A Child's History of England

by Dickens, Charles

  plot in other ways. He was found guilty and executed, after a

  manful defence, and the Catholic Church made a saint of him; some

  rich and powerful persons, who had had nothing to do with the

  project, were fined and imprisoned for it by the Star Chamber; the

  Catholics, in general, who had recoiled with horror from the idea

  of the infernal contrivance, were unjustly put under more severe

  laws than before; and this was the end of the Gunpowder Plot.

  SECOND PART

  His Sowship would pretty willingly, I think, have blown the House

  of Commons into the air himself; for, his dread and jealousy of it

  knew no bounds all through his reign. When he was hard pressed for

  money he was obliged to order it to meet, as he could get no money

  without it; and when it asked him first to abolish some of the

  monopolies in necessaries of life which were a great grievance to

  the people, and to redress other public wrongs, he flew into a rage

  and got rid of it again. At one time he wanted it to consent to

  the Union of England with Scotland, and quarrelled about that. At

  another time it wanted him to put down a most infamous Church

  abuse, called the High Commission Court, and he quarrelled with it

  about that. At another time it entreated him not to be quite so

  fond of his archbishops and bishops who made speeches in his praise

  too awful to be related, but to have some little consideration for

  the poor Puritan clergy who were persecuted for preaching in their

  own way, and not according to the archbishops and bishops; and they

  quarrelled about that. In short, what with hating the House of

  Commons, and pretending not to hate it; and what with now sending

  some of its members who opposed him, to Newgate or to the Tower,

  and now telling the rest that they must not presume to make

  speeches about the public affairs which could not possibly concern

  them; and what with cajoling, and bullying, and fighting, and being

  frightened; the House of Commons was the plague of his Sowship's

  existence. It was pretty firm, however, in maintaining its rights,

  and insisting that the Parliament should make the laws, and not the

  King by his own single proclamations (which he tried hard to do);

  and his Sowship was so often distressed for money, in consequence,

  that he sold every sort of title and public office as if they were

  merchandise, and even invented a new dignity called a Baronetcy,

  which anybody could buy for a thousand pounds.

  These disputes with his Parliaments, and his hunting, and his

  drinking, and his lying in bed - for he was a great sluggard -

  occupied his Sowship pretty well. The rest of his time he chiefly

  passed in hugging and slobbering his favourites. The first of

  these was SIR PHILIP HERBERT, who had no knowledge whatever, except

  of dogs, and horses, and hunting, but whom he soon made EARL OF

  MONTGOMERY. The next, and a much more famous one, was ROBERT CARR,

  or KER (for it is not certain which was his right name), who came

  from the Border country, and whom he soon made VISCOUNT ROCHESTER,

  and afterwards, EARL OF SOMERSET. The way in which his Sowship

  doted on this handsome young man, is even more odious to think of,

  than the way in which the really great men of England condescended

  to bow down before him. The favourite's great friend was a certain

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  SIR THOMAS OVERBURY, who wrote his love-letters for him, and

  assisted him in the duties of his many high places, which his own

  ignorance prevented him from discharging. But this same Sir Thomas

  having just manhood enough to dissuade the favourite from a wicked

  marriage with the beautiful Countess of Essex, who was to get a

  divorce from her husband for the purpose, the said Countess, in her

  rage, got Sir Thomas put into the Tower, and there poisoned him.

  Then the favourite and this bad woman were publicly married by the

  King's pet bishop, with as much to-do and rejoicing, as if he had

  been the best man, and she the best woman, upon the face of the

  earth.

  But, after a longer sunshine than might have been expected - of

  seven years or so, that is to say - another handsome young man

  started up and eclipsed the EARL OF SOMERSET. This was GEORGE

  VILLIERS, the youngest son of a Leicestershire gentleman: who came

  to Court with all the Paris fashions on him, and could dance as

  well as the best mountebank that ever was seen. He soon danced

  himself into the good graces of his Sowship, and danced the other

  favourite out of favour. Then, it was all at once discovered that

  the Earl and Countess of Somerset had not deserved all those great

  promotions and mighty rejoicings, and they were separately tried

  for the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury, and for other crimes. But,

  the King was so afraid of his late favourite's publicly telling

  some disgraceful things he knew of him - which he darkly threatened

  to do - that he was even examined with two men standing, one on

  either side of him, each with a cloak in his hand, ready to throw

  it over his head and stop his mouth if he should break out with

  what he had it in his power to tell. So, a very lame affair was

  purposely made of the trial, and his punishment was an allowance of

  four thousand pounds a year in retirement, while the Countess was

  pardoned, and allowed to pass into retirement too. They hated one

  another by this time, and lived to revile and torment each other

  some years.

