Chapter XXXII - England Under James the First

by Charles Dickens

　　'Our cousin of Scotland' was ugly, awkward, and shuffling both inmind and person. His tongue was much too large for his mouth, hislegs were much too weak for his body, and his dull goggle-eyesstared and rolled like an idiot's. He was cunning, covetous,wasteful, idle, drunken, greedy, dirty, cowardly, a great swearer,and the most conceited man on earth. His figure - what is commonlycalled rickety from his birth - presented a most ridiculousappearance, dressed in thick padded clothes, as a safeguard againstbeing stabbed (of which he lived in continual fear), of a grass-green colour from head to foot, with a hunting-horn dangling at hisside instead of a sword, and his hat and feather sticking over oneeye, or hanging on the back of his head, as he happened to toss iton. He used to loll on the necks of his favourite courtiers, andslobber their faces, and kiss and pinch their cheeks; and thegreatest favourite he ever had, used to sign himself in his lettersto his royal master, His Majesty's 'dog and slave,' and used toaddress his majesty as 'his Sowship.' His majesty was the worstrider ever seen, and thought himself the best. He was one of themost impertinent talkers (in the broadest Scotch) ever heard, andboasted of being unanswerable in all manner of argument. He wrotesome of the most wearisome treatises ever read - among others, abook upon witchcraft, in which he was a devout believer - andthought himself a prodigy of authorship. He thought, and wrote,and said, that a king had a right to make and unmake what laws hepleased, and ought to be accountable to nobody on earth. This isthe plain, true character of the personage whom the greatest menabout the court praised and flattered to that degree, that I doubtif there be anything much more shameful in the annals of humannature.

　　He came to the English throne with great ease. The miseries of adisputed succession had been felt so long, and so dreadfully, thathe was proclaimed within a few hours of Elizabeth's death, and wasaccepted by the nation, even without being asked to give any pledgethat he would govern well, or that he would redress cryinggrievances. He took a month to come from Edinburgh to London; and,by way of exercising his new power, hanged a pickpocket on thejourney without any trial, and knighted everybody he could lay holdof. He made two hundred knights before he got to his palace inLondon, and seven hundred before he had been in it three months.He also shovelled sixty-two new peers into the House of Lords - andthere was a pretty large sprinkling of Scotchmen among them, youmay believe.

　　His Sowship's prime Minister, Cecil (for I cannot do better thancall his majesty what his favourite called him), was the enemy ofSir Walter Raleigh, and also of Sir Walter's political friend, LordCobham; and his Sowship's first trouble was a plot originated bythese two, and entered into by some others, with the old object ofseizing the King and keeping him in imprisonment until he shouldchange his ministers. There were Catholic priests in the plot, andthere were Puritan noblemen too; for, although the Catholics andPuritans were strongly opposed to each other, they united at thistime against his Sowship, because they knew that he had a designagainst both, after pretending to be friendly to each; this designbeing to have only one high and convenient form of the Protestantreligion, which everybody should be bound to belong to, whetherthey liked it or not. This plot was mixed up with another, whichmay or may not have had some reference to placing on the throne, atsome time, the Lady Arabella Stuart; whose misfortune it was, to bethe daughter of the younger brother of his Sowship's father, butwho was quite innocent of any part in the scheme. Sir WalterRaleigh was accused on the confession of Lord Cobham - a miserablecreature, who said one thing at one time, and another thing atanother time, and could be relied upon in nothing. The trial ofSir Walter Raleigh lasted from eight in the morning until nearlymidnight; he defended himself with such eloquence, genius, andspirit against all accusations, and against the insults of Coke,the Attorney-General - who, according to the custom of the time,foully abused him - that those who went there detesting theprisoner, came away admiring him, and declaring that anything sowonderful and so captivating was never heard. He was found guilty,nevertheless, and sentenced to death. Execution was deferred, andhe was taken to the Tower. The two Catholic priests, lessfortunate, were executed with the usual atrocity; and Lord Cobhamand two others were pardoned on the scaffold. His Sowship thoughtit wonderfully knowing in him to surprise the people by pardoningthese three at the very block; but, blundering, and bungling, asusual, he had very nearly overreached himself. For, the messengeron horseback who brought the pardon, came so late, that he waspushed to the outside of the crowd, and was obliged to shout androar out what he came for. The miserable Cobham did not gain muchby being spared that day. He lived, both as a prisoner and abeggar, utterly despised, and miserably poor, for thirteen years,and then died in an old outhouse belonging to one of his formerservants.

