Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 3.djvu/66

52 In the face of all this, James proceeded immediately to raise Rochester to the dignity of earl of Somerset, that he might equal in rank, if not iniquity, the murder-breathing countess. The marriage, moreover, was celebrated on the 26th of December, at the royal chapel in Whitehall, the king making it his own affair, being himself present, with prince Charles, and a great crowd of bishops and noblemen. The queen kept herself commendably apart from the whole infamous business. The blood-stained bride, with a shamelessness unparalleled, appeared with her hair hanging loose on her shoulders, in the character of a virgin! Montague, bishop of Bath and Wells, married the guilty couple, and Mountain, dean of Westminster, pronounced a blessing upon them. Then the king gave a series of banquets and masques at Whitehall in honour of them, which continued till the 4th of January, 1614; and, as if all classes of public men were eager to disgrace themselves by sanctioning this court wickedness, the lord mayor and aldermen invited the adulterous couple to a splendid banquet, given at Merchant Tailors' Hall, on the same 4th of January, whither they were accompanied by the duke of Lennox, the earl of Northampton, lord privy seal, the lord chamberlain, and the earls of Worcester, Pembroke, and Montgomery. As it was to do honour to the king's especial favourite, the whole civic body wore arrayed in their robes of office, and the dinner was served by citizens selected out of the twelve companies, in the costumes of those companies. There was, moreover, a masque, a ball, dancing, and a play, and then the guilty and fêted pair returned to Whitehall.

This city ovation was followed by another at Gray's Inn, on Twelfth Night, which the lord chancellor Bacon had forced, in a manner, on the reluctant lawyers. The marriage of the princess Elizabeth, the king's own daughter, had been a most simple and tame affair to this, and the public, of every class and denomination, regarded with horror and indignation this deification of lust and murder. Puritans, churchmen, catholics, people of every and of no religion were equally loud in venting their anathemas on the foolish king, the sycophantic prelates, and compliant ministers. James gave such indulgence to debauch in the midst of these atrocious festivities, that he grew into a most cumbersome and disgusting spectacle. "This year," says Roger Coke, "as it was the meridian of the king's reign in England, so it was of his pleasures. He was excessively addicted to hunting and drinking, not ordinary French and Spanish wines, but strong Greek wines; and though he would divide his hunting from drinking these wines, yet he would compound his hunting with drinking; and to that purpose he was attended with a special officer, who was, as much as could be, always at hand to fill the king's cup in his hunting, when he called for it. Whether it were the drinking these wines, or from some other cause, the king became so lazy and unwieldy, that he was trussed on horseback, and as he was set, so he would ride, without otherwise poising himself in his saddle; nay, when his hat was set on his head, he would not take the pains to alter it, but it sate as it was put on."

From his gaieties James was called, by his eternal want of money, to face his parliament. Since 1611, when he dissolved his last house of commons, he had endeavoured to carry on by any illegal and unconstitutional means that the people would submit to. But the Dutch did not keep their engagement to pay off their debt of upwards of eight hundred thousand pounds by annual instalments of sixty thousand pounds, and James was too pusillanimous to adopt the means which a Cromwell would have done. He threatened war, and threatened only; and therefore became despised by his debtors, who thenceforth made no movement towards paying. Disappointed here, the only alternative was to fleece his own subjects. He resorted to the scandalous measure of selling all the places of honour and trust, and all kind of dignities for money. He sold several peerages for high prices. Every place under government was to be had only for cash; nor did the proceeds of this infamous traffic always reach the king's hands, but fell into those of his minion Somerset, and the Howards, the relatives of Somerset's wife. The wicked countess of Somerset and lady Suffolk, her mother, got four thousand pounds as a bribe from Sir Fulke Greville, for the chancellorship of the exchequer. The example thus set at court, ran through all departments, and the whole management of the country was given up to corruption and venality.

So little of these proceeds of iniquity reached the king, and that little was so foolishly and recklessly given away amongst his hangers-on, that the salaries of all who were not in a situation to be bribed, and thus pay themselves, remained unpaid. In this difficulty, James hit upon a notable scheme, and originated a new order of aristocracy; namely, baronets, or little barons, a link betwixt the barons, or lowest peers, and knights. These new titles he sold at one thousand pounds apiece. Sir Nicholas Bacon was the first created for England, and Sir Francis Blundell for Ireland, in 1619. Baronets for Nova Scotia were added, to extend this source of income, in 1625, of whom Sir Robert Gordon was the first. "Some of these new honourable men," says Arthur Wilson, in his life of James, "whose wives' pride and their own prodigalitics had pumpt up to it, were so drained, that they had not moisture to maintain the radical humour, but withered to nothing. This money thus raised is pretended for the planting of Ireland, but it found many other channels before it came to that sea. And though, at our king's first access to the crown, there was a glut of knights made, yet after some time he held his hand, lest the kingdom should be cloyed with them and the world thrived so well with some, that the price was afterwards brought up to three hundred pounds apiece. But now again, the poor courtiers were so indigent, that sixty pounds would purchase a knighthood."

Lord Northampton died at this crisis, and the iniquitous countess's kith and kin got the benefit. Suffolk, her father, succeeded as lord treasurer; Somerset, her husband, as lord chamberlain; and their dependents rushed in in a stream, all the other offices being sold by them for all they could get. Amongst others lord Knollys was made master of the court of wards, because he had married a sister of the infamous countess.

The attempts upon the constitution at this period were in strict keeping with the base practices just detailed; and in these lord Bacon, as pitiable a time-server as he was a great philosopher, and as base a traitor to liberty as he was a deep lawyer, stood foremost. He had concocted a notable scheme for managing parliaments, and it was the broaching;