Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 3.djvu/133

] force; as for instance the tine of twenty pounds per month for non-attendance at church, as well as a fine of twelve pence for every oath, and forthwith demanded that penalty from him. Young Vaux refused with hot words and fresh oaths; Knightly then demanded that lord Vaux or his mother should pay it for him; and on their refusal ordered the constables to distrain to the amount of three shillings on the goods. This put the finish to the patience of lord Vaux himself, who told Knightly that he would call him to account for his conduct in another place; on which Knightly replied that his lordship knew where he lived. Lord Vaux, in his anger, thrust Knightly out of the house, saying that he had done, and should now go about his business; but this infuriating Knightly, he turned back again, declaring that he had not done, he would make a farther search. The parties thereupon came to blows: lord Vaux broke the head of Knightly's man with a cudgel, and the deputy-lieutenant and his followers thought it time to get away. Lord Vaux was soon after arrested by the privy council on the complaint of Knightly, and dealt with in the star-chamber.

Certainly no proceedings could indispose the house of peers to the king more than such as these; but meantime Charles was active in endeavouring by other measures to win a party there. The earl of Pembroke had for some time made himself head of the opposition, and on great occasions brought with him on a vote no less than ten proxies, Buckingham himself being only able to command thirteen. He prevailed on Pembroke to be reconciled to the favourite; and at the same time, to punish the lord-keeper Willams, who had quarrelled with Buckingham, and told him that he should go over to Pembroke, and labour for the redress of the grievances of the people, he dismissed him, and gave the great seal to Sir Thomas Coventry, the attorney-general.

To manage the commons, and to prevent the threatened impeachment of Buckingham, when the judges presented to him the lists of sheriffs, he struck out seven names, and wrote in their places seven of the most able and active of the leaders of opposition in the commons, the most determined enemies of the favourite, namely:—Sir Edward Coke, Sir Thomas Wentworth, Sir Francis Seymour, Sir Robert Philips, Sir Grey Palmer, Sir William Fleetwood, and Edward Alford. As this office disqualified them from sitting in parliament, the king thus got rid of them for that year; but Coke contended that though a sheriff could not sit for his own county, he could for another, and got himself elected for the county of Norfolk, but did not venture to take his seat.

All these measures, it will be seen, were dictated not by a desire to conciliate, but to override the parliament, and therefore could not promise much good to a mind of any depth of penetration. Parliament was summoned for the 6th of February, 1626, and the 2nd was appointed for the coronation. In this ceremony the king was destined to suffer a deep mortification. All previous queens had been most anxious to share in the coronation of their husband, and that grace had by several monarchs been refused, especially by Henry VII. But the unwise French papists about Henrietta persuaded her to decline a ceremony which must be performed by a heretic prelate; a fatal advice, for it gave rise in after years to the assertion of her enemies, that as she had never been crowned, she never was lawful queen-consort.

Charles did all in his power to conquer her prejudices and prevail on her to be crowned—no British queen having ever refused such an honour before; but neither conjugal affection, nor a desire to stand well with the great nation with which her lot was cost, nor those natural feelings in a young and handsome woman to shine as the first of her sex in the most magnificent ceremony of the realm, could shake her resolve. She would not even consent to be present in a latticed box at her husband's coronation, her absence having the effect of preventing the French ambassador being there; for though he declared he would have strained his conscience a little to have taken his proper place in the assembly, etiquette made that impossible, when the sister of his master, the queen of the nation, was not there even as a spectator.

The popularity of Henrietta received a death-blow from this perverse conduct: the people never forgave the slight upon their crown and country by this ill-advised and obstinate girl, and this feeling was heightened by attendant circumstances. The day was Candlemas Day, a high festival in the catholic church, which was celebrated with all its formalities by Henrietta, whilst her protestant husband was being crowned in Westminster Abbey. The people saw her standing at a window of Whitehall gate-house, King Street, watching the procession as it went and returned, and her French ladies dancing and capering about her in the room.

The ceremony of the coronation itself was destitute of any national joy. Charles had alarmed the religious feelings of the nation, and had already infected his subjects with want of faith in him. Laud, who was ill high favour with both Charles and Buckingham, was a conspicuous object on the occasion, and had made several alterations in the service, and composed a new prayer; all his changes tending to that exaltation of church and state for which he lived, and for which he lost his head. Buckingham was lord constable for the day, another circumstance calculated to find no favour with the people. In ascending the stops of the throne, instead of giving his right hand to the king, he gave him his left, which Charles put by with his right hand, and assisted the duke, saying, "I have as much need to help you as you to help me." Nor was this the only strange thing observed on the occasion. Archbishop Abbot, who performed the ceremony of anointing, was regarded by many as still not canonical, on account of his accidentally killing the king's keeper whilst hunting, although he had received absolution. He performed the act of anointing behind a screen raised for the purpose, so much was the puritans' disapprobation of this ceremony dreaded; and when the archbishop presented the king to the people as their rightful king, and called upon them to testify their consent by their general acclamation, there was a dead silence. Lord Arundel, the earl marshal, hastened to bid them shout, and cry "God save the king," but the response was but very faint and partial.

With the knowledge of a discontented people, Charles went to meet his parliament, and this consciousness would, in a monarch capable of taking a solemn warning, have