　　This plot got rid of, and Sir Walter Raleigh safely shut up in theTower, his Sowship held a great dispute with the Puritans on theirpresenting a petition to him, and had it all his own way - not sovery wonderful, as he would talk continually, and would not hearanybody else - and filled the Bishops with admiration. It wascomfortably settled that there was to be only one form of religion,and that all men were to think exactly alike. But, although thiswas arranged two centuries and a half ago, and although thearrangement was supported by much fining and imprisonment, I do notfind that it is quite successful, even yet.

　　His Sowship, having that uncommonly high opinion of himself as aking, had a very low opinion of Parliament as a power thataudaciously wanted to control him. When he called his firstParliament after he had been king a year, he accordingly thought hewould take pretty high ground with them, and told them that hecommanded them 'as an absolute king.' The Parliament thought thosestrong words, and saw the necessity of upholding their authority.His Sowship had three children: Prince Henry, Prince Charles, andthe Princess Elizabeth. It would have been well for one of these,and we shall too soon see which, if he had learnt a little wisdomconcerning Parliaments from his father's obstinacy.

　　Now, the people still labouring under their old dread of theCatholic religion, this Parliament revived and strengthened thesevere laws against it. And this so angered Robert Catesby, arestless Catholic gentleman of an old family, that he formed one ofthe most desperate and terrible designs ever conceived in the mindof man; no less a scheme than the Gunpowder Plot.

　　His object was, when the King, lords, and commons, should beassembled at the next opening of Parliament, to blow them up, oneand all, with a great mine of gunpowder. The first person to whomhe confided this horrible idea was Thomas Winter, a Worcestershiregentleman who had served in the army abroad, and had been secretlyemployed in Catholic projects. While Winter was yet undecided, andwhen he had gone over to the Netherlands, to learn from the SpanishAmbassador there whether there was any hope of Catholics beingrelieved through the intercession of the King of Spain with hisSowship, he found at Ostend a tall, dark, daring man, whom he hadknown when they were both soldiers abroad, and whose name was Guido- or Guy - Fawkes. Resolved to join the plot, he proposed it tothis man, knowing him to be the man for any desperate deed, andthey two came back to England together. Here, they admitted twoother conspirators; Thomas Percy, related to the Earl ofNorthumberland, and John Wright, his brother-in-law. All these mettogether in a solitary house in the open fields which were thennear Clement's Inn, now a closely blocked-up part of London; andwhen they had all taken a great oath of secrecy, Catesby told therest what his plan was. They then went up-stairs into a garret,and received the Sacrament from Father Gerard, a Jesuit, who issaid not to have known actually of the Gunpowder Plot, but who, Ithink, must have had his suspicions that there was somethingdesperate afoot.

　　Percy was a Gentleman Pensioner, and as he had occasional duties toperform about the Court, then kept at Whitehall, there would benothing suspicious in his living at Westminster. So, having lookedwell about him, and having found a house to let, the back of whichjoined the Parliament House, he hired it of a person named Ferris,for the purpose of undermining the wall. Having got possession ofthis house, the conspirators hired another on the Lambeth side ofthe Thames, which they used as a storehouse for wood, gunpowder,and other combustible matters. These were to be removed at night(and afterwards were removed), bit by bit, to the house atWestminster; and, that there might be some trusty person to keepwatch over the Lambeth stores, they admitted another conspirator,by name Robert Kay, a very poor Catholic gentleman.

