The History of England Volume V. David Hume
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repeat. When Waller was young, he had the curiosity to go to court; and he stood in the circle, and saw James dine; where, among other company, there sat at table two bishops, Neile and Andrews. The king proposed aloud this question, Whether he might not take his subjects money, when he needed it, without all this formality of parliament? Neile replied, God forbid you should not: For you are the breath of our nostrils. Andrews declined answering, and said, he was not skilled in parliamentary cases: But upon the king’s urging him, and saying he would admit of no evasion, the bishop replied pleasantly: Why then I think your majesty may lawfully take my brother Neile’s money: For he offers it.b
1615. Somerset’s fall.
The favourite had hitherto escaped the enquiry of justice; but he had not escaped that still voice, which can make itself be heard amidst all the hurry and flattery of a court, and astonishes the criminal with a just representation of his most secret enormities. Conscious of the murder of his friend, Somerset received small consolation from the enjoyments of love, or the utmost kindness and indulgence of his sovereign. The graces of his youth gradually disappeared, the gaiety of his manners was obscured, his politeness and obliging behaviour were changed into sullenness and silence. And the king, whose affection had been engaged by these superficial accomplishments, began to estrange himself from a man, who no longer contributed to his amusement.
The sagacious courtiers observed the first symptoms of this disgust: Somerset’s enemies seized the opportunity, and offered a new minion to the king. George Villiers, a youth of one-and-twenty, younger brother of a good family, returned at this time from his travels, and was remarked for the advantages of a handsome person, genteel air, and fashionable apparel. At a comedy, he was purposely placed full in James’s eye, and immediately engaged the attention, and, in the same instant, the affections of that monarch.c Ashamed of his sudden attachment, the king endeavoured, but in vain, to conceal the partiality, which he felt for the handsome stranger; and he employed all his profound politics to fix him in his service, without seeming to desire it. He declared his resolution not to confer any office on him, unless entreated by the queen; and he pretended, that it should only be in complaisance to her choice, he would agree to admit him near his person. The queen was immediately applied to; but she, well knowing the extreme, to which the king carried these attachments, refused, at first, to lend her countenance to this new passion. It was not till entreated by Abbot, archbishop of Canterbury, a decent prelate, and one much prejudiced against Somerset, that she would condescend to oblige her husband, by asking this favour of him.d And the king, thinking now that all appearances were fully saved, no longer constrained his affection, but immediately bestowed the office of cupbearer on young Villiers.
The whole court was thrown into parties between the two minions; while some endeavoured to advance the rising fortunes of Villiers, others deemed it safer to adhere to the established credit of Somerset. The king himself, divided between inclination and decorum, encreased the doubt and ambiguity of the courtiers; and the stern jealousy of the old favourite, who refused every advance of friendship from his rival, begat perpetual quarrels between their several partizans. But the discovery of Somerset’s guilt in the murder of Overbury, at last decided the controversy, and exposed him to the ruin and infamy which he so well merited.
An apothecary’s ’prentice, who had been employed in making up the poisons, having retired to Flushing, began to talk very freely of the whole secret; and the affair at last came to the ears of Trumbal, the king’s envoy in the Low Countries. By his means, Sir Ralph Winwood, secretary of state, was informed; and he immediately carried the intelligence to James. The king, alarmed and astonished to find such enormous guilt in a man whom he had admitted into his bosom, sent for Sir Edward Coke, chief justice, and earnestly recommended to him the most rigorous and unbiassed scrutiny. This injunction was executed with great industry and severity: The whole labyrinth of guilt was carefully unravelled: The lesser criminals, Sir Jervis Elvis, lieutenant of the Tower, Franklin, Weston, Mrs. Turner, were first tried and condemned: Somerset and his countess were afterwards found guilty: Northampton’s death, a little before, had saved him from a like fate.
It may not be unworthy of remark that Coke, in the trial of Mrs. Turner, told her, that she was guilty of the seven deadly sins: She was a whore, a bawd, a sorcerer, a witch, a papist, a felon, and a murderer.e And what may more surprize us, Bacon, then attorney-general, took care to observe, that poisoning was a popish trick.f Such were the bigotted prejudices which prevailed: Poisoning was not, of itself, sufficiently odious, if it were not represented as a branch of popery. Stowe tells us, that, when the king came to Newcastle, on his first entry into England, he gave liberty to all the prisoners, except those who were confined for treason, murder, and papistry. When one considers these circumstances, that furious bigotry of the catholics, which broke out in the gunpowder conspiracy, appears the less surprising.
All the accomplices in Overbury’s murder received the punishment due to their crime: But the king bestowed a pardon on the principals, Somerset and the countess. It must be confessed that James’s fortitude had been highly laudable, had he persisted in his first intention of consigning over to severe justice all the criminals: But let us still beware of blaming him too harshly, if, on the approach of the fatal hour, he scrupled to deliver into the hands of the executioner, persons whom he had once favoured with his most tender affections. To soften the rigour of their fate, after some years’ imprisonment, he restored them to their liberty, and conferred on them a pension, with which they retired, and languished out old age in infamy and obscurity. Their guilty loves were turned into the most deadly hatred; and they passed many years together in the same house, without any intercourse or correspondence with each other.g
Several historians,h in relating these events, have insisted much on the dissimulation of James’s behaviour, when he delivered Somerset into the hands of the chief justice; on the insolent menaces of that criminal; on his peremptory refusal to stand a trial; and on the extreme anxiety of the king during the whole progress of this affair. Allowing all these circumstances to be true, of which some are suspicious, if not palpably false,i the great remains of tenderness, which James still felt for Somerset, may, perhaps, be sufficient to account for them. That favourite was high-spirited; and resolute rather to perish than live under the infamy to which he was exposed. James was sensible, that the pardoning of so great a criminal, which was of itself invidious, would become still more unpopular, if his obstinate and stubborn behaviour on his trial should augment the public hatred against him.k At least, the unreserved confidence, in which the king had indulged his favourite for several years, might render Somerset master of so many secrets, that it is impossible, without farther light, to assign the particular reason of that superiority, which, it is said, he appeared so much to assume.
Rise of Buckingham.
The fall of Somerset, and his banishment from court, opened the way for Villiers to mount up at once to the full height of favour, of honours, and of riches. Had James’s passion been governed by common rules of prudence, the office of cup-bearer would have attached Villiers to his person, and might well have contented one of his age and family; nor would any one, who was not cynically austere, have much censured the singularity of the king’s choice in his friends and favourites. But such advancement was far inferior to the fortune, which he intended for his minion. In the course of a few years, he created him Viscount Villiers, Earl, Marquis, and Duke of Buckingham, knight of the garter, master of the horse, chief justice in Eyre, warden of the cinque ports, master of the king’s bench office, steward of Westminster, constable of Windsor, and lord high admiral of England.l His mother obtained the title of Countess of Buckingham: His brother was created Viscount Purbeck; and a numerous train of needy relations were all pushed up into credit and authority. And thus the fond prince, while he meant to play the tutor to his favourite, and to train him up in the rules of prudence and politics, took an infallible method, by loading him with premature and exorbitant honours, to render him, for ever, rash, precipitate, and insolent.
1616.
A young minion to gratify with pleasure, a necessitous family to supply with riches, were enterprizes too great for the empty exchequer of James. In order to obtain a little money, the cautionary towns must be delivered up to the Dutch; a measure which has been severely blamed by almost all historians; and I may venture