Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 3.djvu/48

34 than prevent his being brought to trial and capitally condemned. The case of Blackwall was extremely hard, for, on the other hand, he had excited the resentment of the pope by his concession. He was called on by letters from cardinals Bellarmine and Arrigoni, and the Jesuits Persons and Holtby to retract; but as he would not, he was superseded by Birket. He was then in his seventieth year, and remained in prison till his death, in 1613.

A second breve from the pope roused the spirit of James; he determined to try whether he could not silence the clamour of the papal party by his pen. He abandoned even the pleasures of the chase, refused to listen to his ministers, and calling his favourite divines around him, he shut himself up with them, and produced a tract called "An Apologie for the Oath of Allegiance," which was immediately translated into French and Latin. But as the royal brochure did not convince the catholics, six priests were condemned for refusing the oath, and three of them were executed, one at York and two at Tyburn. Moreau, Bellarmine, and Persons, published replies to the royal treatise; and again James closeted himself with his divines, revised his publication, and prefaced it with a "Premonition to all Christian Princes." It was in vain that the kings of Denmark and France counselled him to desist from a contest so unworthy of a great monarch, in vain that the queen urged the same advice. He condescended to declare that the fittest answer to Persons would be a rope; and as for Bellarmine, who had written under a feigned name, he dubbed him "a most obscure author, a very desperate fellow in beginning his apprentisage, not only to refute, but to rail at a king." The flatterers of the king applauded his "immortal labours," as they were pleased to call them; and James continued to toil at them, revise, and remodel his arguments till 1609. The catholic peers, with the exception of lord Teynham, all took the oath on different occasions in the upper house.

To dismiss for the present the religious controversies which kept the kingdom in a ferment of bitterness, we have a little overstepped the progress of general events. In the spring of 1606 James called together parliament, for he was in much distress for money. As usual, the commons had their list of grievances to set off against his demands, and as James showed no eagerness to redress no less than sixteen subjects of complaint, the commons made no haste with the supplies. At length, in the month of May, whilst the question of the subsidy was dragging its slow length along, and Cecil was endeavouring in vain to quicken the motion of the house, by making promises which meant nothing beyond inducing the members to vote, a sudden rumour ran through the court that the king was assassinated at Oaking, in Berkshire, where he was hunting along with his favourites, the earl of Montgomery, Sir John Ramsay, and Sir James Hay. The mode of his death was variously reported. One version was that he had been stabbed with a poisoned knife, and another that he had been shot with a pistol, and a third that he was smothered in his bed. The murderers were differently represented to be the Jesuits, Scotchmen in women's clothes, Frenchmen, and Spaniards. There was a great consternation both in the city and the parliament. The lords displayed the greatest loyalty; and the commons suddenly closed their money debate by voting three subsidies and six fifteenths. In the midst of the panic James arrived safe and sound in London, and was received with proportionate enthusiasm. As the sensation went off, many began to suspect that Cecil, and perhaps the king himself, could have explained the origin of the ruse; that it was but a spur to the tardy liberality of the commons. At all events, James, having obtained his supplies, prorogued parliament to the 18th of November.

The subsidies were voted all in good time, for in July of this year, Christian IV., king of Denmark, the brother of queen Anne, paid his royal brother-in-law a visit. The queen had been recently confined of a daughter, which only lived to be christened, so that Anne was necessarily unable to be present at the rejoicings and court fêtes given on the occasion. And perhaps it was owing to the absence of the restraint of her presence that the festivities of the two kings and the whole court degenerated into a grossness and drunken excess which scandalised the whole nation. The maskings, banquetings, balls, tiltings, and all manner of rude sports, wrestling, bull and bear baitings, kept both court and city in a continual riot. But the excess reached its height at an entertainment given by Cecil to the kings and courtiers at his magnificent seat of Theobalds. "There," says Sir John Harrington, in "Nugæ Antiquæ," "those whom I never could get to taste good liquor, now follow the fashion and wallow in beastly delights. The ladies abandon sobriety, and roll about in intoxication. After dinner, the representation of Solomon, his temple, and the coming of the queen of Sheba was made. The lady who did play the queen's part did carry most precious gifts to both their majesties, but forgetting the steps arising to the canopy, overset her caskets into his Danish majesty's lap, and fell at his feet, though I rather think it was his face. Much was the hurry and confusion: cloths and napkins were at hand to make all clean."

The end of the entertainment was that his Danish majesty, attempting to dance with the queen of Sheba, fell down, and was obliged to be carried to bed, and the majesty of England was at the same time carried to his in the same state of drunken prostration. King Christian remained barely a month, and during the time was as lavish of his gifts as of his jollity. He presented to his sister his portrait richly set with jewels; to the king a rapier and hanger worth seven thousand pounds; to the prince of Wales a man of war, valued at eight thousand pounds; and distributed amongst the English courtiers gold chains and jewels amounting to fifteen thousand pounds. But with all his munificence. Christian did not avoid making enemies in the English court in his drunken freedoms: his expressions to the countess of Nottingham were never forgiven by her, and the offence is recorded in a very indignant letter addressed by her to one of the king of Denmark's suite, Sir Andrew St. Clair.

We may here devote a few words to the character of James's court at this period. So strong did party run in those times, that we have the most opposite descriptions of both James and his queen, personality, morality, and intellectually. With few of any party, however, had James managed to make himself popular. He was not without a certain degree of shrewdness which often took by surprise those who were disposed to think him shallow: he had a considerable amount of learning, but so accompanied by authorly vanity, rather than regal pride, that he lost all respect by his inordinate desire to show it. He had no manly dignity even on public state occasions, and amongst his chosen associates he condescended to such displays of homely