　　All these arrangements had been made some months, and it was adark, wintry, December night, when the conspirators, who had beenin the meantime dispersed to avoid observation, met in the house atWestminster, and began to dig. They had laid in a good stock ofeatables, to avoid going in and out, and they dug and dug withgreat ardour. But, the wall being tremendously thick, and the workvery severe, they took into their plot Christopher Wright, ayounger brother of John Wright, that they might have a new pair ofhands to help. And Christopher Wright fell to like a fresh man,and they dug and dug by night and by day, and Fawkes stood sentinelall the time. And if any man's heart seemed to fail him at all,Fawkes said, 'Gentlemen, we have abundance of powder and shot here,and there is no fear of our being taken alive, even if discovered.'The same Fawkes, who, in the capacity of sentinel, was alwaysprowling about, soon picked up the intelligence that the King hadprorogued the Parliament again, from the seventh of February, theday first fixed upon, until the third of October. When theconspirators knew this, they agreed to separate until after theChristmas holidays, and to take no notice of each other in themeanwhile, and never to write letters to one another on anyaccount. So, the house in Westminster was shut up again, and Isuppose the neighbours thought that those strange-looking men wholived there so gloomily, and went out so seldom, were gone away tohave a merry Christmas somewhere.

　　It was the beginning of February, sixteen hundred and five, whenCatesby met his fellow-conspirators again at this Westminsterhouse. He had now admitted three more; John Grant, a Warwickshiregentleman of a melancholy temper, who lived in a doleful house nearStratford-upon-Avon, with a frowning wall all round it, and a deepmoat; Robert Winter, eldest brother of Thomas; and Catesby's ownservant, Thomas Bates, who, Catesby thought, had had some suspicionof what his master was about. These three had all suffered more orless for their religion in Elizabeth's time. And now, they allbegan to dig again, and they dug and dug by night and by day.

　　They found it dismal work alone there, underground, with such afearful secret on their minds, and so many murders before them.They were filled with wild fancies. Sometimes, they thought theyheard a great bell tolling, deep down in the earth under theParliament House; sometimes, they thought they heard low voicesmuttering about the Gunpowder Plot; once in the morning, theyreally did hear a great rumbling noise over their heads, as theydug and sweated in their mine. Every man stopped and looked aghastat his neighbour, wondering what had happened, when that boldprowler, Fawkes, who had been out to look, came in and told themthat it was only a dealer in coals who had occupied a cellar underthe Parliament House, removing his stock in trade to some otherplace. Upon this, the conspirators, who with all their digging anddigging had not yet dug through the tremendously thick wall,changed their plan; hired that cellar, which was directly under theHouse of Lords; put six-and-thirty barrels of gunpowder in it, andcovered them over with fagots and coals. Then they all dispersedagain till September, when the following new conspirators wereadmitted; Sir Edward Baynham, of Gloucestershire; Sir EverardDigby, of Rutlandshire; Ambrose Rookwood, of Suffolk; FrancisTresham, of Northamptonshire. Most of these were rich, and were toassist the plot, some with money and some with horses on which theconspirators were to ride through the country and rouse theCatholics after the Parliament should be blown into air.

　　Parliament being again prorogued from the third of October to thefifth of November, and the conspirators being uneasy lest theirdesign should have been found out, Thomas Winter said he would goup into the House of Lords on the day of the prorogation, and seehow matters looked. Nothing could be better. The unconsciousCommissioners were walking about and talking to one another, justover the six-and-thirty barrels of gunpowder. He came back andtold the rest so, and they went on with their preparations. Theyhired a ship, and kept it ready in the Thames, in which Fawkes wasto sail for Flanders after firing with a slow match the train thatwas to explode the powder. A number of Catholic gentlemen not inthe secret, were invited, on pretence of a hunting party, to meetSir Everard Digby at Dunchurch on the fatal day, that they might beready to act together. And now all was ready.

