the zenith of popularity. The joy of all classes at receiving back Charles from the perils of the sea and of popish Spain was unbounded. Such a clamouring and cackling of delight from shore to shore of England, especially in the loyal city of London! As if the affections and hopes of all the hens in the farmyard had been embarked with one adventurous duckling on the horse-pond, and now the inestimable creature was once more safe on land! If we were now to receive back the Prince of Wales after having been sealed up for a winter in the polar ice, we could not make greater fools of ourselves. thousand pounds, which he shook from capricious fool, he resolved to defeat the him in his path, as a lion shakes the dew- projected match. The facile Charles was drops from his mane. Such a lion among persuaded that he was being played upon, ladies was likely to be "a most dreadful and that the delay which occurred was due thing." Buckingham, the beautiful, mad- to Spanish treachery. There is no doubt ly arrogant Englishman, when he and that Philip and his ministers were falsely Charles, on their way to Spain, mingled accused, and that Buckingham frustrated in the society of the French Court, dared the negotiation from pique and passion; to throw love-glances at the young but when the duke returned to England, French queen; and thus drew upon bringing back the prince, and it became himself the dangerous frown of Riche-known that he had been the chief actor lieu. When lion meets lion, then comes in the business, Buckingham rose to the tug of conflict. The Cardinal, whose fine genius seems to have had the advantage (with a view to success) of being as untrammelled by religious scruples as that of Frederick or that of Voltaire, was himself a lover of his queen. His sacred character as a bishop, his eminence as a theologian, would lend exquisite flavour and piquancy to such forbidden fruit. The queen is understood to have been not insensible to the charm of having fascinated the two most fascinating and prominent men in France and England respectively. All things are said to be lawful in love, and Richelieu, who was seven years older than Buckingham, and now no longer that dapper ecclesiastic, Our ancestors called themselves free, that "creature of porcelain," whose am- and in a deep sense were so. They unbition had first found wings in the ser- derstood that no king had a right to vice of the French pueen-mother, abso-crumple up the written law in the shut lutely forbade his rival, after the friends fist of a despotic will. The prerogative had gone on their way, to reënter of the Crown was, they vaguely conFrance. The destructive wrath of Buck-ceived, the blazon and the buckler of the ingham, prompting him to make his way people. But an anointed king was for into France at the sword-point and force them a sacred personage. There was. the world to own that he, not Richelieu, was the better man, became an important factor in the political evolution of the time. Such was the Buckingham with whom, after having seen and remarked at the French Court the vivacious, dark-eyed, captivating Henrietta Maria, Charles pursued his journey to Spain in quest of the Infanta. When Jack and Tom turned up in Madrid, the excitement among the Spaniards was great. Charles had touched the romantic nerve of the people, and it vibrated in vivid response. To a lover so frank and intrepid what could be denied? Philip declared that he would put his daughter into Charles's arms, and that, if the pope refused his sanction to the match, it should be dispensed with. Bristol was satisfied that the prospect of success was good. Then Buckingham spoiled all. Jealous of Bristol, insolent to the Spaniards, acting as a petulant and * Michelet. something supernatural about him. Superstition was still a colossal power, even in Protestant countries; men believed in witchcraft and astrology as firmly as we believe in dividends; and royal touch was. still held to be potent in the cure of epilepsy. In its noblest form Shakespeare entertained this reverence for kings, and expressed it perfectly and imperishably when he spoke of the "divinity that doth hedge a king." If you would realize the difference between the antique England of the Jacobean period and the England of the Victorian age, read Macaulay's impatiently contemptuous sketch of James, and then turn to the following lines, in which Shakespeare, who was a subject first of Elizabeth and then of James, eulogizes both : Shall star-like rise, as great in fame as she | Prince and Buckingham were told that was, And so stand fixed: peace, plenty, love, truth, terror, That were the servants of this chosen infant, And, like a mountain cedar, reach his branches sense of the difficulty of emancipating himself from the yoke of his poor slave and dog by an ironically sympathetic question from said slave as to that rheum with which he had been troubled the other evening. afternoon that, on account of a bitter cold and rheum, the King would be confined to his chamber, and could not see them. In the evening Carendolet, secretary to the Spanish Legation, was introduced into James's room, and assured him that he, James, was surrounded by spies and informers, that no one dared to do his commands or to tender to him advice, except by the permission of Buckingham; in one word, that Buckingham was king. It is not reasonable to say that, in James promised secresy, and next day, these lines, Shakespeare was a mere Court when Charles and the duke met him as flatterer. The reverence for kings that he drove in his coach, he took in his son pervades his historical plays was infi- but shut the door against the favourite. nitely deeper than Court flattery. What His Majesty had escaped, then? Not he. he wrote about James was as natural, The Bishop of Lincoln, shifty, eloquent becoming, and right, in the eyes