Part 85

"The lord keeper, on March 22, received a letter from the court, that it was feared his majesty's sickness was dangerous to death; which fear was more confirmed, for he, meeting Dr. Harvey in the road, was told by him that the king used to have a beneficial evacuation of nature, a sweating in his left arm, as helpful to him as any fontenel could be, which of late failed.

"When the lord keeper presented himself before him, he moved to cheerful discourse, but it would not do. He stayed by his bedside until midnight. Upon the consultations of the physicians in the morning he was out of comfort, and by the prince's leave told him, kneeling by his pallet, that his days to come would be but few in this world. 'I am satisfied,' said the king; 'but pray you assist me to make me ready for the next world, to go away hence for Christ, whose mercies I call for, and hope to find.'

"From that time the keeper never left him, or put off his clothes to go to bed. The king took the communion, and professed he died in the bosom of the Church of England, whose doctrine he had defended with his pen, being persuaded it was according to the mind of Christ, as he should shortly answer it before him.

"He stayed in the chamber to take notice of everything the king said, and to repulse those who crept much about the chamber door, and into the chamber; they were for the most addicted to the Church of Rome. Being rid of them, he continued in prayer, while the king lingered on, and at last shut his eyes with his own hands."

Thus, in the full power of his faculties, a timorous prince

encountered the horrors of dissolution. Religion rendered cheerful the abrupt night of futurity; and what can philosophy do more, or rather, can philosophy do as much?

I proposed to have examined with some care the works of James I.; but that uninviting task has been now postponed till it is too late. As a writer, his works may not be valuable, and are infected with the pedantry and the superstition of the age; yet I suspect that James was not that degraded and feeble character in which he ranks by the contagious voice of criticism. He has had more critics than readers. After a great number of acute observations and witty allusions, made extempore, which we find continually recorded of him by contemporary writers, and some not friendly to him, I conclude that he possessed a great promptness of wit, and much solid judgment and acute ingenuity. It requires only a little labour to prove this.

That labour I have since zealously performed. This article, composed more than thirty years ago, displays the effects of first impressions and popular clamours. About ten years I suspected that his character was grossly injured, and lately I found how it has suffered from a variety of causes. That monarch preserved for us a peace of more than twenty years; and his talents were of a higher order than the calumnies of the party who have remorselessly degraded him have allowed a common inquirer to discover. For the rest I must refer the reader to "An Inquiry into the Literary and Political Character of James I.;" in which he may find many correctives for this article. I shall in a future work enter into further explanations of this ambiguous royal author.

FOOTNOTES:

GENERAL MONK AND HIS WIFE.

From the MS. collection of Sir Thomas Browne, I shall rescue an anecdote, which has a tendency to show that it is not advisable to permit ladies to remain at home, when political plots are to be secretly discussed. And while it displays the treachery of Monk's wife, it will also appear that, like other great revolutionists, it was ambition that first induced him to become the reformer he pretended to be.

"Monk gave fair promises to the Rump, but last agreed with the French Ambassador to take the government on himself; by whom he had a promise from Mazarin of assistance from France. This bargain was struck late at night: but not so secretly but that Monk's wife, who had posted herself conveniently behind the hangings, finding what was resolved upon, sent her brother Clarges away immediately with notice of it to Sir A.A. She had promised to watch her husband, and inform Sir A. how matters went. Sir A. caused the council of state, whereof he was a member, to be summoned, and charged Monk that he was playing false. The general insisted that he was true to his principles, and firm to what he had promised, and that he was ready to give them all satisfaction. Sir A. told him if he were sincere he might remove all scruples, and should instantly take away their commissions from such and such men in his army, and appoint others, and that before he left the room. Monk consented; a great part of the commissions of his officers were changed, and Sir Edward Harley, a member of the council, and then present was made governor of Dunkirk, in the room of Sir William Lockhart; the army ceased to be at Monk's devotion; the ambassador was recalled, and broke his heart."

Such were the effects of the infidelity of the wife of General Monk!

PHILIP AND MARY.

Houssaie, in his Mémoires, vol. i. p. 261, has given the following curious particulars of this singular union:--

"The second wife of Philip was Mary Queen of England; a virtuous princess (Houssaie was a good catholic), but who had neither youth nor beauty. This marriage was as little happy for the one as for the other. The husband did not like his wife, although she doted on him; and the English hated Philip still more than he hated them. Silhon says, that the rigour which he exercised in England against heretics partly hindered Prince Carlos from succeeding to that crown, and for which purpose Mary had invited him in case she died childless!"--But no historian speaks of this pretended inclination, and is it probable that Mary ever thought proper to call to the succession of the English throne the son of the Spanish Monarch? This marriage had made her nation detest her, and in the last years of her life she could be little satisfied with him, from his marked indifference for her. She well knew that the Parliament would never consent to exclude her sister Elizabeth, whom the nobility loved for being more friendly to the new religion, and more hostile to the house of Austria.

In the Cottonian Library, Vespasian F. III. is preserved a note of instructions in the handwriting of Queen Mary, of which the following is a copy. It was, probably, written when Philip was just seated on the English throne.

"Instructions for my lorde Previsel.

"Firste, to tell the Kinge the whole state of this realme, wt all things appartaynyng to the same, as myche as ye knowe to be trewe.

"Seconde, to obey his commandment in all thyngs.

"Thyrdly, in all things he shall aske your aduyse to declare your opinion as becometh a faythfull conceyllour to do.

"MARY the Quene."

Houssaie proceeds: "After the death of Mary, Philip sought Elizabeth in marriage; and she, who was yet unfixed at the beginning of her reign, amused him at first with hopes. But as soon as she unmasked herself to the pope, she laughed at Philip, telling the Duke of Feria, his ambassador, that her conscience would not permit her to marry the husband of her sister."

This monarch, however, had no such scruples. Incest appears to have had in his eyes peculiar charms; for he offered himself three times to three different sisters-in-law. He seems also to have known the secret of getting quit of his wives when they became inconvenient. In state matters he spared no one whom he feared; to them he sacrificed his only son, his brother, and a great number of princes and ministers.

It is said of Philip, that before he died he advised his son to make peace with England, and war with the other powers. Pacem cum Anglo, bellum cum reliquis. Queen Elizabeth, and the ruin of his invincible fleet, physicked his frenzy into health, and taught him to fear and respect that country which he thought he could have made a province of Spain.

On his death-bed he did everything he could for salvation. The following protestation, a curious morsel of bigotry, he sent to his confessor a few days before he died:--

"Father confessor! as you occupy the place of God, I protest to you that I will do everything you shall say to be necessary for my being saved; so that what I omit doing will be placed to your account, as I am ready to acquit myself of all that shall be ordered to me."

Is there, in the records of history, a more glaring instance of the idea which a good Catholic attaches to the power of a confessor, than the present authentic example? The most licentious philosophy seems not more dangerous than a religion whose votary believes that the accumulation of crimes can be dissipated by the breath of a few orisons, and which, considering a venal priest to "occupy the place of God," can traffic with the divine power at a very moderate price.