　　But, now, the great wickedness and danger which had been all alongat the bottom of this wicked plot, began to show itself. As thefifth of November drew near, most of the conspirators, rememberingthat they had friends and relations who would be in the House ofLords that day, felt some natural relenting, and a wish to warnthem to keep away. They were not much comforted by Catesby'sdeclaring that in such a cause he would blow up his own son. LordMounteagle, Tresham's brother-in-law, was certain to be in thehouse; and when Tresham found that he could not prevail upon therest to devise any means of sparing their friends, he wrote amysterious letter to this lord and left it at his lodging in thedusk, urging him to keep away from the opening of Parliament,'since God and man had concurred to punish the wickedness of thetimes.' It contained the words 'that the Parliament should receivea terrible blow, and yet should not see who hurt them.' And itadded, 'the danger is past, as soon as you have burnt the letter.'

　　The ministers and courtiers made out that his Sowship, by a directmiracle from Heaven, found out what this letter meant. The truthis, that they were not long (as few men would be) in finding outfor themselves; and it was decided to let the conspirators alone,until the very day before the opening of Parliament. That theconspirators had their fears, is certain; for, Tresham himself saidbefore them all, that they were every one dead men; and, althougheven he did not take flight, there is reason to suppose that he hadwarned other persons besides Lord Mounteagle. However, they wereall firm; and Fawkes, who was a man of iron, went down every dayand night to keep watch in the cellar as usual. He was there abouttwo in the afternoon of the fourth, when the Lord Chamberlain andLord Mounteagle threw open the door and looked in. 'Who are you,friend?' said they. 'Why,' said Fawkes, 'I am Mr. Percy's servant,and am looking after his store of fuel here.' 'Your master haslaid in a pretty good store,' they returned, and shut the door, andwent away. Fawkes, upon this, posted off to the other conspiratorsto tell them all was quiet, and went back and shut himself up inthe dark, black cellar again, where he heard the bell go twelveo'clock and usher in the fifth of November. About two hoursafterwards, he slowly opened the door, and came out to look abouthim, in his old prowling way. He was instantly seized and bound,by a party of soldiers under Sir Thomas Knevett. He had a watchupon him, some touchwood, some tinder, some slow matches; and therewas a dark lantern with a candle in it, lighted, behind the door.He had his boots and spurs on - to ride to the ship, I suppose -and it was well for the soldiers that they took him so suddenly.If they had left him but a moment's time to light a match, hecertainly would have tossed it in among the powder, and blown uphimself and them.

　　They took him to the King's bed-chamber first of all, and there theKing (causing him to be held very tight, and keeping a good wayoff), asked him how he could have the heart to intend to destroy somany innocent people? 'Because,' said Guy Fawkes, 'desperatediseases need desperate remedies.' To a little Scotch favourite,with a face like a terrier, who asked him (with no particularwisdom) why he had collected so much gunpowder, he replied, becausehe had meant to blow Scotchmen back to Scotland, and it would takea deal of powder to do that. Next day he was carried to the Tower,but would make no confession. Even after being horribly tortured,he confessed nothing that the Government did not already know;though he must have been in a fearful state - as his signature,still preserved, in contrast with his natural hand-writing beforehe was put upon the dreadful rack, most frightfully shows. Bates,a very different man, soon said the Jesuits had had to do with theplot, and probably, under the torture, would as readily have saidanything. Tresham, taken and put in the Tower too, madeconfessions and unmade them, and died of an illness that was heavyupon him. Rookwood, who had stationed relays of his own horses allthe way to Dunchurch, did not mount to escape until the middle ofthe day, when the news of the plot was all over London. On theroad, he came up with the two Wrights, Catesby, and Percy; and theyall galloped together into Northamptonshire. Thence to Dunchurch,where they found the proposed party assembled. Finding, however,that there had been a plot, and that it had been discovered, theparty disappeared in the course of the night, and left them alonewith Sir Everard Digby. Away they all rode again, throughWarwickshire and Worcestershire, to a house called Holbeach, on theborders of Staffordshire. They tried to raise the Catholics ontheir way, but were indignantly driven off by them. All this timethey were hotly pursued by the sheriff of Worcester, and a fastincreasing concourse of riders. At last, resolving to defendthemselves at Holbeach, they shut themselves up in the house, andput some wet powder before the fire to dry. But it blew up, andCatesby was singed and blackened, and almost killed, and some ofthe others were sadly hurt. Still, knowing that they must die,they resolved to die there, and with only their swords in theirhands appeared at the windows to be shot at by the sheriff and hisassistants. Catesby said to Thomas Winter, after Thomas had beenhit in the right arm which dropped powerless by his side, 'Stand byme, Tom, and we will die together!' - which they did, being shotthrough the body by two bullets from one gun. John Wright, andChristopher Wright, and Percy, were also shot. Rookwood and Digbywere taken: the former with a broken arm and a wound in his bodytoo.