of his Welsh Williams, indefatigable in the generation, as what Mr. Tennyson has pursuit of useful knowledge and alert to written about Queen Victoria is in the make the most of both worlds, had eyes of ours. If Shakespeare had told Carendolet's mistress in his pay. The James that his throne was "broad-based secretary told the mistress, and the misupon the people's will," he would either tress told the bishop, and the bishop have received some serious mark of the told the prince, and the prince told Buckroyal displeasure, or, if James had hap-ingham, and James was recalled to a pened to be in his best mood, would have been sent for and treated, on his knees, to a sputtering lecture, an hour long, on the sacred and imprescriptible rights of the Lord's anointed, while courtiers stood round in gaping admiration and archbishops declared in lowly accents that the cascade of nonsense was inspired by God. James welcomed back Charles and Buckingham with transports of delight. "I wear Steenie's pict. re," wrote the slobbering nondescript, " in a blue ribbon under my waistcoat next my skin." But his days were henceforward to be full of sorrow. It was not possible for him to extinguish his intellect so far as to be, in political matters, Buckingham's unconscious or happy slave. Steenie had made Baby Charles quite his own, and they were in a league to keep James in the dark. Their plan was never to let him be for five minutes out of sight of one or both of them. But every ambassador of that time who understood his trade was a master in the art of intrigue; and Marquis Ynoiosa and Don Carlos Caloma, the king of Spain's head men in England, contrived to reach the ear of James. Three months long they had watched for an opportunity, baffled by the vigilant favourite and the cunning prince. At last Caloma managed to engage the attention of Charles and Buckingham in one part of a room while Ynoiosa slipped a note into James's hand, with a glance doubtless that it was to be put into his pocket. The For intrigue was one of the arts carried to a high state of perfection in that religious age. The meshwork in which it encircled personages of importance was complicated in its ramifications and fine in its threads. A clever ambassador, a Bristol for instance, would be better served by the body-guards of the Spanish king than the Spanish king himself, would have keys that could open Philip's most secret cabinets, and would boast that he could furnish James with copies of documents before they were read by Philip in council. The most fervently pious men, the Puritan Cromwell for example, would have no misgiving as to the maxim, licet uti altero peccato, would dispense the necessary pieces of silver to the domestic Judas, and would leave the conscientious question to the latter. Under these circumstances, a liberal-minded Charles II., conning the lessons of adversity in threadbare coat in Holland, would testify his filial affection by having Dr. Dorislaus, who had taken part in the trial of his father, assassinated. And so the endless tragi-comedy, act after act, went on, and the whirligig of time kept moving, and at length a free press and Baron Reuter began to manage the intelligence depart ment for irresistible opinion, without, it his motives for opposing the Spanish may be hoped, much need of liars, assas-match, they implied no dislike of popery, sins, and traitors, and surely, with com- inasmuch as he had in Spain declared parative advantage to all parties. himself prepared to become, if need were, a Papist. He was soon the best-hated man in England, and the prince, intimately associated with him, could not but share his unpopularity. The most important consideration of all, however, to explain the coldness with which the nation regarded Charles's accession to the throne, is that he identified himself more closely than his father with certain theological influences and tendencies, now coming prominently into view, which the majority of the people and of their representatives in Parliament regarded with unmeasured hostility. James had not succeeded in breaking the yoke of Buckingham, but it galled him to the quick. The Earl of Bristol, eclipsed and supplanted by the duke, had returned from Spain, and a persuasion had gradually diffused itself that the nation had been misled as to the causes of the failure of the Spanish-match project. Having nursed that project as a pet lamb in his bosom, James learned with feelings which may be imagined that it had been frustrated in mere capricious wilfulness by Buckingham. Knowing how deeply James had valued the Spanish alliance, Bristol doubtless calculated that We may shut the book of England's Charles and the favourite could not per- history in those years unless we appremanently hoodwink him, and hoped that hend the interest taken in theological the duke would fall and that himself questions. That interest was fervent and would regain power. He knew that James universal. Landed proprietors, farmers, could not dispense with a favourite, but shopkeepers, nay, apprentices and farmhis notion, strange to say, was that Som- labourers cared more about abstract theerset, a convicted murderer, might return ological propositions than people now to Court in that capacity. James actually care about big loaf or free breakfast had a secret interview with Somerset. It table. And, strange as it may seem, it is was believed by close observers at the a fact which will be questioned by no one time that Buckingham held his place by acquainted with the literature of the an extremely precarious tenure. The period, from the writings of Owen, Baxunhappy king was the centre of a coil of ter, and Milton down to street broadsides inextricable intrigues, Buckingham plot- and municipal petitions, that the theology. ting against Somerset, Bristol plotting which had been embraced with