  While these events were in progress, and while his Sowship was

  making such an exhibition of himself, from day to day and from year

  to year, as is not often seen in any sty, three remarkable deaths

  took place in England. The first was that of the Minister, Robert

  Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, who was past sixty, and had never been

  strong, being deformed from his birth. He said at last that he had

  no wish to live; and no Minister need have had, with his experience

  of the meanness and wickedness of those disgraceful times. The

  second was that of the Lady Arabella Stuart, who alarmed his

  Sowship mightily, by privately marrying WILLIAM SEYMOUR, son of

  LORD BEAUCHAMP, who was a descendant of King Henry the Seventh, and

  who, his Sowship thought, might consequently increase and

  strengthen any claim she might one day set up to the throne. She

  was separated from her husband (who was put in the Tower) and

  thrust into a boat to be confined at Durham. She escaped in a

  man's dress to get away in a French ship from Gravesend to France,

  but unhappily missed her husband, who had escaped too, and was soon

  taken. She went raving mad in the miserable Tower, and died there

  after four years. The last, and the most important of these three

  deaths, was that of Prince Henry, the heir to the throne, in the

  nineteenth year of his age. He was a promising young prince, and

  greatly liked; a quiet, well-conducted youth, of whom two very good

  things are known: first, that his father was jealous of him;

  secondly, that he was the friend of Sir Walter Ra
leigh, languishing

  through all those years in the Tower, and often said that no man

  but his father would keep such a bird in such a cage. On the

  occasion of the preparations for the marriage of his sister the

  Princess Elizabeth with a foreign prince (and an unhappy marriage

  it turned out), he came from Richmond, where he had been very ill,

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  to greet his new brother-in-law, at the palace at Whitehall. There

  he played a great game at tennis, in his shirt, though it was very

  cold weather, and was seized with an alarming illness, and died

  within a fortnight of a putrid fever. For this young prince Sir

  Walter Raleigh wrote, in his prison in the Tower, the beginning of

  a History of the World: a wonderful instance how little his

  Sowship could do to confine a great man's mind, however long he

  might imprison his body.

  And this mention of Sir Walter Raleigh, who had many faults, but

  who never showed so many merits as in trouble and adversity, may

  bring me at once to the end of his sad story. After an

  imprisonment in the Tower of twelve long years, he proposed to

  resume those old sea voyages of his, and to go to South America in

  search of gold. His Sowship, divided between his wish to be on

  good terms with the Spaniards through whose territory Sir Walter

  must pass (he had long had an idea of marrying Prince Henry to a

  Spanish Princess), and his avaricious eagerness to get hold of the

  gold, did not know what to do. But, in the end, he set Sir Walter

  free, taking securities for his return; and Sir Walter fitted out

  an expedition at his own coast and, on the twenty-eighth of March,

  one thousand six hundred and seventeen, sailed away in command of

  one of its ships, which he ominously called the Destiny. The

  expedition failed; the common men, not finding the gold they had

  expected, mutinied; a quarrel broke out between Sir Walter and the

  Spaniards, who hated him for old successes of his against them; and

  he took and burnt a little town called SAINT THOMAS. For this he

  was denounced to his Sowship by the Spanish Ambassador as a pirate;

  and returning almost broken-hearted, with his hopes and fortunes

  shattered, his company of friends dispersed, and his brave son (who

  had been one of them) killed, he was taken - through the treachery

  of SIR LEWIS STUKELY, his near relation, a scoundrel and a Vice-

  Admiral - and was once again immured in his prison-home of so many

  years.

  His Sowship being mightily disappointed in not getting any gold,

  Sir Walter Raleigh was tried as unfairly, and with as many lies and

  evasions as the judges and law officers and every other authority

  in Church and State habitually practised under such a King. After

  a great deal of prevarication on all parts but his own, it was

  declared that he must die under his former sentence, now fifteen

  years old. So, on the twenty-eighth of October, one thousand six

  hundred and eighteen, he was shut up in the Gate House at

  Westminster to pass his late night on earth, and there he took

  leave of his good and faithful lady who was worthy to have lived in

  better days. At eight o'clock next morning, after a cheerful

  breakfast, and a pipe, and a cup of good wine, he was taken to Old

  Palace Yard in Westminster, where the scaffold was set up, and

  where so many people of high degree were assembled to see him die,

  that it was a matter of some difficulty to get him through the

  crowd. He behaved most nobly, but if anything lay heavy on his

  mind, it was that Earl of Essex, whose head he had seen roll off;