　　It was the fifteenth of January, before the trial of Guy Fawkes,and such of the other conspirators as were left alive, came on.They were all found guilty, all hanged, drawn, and quartered:some, in St. Paul's Churchyard, on the top of Ludgate-hill; some,before the Parliament House. A Jesuit priest, named Henry Garnet,to whom the dreadful design was said to have been communicated, wastaken and tried; and two of his servants, as well as a poor priestwho was taken with him, were tortured without mercy. He himselfwas not tortured, but was surrounded in the Tower by tamperers andtraitors, and so was made unfairly to convict himself out of hisown mouth. He said, upon his trial, that he had done all he couldto prevent the deed, and that he could not make public what hadbeen told him in confession - though I am afraid he knew of theplot in other ways. He was found guilty and executed, after amanful defence, and the Catholic Church made a saint of him; somerich and powerful persons, who had had nothing to do with theproject, were fined and imprisoned for it by the Star Chamber; theCatholics, in general, who had recoiled with horror from the ideaof the infernal contrivance, were unjustly put under more severelaws than before; and this was the end of the Gunpowder Plot.

　　SECOND PART

　　His Sowship would pretty willingly, I think, have blown the Houseof Commons into the air himself; for, his dread and jealousy of itknew no bounds all through his reign. When he was hard pressed formoney he was obliged to order it to meet, as he could get no moneywithout it; and when it asked him first to abolish some of themonopolies in necessaries of life which were a great grievance tothe people, and to redress other public wrongs, he flew into a rageand got rid of it again. At one time he wanted it to consent tothe Union of England with Scotland, and quarrelled about that. Atanother time it wanted him to put down a most infamous Churchabuse, called the High Commission Court, and he quarrelled with itabout that. At another time it entreated him not to be quite sofond of his archbishops and bishops who made speeches in his praisetoo awful to be related, but to have some little consideration forthe poor Puritan clergy who were persecuted for preaching in theirown way, and not according to the archbishops and bishops; and theyquarrelled about that. In short, what with hating the House ofCommons, and pretending not to hate it; and what with now sendingsome of its members who opposed him, to Newgate or to the Tower,and now telling the rest that they must not presume to makespeeches about the public affairs which could not possibly concernthem; and what with cajoling, and bullying, and fighting, and beingfrightened; the House of Commons was the plague of his Sowship'sexistence. It was pretty firm, however, in maintaining its rights,and insisting that the Parliament should make the laws, and not theKing by his own single proclamations (which he tried hard to do);and his Sowship was so often distressed for money, in consequence,that he sold every sort of title and public office as if they weremerchandise, and even invented a new dignity called a Baronetcy,which anybody could buy for a thousand pounds.