passionate against Buckingham, Baby Charles and intensity by the great body of the English Steenie plotting against the dear dad and people, was that which can be briefly and gossip; Spanish interest, French interest practically described as absorbing, beof the Court and Richelieu party, French yond any other theological scheme, the interest of the Huguenot party, interest human into the Divine. The fundamenof the Elector Palatine, interest of the tal position of Puritan theology was that Puritans and patriots of England, all pull-defined by St. Paul when he represents ing and wrestling and whirling as in delirious dance round James. It was enough to tease a poor old nondescript wise fool to death. Volumes might be written to trace the conflicting influences and describe the warring passions of the scene; but the game would not be worth the candle; and we ought to be thankful that oblivion, which, like death, is often kind, has spread over the whole its pall. God as the potter and man as the clay. This will now strike most readers as a doctrine of utter slavishness; but all can understand that, if attainment of infinite benefit and escape from inexpressible calamity were believed to be connected with absolute submission to the Divine will, a resistance proportioned to the strength of this conviction would be presented by those entertaining it to any attempt to prevent them from submitting themselves implicitly to God. It has The main historical facts which it is important for us to note are, first, that the Court was steadily growing in un-been demonstrated again and again in popularity during the last years of James's reign; and, secondly, that this unpopularity directed itself more against Buckingham and Charles than against the king. The popularity which the duke had earned by bringing back Charles unmarried from Spain was short-lived. It was whispered that, whatever might be history, that under no influence does man become more terrible as a force than when he feels himself a mere instrument in the hand of God. Take three historic names, with all they stand for, to prove this fact, the Hebrew David, Mahomet, Cromwell. The Puritan, ever in the great Taskmaster's eye, penetrated with the faith that his whole individuality was the Augustinian system of theology as taken possession of by God, presented a repromulgated by the greater Augustine front of fierce opposition to the Papist of Geneva. He came from Scotland sound on the one hand, and to the Arminian on as a bell on the five points of Calvinism; the other. The Papist put the Pope and and so late as 1618 his representatives in the Church between the soul and God; the Synod of Dort were instructed to the Puritan would hear of no created side with the Calvinists. It is indeed mediator. The Arminian ventured to true that he much preferred bishops to assert, from the bosom of the Reformed presbyters, and that the English Puritans Church itself, the rights of the human gained no favour in his eyes by remindpersonality; the Puritan recognized es- ing him of those Caledonian ecclesiastics sentially but one right, one fate, for the who, whatever their faults, were never finite being, to be irradiated with God as accused of sycophancy. They had told light, or to be consumed by God as fire. James that he was "Christ's silly vassal," In the history of spiritual civilization and and lectured him and snubbed him withof European progress Arminius and his out mercy. No doubt they told him also followers take an honoured place as that he was the Lord's anointed, and daring to stem the current of tendency James had wit enough to extract a good in their time, and to maintain, with their deal out of this. The prophet Samuel, lives in their hands, that the clay, if it striving to check the monarchical tendenceases to be clay and becomes human, cies of the degenerating Jews, warned has a personality not to be extinguished them that, once their king was anointed, by God himself, a personality involving they would be compelled to submit to rights which, if justice admits of any him however afflictive he might be. definition whatever, can be pleaded James knew he had been anointed, felt against power even when infinite. But that he was afflictive, and asked whether religion, if it has often been expanded any subject pretending to logic could and ennobled by an infusion of philoso- dispute the duty of submitting to him? phy, has invariably been thereby weak- The "stubborn kirk" clung to its notions ened as a force; and whatever Armin- as to the supreme right of the people, ianism may have done to promote in the and would lend no countenance to deslargest sense the liberty of the human potic theories. It was heaven for James, spirit, it is unquestionable that the cause after having been called a silly vassal by of practical freedom, as against priest or gaunt presbyters in serge, to be told by despot, was in the seventeenth century surpliced prelates that he spake as an mainly vindicated by the inexorable de-angel of God. But so long as his bishops termination of the Puritans to be untram-said this, he liked them to be theologimelled in obeying the law of their God. cally in sympathy with the Reformation, Assailed by the Puritans, the Arminians and out of sympathy with the Church of leant naturally upon the State for protec- Rome. tion, and while the historian of philosophy While Puritan theology reigned in classes them as advocates of freedom, Court and Church, the Puritan revoluthe historian of constitutional liberty tion, in so far as it was a religious revomust pronounce them politically ser-lution-and its central force was relivile. Moderating their jealousy of the gious was impossible. Revolutions civil power, they moderated also their are not made by trifles; men do not shed hatred of the Papacy, and naturally cast their in their lot with those