroyed them in such a manner. So much a strong resolution of bold and courageous men can bring to pass, that no resistance or advantage of ground can disappoint them; and it can hardly be imagined how small a loss the English sustained in this unparalleled action, not one ship being left behind, and the killed and wounded not exceeding two hundred men; when the slaughter on board the Spanish ships and on shore was incredible." It will be recollected with interest that, on the same spot, Nelson lost his arm, in an unsuccessful night-attempt to capture Santa Cruz with an armed force in boats.

For this service the thanks of parliament were voted to the officers and seamen engaged, with a diamond ring to the Admiral worth 500l. Blake returned to his old station off Cadiz; but the increase of his disorders, which were dropsy and scurvy, raised a desire in him to return to England, which, however, he did not live to fulfil. He died as he was entering Plymouth Sound, August 17, 1657. His body was transported to London, and buried with great pomp in a vault in Henry VII.'s Chapel, Westminster Abbey, at the public expense. After the Restoration it was thought unworthy to remain in that treasure-house of England's departed greatness; and with the bones of others who had found a resting-place there during the short period of the Commonwealth, it was transferred to St. Margaret's churchyard. It has been disputed whether this was done with more or less of [Pg 90] indecency; but the matter is little worth inquiry. The real indecency and folly lay in thinking that any ground, however sanctified by the reverent associations of centuries, could be polluted by the tomb of a man whose leading passion was the glory of his country, and who made the name and flag of that country respected wheresoever he carried it: a man of whom not one mean or interested action is recorded, and whose great qualities extorted praise even from the Royalists. Bate, in his 'Elenchus Motuum,' speaks of him as a man "blameable in this only, that he joined with the parricides;" and it may be remarked that Dr. Bate's horror of a parricide did not prevent his being physician to Cromwell, as well as to Charles I. and II. He was a man of the strictest honesty, liberal to the extent of his fortune, and so disinterested that he left only 500l. He was a man of low stature.

We conclude with Clarendon's character of this great man. "He was of private extraction, yet had enough left him by his father to give him a good education, which his own inclination disposed him to receive in the University of Oxford, where he took the degree of a Master of Arts, and was enough versed in books for a man who intended not to be of any profession, having sufficient of his own to maintain him in the plenty he affected, and having then no appearance of ambition to be a greater man than he was. He was of a melancholic and sullen nature, and spent his time most with good fellows, who liked his moroseness, and a freedom he used in inveighing against the licence of the time and the power of the court. They who knew him inwardly, discovered that he had an anti-monarchical spirit, when few men thought the government in any danger." After a short sketch of Blake's actions in the civil war, the noble author continues, "He then betook himself wholly to the sea, and quickly made himself signal there. He was the first man that declined the old track, and made it manifest that the science might be attained in less time than was imagined, and despised those rules which had long been in practice, to keep his ship and his men out of danger; [Pg 91] which had been held in former times a point of great ability and circumspection, as if the principal art requisite in the captain of a ship had been to be sure to come safe home again. He was the first man who brought the ships to contemn castles on shore, which had been thought ever very formidable, and were discovered by him to make a noise only, and to fright those who could be rarely hurt by them. He was the first who infused that proportion of courage into the seamen, by making them see by experience what mighty things they could do, if they were resolved, and taught them to fight in fire as well as upon water; and though he has been very well imitated and followed, he was the first that gave the example of that kind of naval courage, and bold and resolute achievements."

The earliest life of Blake which we have seen is in the second volume of a collection entitled 'Lives English and Foreign,' published at the beginning of the last century. Clarendon's History of the Rebellion, Heath's Chronicle of the Civil Wars, the Memoirs of Ludlow, Whitelocke, and other contemporary authorities, will furnish minute accounts of the many battles of which we have here only made short mention.

Transcriber's Note

Obvious punctuation and spelling errors repaired.
Footnotes moved to end of respective chapters.

[The end of The Cabinet Portrait Gallery of British Worthies Vol 6 of 12 by Charles Knight]

	Page
CHARLES I.	5
STRAFFORD	27
JOHN HAMPDEN	38
ARCHBISHOP LAUD	50
JOHN SELDEN	70
ROBERT BLAKE	81

THE

CABINET PORTRAIT GALLERY

OF

BRITISH WORTHIES.

VOLUME VI.

LONDON: CHARLES KNIGHT & CO., LUDGATE STREET.

1846.

London: Printed by W. Clowes and Sons, Stamford Street.

PROSPECTUS.

CONTENTS.

CABINET PORTRAIT GALLERY OF BRITISH WORTHIES.

Footnote

Footnote

Transcriber's Note

LONDON:
CHARLES KNIGHT & CO., LUDGATE STREET.

CABINET PORTRAIT GALLERY
OF
BRITISH WORTHIES.