　　These disputes with his Parliaments, and his hunting, and hisdrinking, and his lying in bed - for he was a great sluggard -occupied his Sowship pretty well. The rest of his time he chieflypassed in hugging and slobbering his favourites. The first ofthese was Sir Philip Herbert, who had no knowledge whatever, exceptof dogs, and horses, and hunting, but whom he soon made Earl ofMontgomery. The next, and a much more famous one, was Robert Carr,or Ker (for it is not certain which was his right name), who camefrom the Border country, and whom he soon made Viscount Rochester,and afterwards, Earl of Somerset. The way in which his Sowshipdoted on this handsome young man, is even more odious to think of,than the way in which the really great men of England condescendedto bow down before him. The favourite's great friend was a certainSir Thomas Overbury, who wrote his love-letters for him, andassisted him in the duties of his many high places, which his ownignorance prevented him from discharging. But this same Sir Thomashaving just manhood enough to dissuade the favourite from a wickedmarriage with the beautiful Countess of Essex, who was to get adivorce from her husband for the purpose, the said Countess, in herrage, got Sir Thomas put into the Tower, and there poisoned him.Then the favourite and this bad woman were publicly married by theKing's pet bishop, with as much to-do and rejoicing, as if he hadbeen the best man, and she the best woman, upon the face of theearth.

　　But, after a longer sunshine than might have been expected - ofseven years or so, that is to say - another handsome young manstarted up and eclipsed the Earl of Somerset. This was GeorgeVilliers, the youngest son of a Leicestershire gentleman: who cameto Court with all the Paris fashions on him, and could dance aswell as the best mountebank that ever was seen. He soon dancedhimself into the good graces of his Sowship, and danced the otherfavourite out of favour. Then, it was all at once discovered thatthe Earl and Countess of Somerset had not deserved all those greatpromotions and mighty rejoicings, and they were separately triedfor the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury, and for other crimes. But,the King was so afraid of his late favourite's publicly tellingsome disgraceful things he knew of him - which he darkly threatenedto do - that he was even examined with two men standing, one oneither side of him, each with a cloak in his hand, ready to throwit over his head and stop his mouth if he should break out withwhat he had it in his power to tell. So, a very lame affair waspurposely made of the trial, and his punishment was an allowance offour thousand pounds a year in retirement, while the Countess waspardoned, and allowed to pass into retirement too. They hated oneanother by this time, and lived to revile and torment each othersome years.

　　While these events were in progress, and while his Sowship wasmaking such an exhibition of himself, from day to day and from yearto year, as is not often seen in any sty, three remarkable deathstook place in England. The first was that of the Minister, RobertCecil, Earl of Salisbury, who was past sixty, and had never beenstrong, being deformed from his birth. He said at last that he hadno wish to live; and no Minister need have had, with his experienceof the meanness and wickedness of those disgraceful times. Thesecond was that of the Lady Arabella Stuart, who alarmed hisSowship mightily, by privately marrying William Seymour, son ofLord Beauchamp, who was a descendant of King Henry the Seventh, andwho, his Sowship thought, might consequently increase andstrengthen any claim she might one day set up to the throne. Shewas separated from her husband (who was put in the Tower) andthrust into a boat to be confined at Durham. She escaped in aman's dress to get away in a French ship from Gravesend to France,but unhappily missed her husband, who had escaped too, and was soontaken. She went raving mad in the miserable Tower, and died thereafter four years. The last, and the most important of these threedeaths, was that of Prince Henry, the heir to the throne, in thenineteenth year of his age. He was a promising young prince, andgreatly liked; a quiet, well-conducted youth, of whom two very goodthings are known: first, that his father was jealous of him;secondly, that he was the friend of Sir Walter Raleigh, languishingthrough all those years in the Tower, and often said that no manbut his father would keep such a bird in such a cage. On theoccasion of the preparations for the marriage of his sister thePrincess Elizabeth with a foreign prince (and an unhappy marriageit turned out), he came from Richmond, where he had been very ill,to greet his new brother-in-law, at the palace at Whitehall. Therehe played a great game at tennis, in his shirt, though it was verycold weather, and was seized with an alarming illness, and diedwithin a fortnight of a putrid fever. For this young prince SirWalter Raleigh wrote, in his prison in the Tower, the beginning ofa History of the World: a wonderful instance how little hisSowship could do to confine a great man's mind, however long hemight imprison his body.

