Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 3.djvu/77

1617.] like a child on receiving his supercedeas. Bacon displayed anything but a philosophical magnanimity on the fall of his great rival. He not only joked with Villiers on the disgrace of the great man who had offended the favourite, but he wrote a most insulting letter to the fallen judge, which was particularly odious from being garnished with the cant of piety.

Bacon now looked confidently towards the chancellorship, and in March of the following year Brackley resigning from age, the great seal was transferred to him, with the title of lord-keeper. Sir Francis had reached the elevation to which he had so long and so ardently aspired, by a slavish advocacy of the most unlimited claims of prerogative, and, as far as in him lay, the restriction of constitutional liberty,—a mortifying instance of how completely the most transcendent talents can be united in a nature ignoble and mercenary. Indeed, the conduct of Bacon on this occasion was vain and weak to a pitiable degree. Though be had now reached the mature age of fifty-four, and drew an enormous income from his grants and offices, he was so profuse of expenditure, that he was a needy man, pressed with difficulties, which he saw in the chancellorship an exhaustless means of dispersing. His vanity burst forth to such a surprising extent, that he assumed all the state of a Wolsey. He rode to Westminster Hall on horseback, in a gown of rich purple satin, and attended by a crowd of nobles, judges, great law officers, lawyers, and students, rivalling even the splendour of the king.

Whilst these affairs were progressing at home, the credit of James abroad had sunk very low. At the conference for effecting a truce betwixt Holland and Spain, held at the Hague—a conference which established the independence of the Low Countries—the English ministers had been made to feel the ignominy of their position, compared with the dignity of the ambassadors of Elizabeth. Prince Maurice told them openly that their minster dare not open his mouth in contradiction to the king of Spain; and their allies, the French, in consequence, assumed a superiority throughout the negotiations which mortified deeply the English envoys. Nor was that the only slight which James's truckling policy brought upon him abroad. He was anxious to ally his son to the court of Spain, notwithstanding the intense aversion of his subjects to the idea of a catholic princess. But he was saved from incensing the nation by a Spanish marriage: Spain declined the offer. He next applied for the hand of Madame Christine, sister to Louis XIII. of France; but here again he was met with the contempt which his mean and insecure character merited: France preferred the suit of the duke of Savoy. It was never before the fortune of England to have to go begging to the continental states for wives for its princes: they had hitherto been only too officiously pressed on its acceptance. Yet James, as if incapable of feeling such insults, continued his assiduous and humble court to the courts of France and Spain. Soon after the refusal of the hand of the French princess, the weak king of France, who had been retained in a state of pupilage by his mother, Catherine de Medici, and her favourite Concini, marshal D'Ancre, had the Italian assassinated by Vitry, one of the royal guards. This took place in open day, on the draw-bridge of the Louvre; and Louis, who was watching the proceeding, immediately showed himself at a window of the palace, shouting to the people, "Praised be the Lord, now I am a king!" and the officers of the guard advanced through the streets with a preconcerted cry of "God save the king! The king is king!" Yet James of England, insisted, despised, and rejected by this assassinating king of France, who was too weak to do more than escape out of the hands of one favourite into those of another, and was very soon more completely enthralled than ever by the duke de Luynes, made all haste to congratulate Louis on his black act, and to pay a high compliment to Vitry, the murderer. This we have on the express authority of "Winwood, the secretary of state. Writing to Sir Guy Carleton, the ambassador in Holland, he says:—"But what opinion private particular men, who aim at nothing else but the advancement of their own fortunes, have of this action, his majesty is pleased to approve of it, which doth appear not only by the outward demonstration of his exceeding joy and contentment when first he received the news thereof, but also by letters which, with his own hand, he hath written to the French king. And besides, Mr. Comptroller, who hath charge in all diligence to return into France, hath express orders to congratulate with the marshal de Vitry, for so he now is, that by his hands, the king, his master, was delivered out of captivity."

We must now trace the proceedings of James in Scotland and Ireland, where he was anxious to establish as thoroughly his principles of church and state supremacy as in England, and where the seed he sowed rapidly grew into the same harvest of bloodshed and revolution as in this country.

The church of Scotland, as established by Knox and his contemporaries, was, like the country from which they brought the idea, a republic. It acknowledged no head but Christ; nor any concern which the state had with it, except to furnish the support of the ministers whose lives were devoted to the civilisation and religious improvement of the community. The minister and the lay elders of a parish constituted the parochial assembly, which governed all the spiritual affairs of that little circle: a certain number of these assemblies constituted a presbytery, which heard all appeals from the parochial assemblies, and sanctioned the appointment, suspension, or dismissal of their ministers. Beyond the presbytery extended the provincial synod, and the general assembly claimed the supreme management of the affairs of the church under God.

This free form of the Scottish church had always been extremely repugnant to James's despotic notions. Even when he professed to admire its constitution as the purest and most perfect on earth, he was writhing under its authority; and no sooner did he ascend the English throne than he avowed his real opinion of its inconsistency with, monarchy. The hierarchy of England delighted him; he regarded it as the surest bulwark of the throne, and bishops he seemed to regard as the guarantees of royal security. "No bishop no king," was his favourite motto; and the hatred of presbytery which he expressed at Hampton Court led him to seek its utter overthrow in Scotland. He knew the sturdy materials that he had to deal with in the Scottish ministry and people, who had driven out his mother in their hatred of Catholicism; yet this did not deter him from