Protestants who had least objection to the doctrine, ritual, and episcopal government of the old Church. If the importance of these statements in relation to the history of England in the first half of the seventeenth century has been appreciated, it will be understood that it was a great point for James, in respect of popularity, that his theology was Puritan, and that it was a strong point against Charles that he allied himself from the first with the Romanizing and Arminian party. James's brain had been taken possession of in his youth by blood for tolerabiles ineptia. Neither the bishops nor the ceremonies would have occasioned civil war, if they had continued to stand for that for which they stood in the days of Elizabeth and in the early days of James. At that time there was no irreconcilable breach between the Church of England and the Scottish Kirk. English archbishops could find admiring audiences north of Tweed, and young Mr. Laud, preaching at Oxford, got himself sharply rebuked by his University superiors for his newfangled high-Anglican notions, so well fitted to Sow dissension between the Church of England and the Reformed Churches. John Knox, though he re-by Laud, but the influence of the idea fused a bishopric, had been prevented stole over them, and for Charles it beby no scruple of conscience from minis- came an enthusiasm, an inspiration, a tering in an Episcopal church. The doom. Laud, in the cast of his theology, symbols about which the Puritans fought was an Arminian and a Roman. He behad been of comparatively small conse- lieved in episcopacy by divine right, in quence until they became typical, or the radical difference between clergy and were believed to have become typical, of laity, in the mystic efficacy of sacerdotal the main issue between Rome and the functions and sacramental rites. He atReformers. The Church seemed to be tached immense importance to the symonce more interposing between God and bolism and ceremonial of worship. the soul, and the palladium of Protestantism to be in danger. "Some men," says Hume, "of the greatest parts and most extensive knowledge that the nation at this time produced could not enjoy any peace of mind because obliged to hear prayers offered up to a Divinity by a priest covered with a white linen vestment." As if one should appraise in money worth the thin pole and torn rag around which men bleed in battle, and wonder how they can sell their lives for ninepence! The sagacity which lay, hidden but indestructible, amid heaps of topsy-turvy rubbish behind James's goggle eyes, told him that Laud was dangerous, and Steenie and Baby had a good deal to do before James, the wise man, yielded, and James, the fool, took Laud into comparative favour. It need not be doubted that the ecclesiastic made way considerably with the old king. Buckingham's mother was a Papist; it was arranged that Laud should lay siege to her. He engaged, in her presence, in controversy with Jesuit The man to whom the portentous Fisher, and had an opportunity to dischange which had taken place was chiefly play the exquisite advantages of his sysdue has been already named. William tem; how it had all the attractions of the Laud was about thirty years old when Church of Rome and none of the drawJames came to England, but, though he backs of the Reformed Churches; how was already possessed with the idea it disallowed the jurisdiction of a foreign which has given him a place in history, ecclesiastic in England, but exalted the he did not, for many years, occupy a native primate and the native king; how highly important position. His advance it rejected sundry errors of the Romish was slow but sure. No man ever under-theology, and yet afforded the stay of stood better than he the art of stooping Church authority to diffident souls, and to conquer and cringing to subdue. priestly succour and absolution to those Bishop Williams, possessed of a random generosity which enabled him to do a kindness to men he despised, held out his hand to Laud and helped the "urchin" to Court. Williams had intrigued boldly and shiftily, as we have seen, for the favour of Buckingham, and had probably reckoned on making the haughty duke his friend; but the brilliant, wily Welsh-herself converted. It seems probable man found himself sharply repelled, that, betweeen the date of the Synod of while Laud, who seems never to have Dort and his death, James learned to suggested to Buckingham that he was look with much less alarm and repuganything but his, the duke's, humble nance on Laud than he had previously slave, became," says Abbott, "the only done; but the change would not be obinward counsellor with Buckingham, sit-served by the body of the people, whereas ting with him sometimes privately for the devotion of Charles to Laud and whole hours." Laud stepped as softly as Arminianism was undisguised. an incarnate idea; which, indeed, he was the Anglican idea in flesh. Consumed by his one passion, he knew no friendship, no mere mundane fidelity or gratitude. He undermined his benefactor Williams, and sent him first to the seclusion of a country diocese and then to the Tower. Buckingham and Charles never imagined that they were being dominated who trembled at the thought of immediate intercourse with God. Here was a plan for reconciling discrepancies, for solving problems that seemed insoluble ! Could James but accept it, he might smite Jack Presbyter hip and thigh, from the Dan of Church government unto the Beersheba of dogma. The lady declared Though Bristol, Somerset, Ynoiosa and company were skilful intriguers, and though James was painfully sensible of his enslavement, Buckingham and Charles prevailed, and he never escaped their tutelage. To the last his subjects tolerated him, or more than tolerated him. He got credit for what was good in him, and Buckingham was debited with the |