　　And this mention of Sir Walter Raleigh, who had many faults, butwho never showed so many merits as in trouble and adversity, maybring me at once to the end of his sad story. After animprisonment in the Tower of twelve long years, he proposed toresume those old sea voyages of his, and to go to South America insearch of gold. His Sowship, divided between his wish to be ongood terms with the Spaniards through whose territory Sir Waltermust pass (he had long had an idea of marrying Prince Henry to aSpanish Princess), and his avaricious eagerness to get hold of thegold, did not know what to do. But, in the end, he set Sir Walterfree, taking securities for his return; and Sir Walter fitted outan expedition at his own coast and, on the twenty-eighth of March,one thousand six hundred and seventeen, sailed away in command ofone of its ships, which he ominously called the Destiny. Theexpedition failed; the common men, not finding the gold they hadexpected, mutinied; a quarrel broke out between Sir Walter and theSpaniards, who hated him for old successes of his against them; andhe took and burnt a little town called Saint Thomas. For this hewas denounced to his Sowship by the Spanish Ambassador as a pirate;and returning almost broken-hearted, with his hopes and fortunesshattered, his company of friends dispersed, and his brave son (whohad been one of them) killed, he was taken - through the treacheryof Sir Lewis Stukely, his near relation, a scoundrel and a Vice-Admiral - and was once again immured in his prison-home of so manyyears.

　　His Sowship being mightily disappointed in not getting any gold,Sir Walter Raleigh was tried as unfairly, and with as many lies andevasions as the judges and law officers and every other authorityin Church and State habitually practised under such a King. Aftera great deal of prevarication on all parts but his own, it wasdeclared that he must die under his former sentence, now fifteenyears old. So, on the twenty-eighth of October, one thousand sixhundred and eighteen, he was shut up in the Gate House atWestminster to pass his late night on earth, and there he tookleave of his good and faithful lady who was worthy to have lived inbetter days. At eight o'clock next morning, after a cheerfulbreakfast, and a pipe, and a cup of good wine, he was taken to OldPalace Yard in Westminster, where the scaffold was set up, andwhere so many people of high degree were assembled to see him die,that it was a matter of some difficulty to get him through thecrowd. He behaved most nobly, but if anything lay heavy on hismind, it was that Earl of Essex, whose head he had seen roll off;and he solemnly said that he had had no hand in bringing him to theblock, and that he had shed tears for him when he died. As themorning was very cold, the Sheriff said, would he come down to afire for a little space, and warm himself? But Sir Walter thankedhim, and said no, he would rather it were done at once, for he wasill of fever and ague, and in another quarter of an hour hisshaking fit would come upon him if he were still alive, and hisenemies might then suppose that he trembled for fear. With that,he kneeled and made a very beautiful and Christian prayer. Beforehe laid his head upon the block he felt the edge of the axe, andsaid, with a smile upon his face, that it was a sharp medicine, butwould cure the worst disease. When he was bent down ready fordeath, he said to the executioner, finding that he hesitated, 'Whatdost thou fear? Strike, man!' So, the axe came down and struckhis head off, in the sixty-sixth year of his age.

　　The new favourite got on fast. He was made a viscount, he was madeDuke of Buckingham, he was made a marquis, he was made Master ofthe Horse, he was made Lord High Admiral - and the Chief Commanderof the gallant English forces that had dispersed the SpanishArmada, was displaced to make room for him. He had the wholekingdom at his disposal, and his mother sold all the profits andhonours of the State, as if she had kept a shop. He blazed allover with diamonds and other precious stones, from his hatband andhis earrings to his shoes. Yet he was an ignorant presumptuous,swaggering compound of knave and fool, with nothing but his beautyand his dancing to recommend him. This is the gentleman who calledhimself his Majesty's dog and slave, and called his Majesty YourSowship. His Sowship called him Steenie; it is supposed, becausethat was a nickname for Stephen, and because St. Stephen wasgenerally represented in pictures as a handsome saint.

　　His Sowship was driven sometimes to his wits'-end by his trimmingbetween the general dislike of the Catholic religion at home, andhis desire to wheedle and flatter it abroad, as his only means ofgetting a rich princess for his son's wife: a part of whosefortune he might cram into his greasy pockets. Prince Charles - oras his Sowship called him, Baby Charles - being now Prince ofWales, the old project of a marriage with the Spanish King'sdaughter had been revived for him; and as she could not marry aProtestant without leave from the Pope, his Sowship himselfsecretly and meanly wrote to his Infallibility, asking for it. Thenegotiation for this Spanish marriage takes up a larger space ingreat books, than you can imagine, but the upshot of it all is,that when it had been held off by the Spanish Court for a longtime, Baby Charles and Steenie set off in disguise as Mr. ThomasSmith and Mr. John Smith, to see the Spanish Princess; that BabyCharles pretended to be desperately in love with her, and jumpedoff walls to look at her, and made a considerable fool of himselfin a good many ways; that she was called Princess of Wales and thatthe whole Spanish Court believed Baby Charles to be all but dyingfor her sake, as he expressly told them he was; that Baby Charlesand Steenie came back to England, and were received with as muchrapture as if they had been a blessing to it; that Baby Charles hadactually fallen in love with Henrietta Maria, the French King'ssister, whom he had seen in Paris; that he thought it a wonderfullyfine and princely thing to have deceived the Spaniards, allthrough; and that he openly said, with a chuckle, as soon as he wassafe and sound at home again, that the Spaniards were great foolsto have believed him.

　　Like most dishonest men, the Prince and the favourite complainedthat the people whom they had deluded were dishonest. They madesuch misrepresentations of the treachery of the Spaniards in thisbusiness of the Spanish match, that the English nation became eagerfor a war with them. Although the gravest Spaniards laughed at theidea of his Sowship in a warlike attitude, the Parliament grantedmoney for the beginning of hostilities, and the treaties with Spainwere publicly declared to be at an end. The Spanish ambassador inLondon - probably with the help of the fallen favourite, the Earlof Somerset - being unable to obtain speech with his Sowship,slipped a paper into his hand, declaring that he was a prisoner inhis own house, and was entirely governed by Buckingham and hiscreatures. The first effect of this letter was that his Sowshipbegan to cry and whine, and took Baby Charles away from Steenie,and went down to Windsor, gabbling all sorts of nonsense. The endof it was that his Sowship hugged his dog and slave, and said hewas quite satisfied.

　　He had given the Prince and the favourite almost unlimited power tosettle anything with the Pope as to the Spanish marriage; and henow, with a view to the French one, signed a treaty that all RomanCatholics in England should exercise their religion freely, andshould never be required to take any oath contrary thereto. Inreturn for this, and for other concessions much less to bedefended, Henrietta Maria was to become the Prince's wife, and wasto bring him a fortune of eight hundred thousand crowns.

　　His Sowship's eyes were getting red with eagerly looking for themoney, when the end of a gluttonous life came upon him; and, aftera fortnight's illness, on Sunday the twenty-seventh of March, onethousand six hundred and twenty-five, he died. He had reignedtwenty-two years, and was fifty-nine years old. I know of nothingmore abominable in history than the adulation that was lavished onthis King, and the vice and corruption that such a barefaced habitof lying produced in his court. It is much to be doubted whetherone man of honour, and not utterly self-disgraced, kept his placenear James the First. Lord Bacon, that able and wise philosopher,as the First Judge in the Kingdom in this reign, became a publicspectacle of dishonesty and corruption; and in his base flattery ofhis Sowship, and in his crawling servility to his dog and slave,disgraced himself even more. But, a creature like his Sowship setupon a throne is like the Plague, and everybody receives infectionfrom him.