  and he solemnly said that he had had no hand in bringing him to the

  block, and that he had shed tears for him when he died. As the

  morning was very cold, the Sheriff said, would he come down to a

  fire for a little space, and warm himself? But Sir Walter thanked

  him, and said no, he would rather it were done at once, for he was

  ill of fever and ague, and in another quarter of an hour his

  shaking fit would come upon him if he were still alive, and his

  enemies might then suppose that he trembled for fear. With that,

  he kneeled and made a very beautiful and Christian prayer. Before

  he laid his head upon the block he felt the edge of the axe, and

  said, with a smile upon his face, that it was a sharp medicine, but

  would cure the worst disease. When he was bent down ready for

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  death, he said to the executioner, finding that he hesitated, 'What

  dost thou fear? Strike, man!' So, the axe came down and struck

  his head off, in the sixty-sixth year of his age.

  The new favourite got on fast. He was made a viscount, he was made

  Duke of Buckingham, he was made a marquis, he was made Master of

  the Horse, he was made Lord High Admiral - and the Chief Commander

  of the gallant English forces that had dispersed the Spanish

  Armada, was displaced to make room for him. He had the whole

  kingdom at his disposal, and his mother sold all the profits and

  honours of the State, as if she had kept a shop. He blazed all

  over with diamonds and other precious stones, from his hatband and

  his earrings to his shoes. Yet he was an ignorant presumptuous,

  swaggering compound of knave and fool, with nothing but his beauty

  and his dancing to recommend him. This is the gentleman who called

  himself his Majesty's dog and slave, and called his Majesty Your

  Sowship. His Sowship called him STEENIE; it is supposed, because

  that was a nickname for Stephen, and because St. Stephen was

  generally represented in pictures as a handsome saint.

  His Sowship was driven sometimes to his wits'-end by his trimming

  between the general dislike of the Catholic religion at home, and

  his desire to wheedle and flatter it abroad, as his only means of

  getting a rich princess for his son's wife: a part of whose

  fortune he might cram into his greasy pockets. Prince Charles - or

  as his Sowship called him, Baby Charles - being now PRINCE OF

  WALES, the old project of a marriage with the Spanish King's

  daughter had been revived for him; and as she could not marry a

  Protestant without leave from the Pope, his Sowship himself

  secretly and meanly wrote to his Infallibility, asking for it. The

  negotiation for this Spanish marriage takes up a larger space in

  great books, than you can imagine, but the upshot of it all is,

  that when it had been held off by the Spanish Court for a long

  time, Baby Charles and Steenie set off in disguise as Mr. Thomas

  Smith and Mr. John Smith, to see the Spanish Princess; that Baby

  Charles pretended to be desperately in love with her, and jumped

  off walls to look at her, and made a considerable fool of himself

  in a good many ways; that she was called Princess of Wales and that

  the whole Spanish Court believed Baby Charles to be all but dying

  for her sake, as he expressly told them he was; that Baby Charles

  and Steenie came back to England, and were received with as much

  rapture a
s if they had been a blessing to it; that Baby Charles had

  actually fallen in love with HENRIETTA MARIA, the French King's

  sister, whom he had seen in Paris; that he thought it a wonderfully

  fine and princely thing to have deceived the Spaniards, all

  through; and that he openly said, with a chuckle, as soon as he was

  safe and sound at home again, that the Spaniards were great fools

  to have believed him.

  Like most dishonest men, the Prince and the favourite complained

  that the people whom they had deluded were dishonest. They made

  such misrepresentations of the treachery of the Spaniards in this

  business of the Spanish match, that the English nation became eager

  for a war with them. Although the gravest Spaniards laughed at the

  idea of his Sowship in a warlike attitude, the Parliament granted

  money for the beginning of hostilities, and the treaties with Spain

  were publicly declared to be at an end. The Spanish ambassador in

  London - probably with the help of the fallen favourite, the Earl

  of Somerset - being unable to obtain speech with his Sowship,

  slipped a paper into his hand, declaring that he was a prisoner in

  his own house, and was entirely governed by Buckingham and his

  creatures. The first effect of this letter was that his Sowship

  began to cry and whine, and took Baby Charles away from Steenie,

  and went down to Windsor, gabbling all sorts of nonsense. The end

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  of it was that his Sowship hugged his dog and slave, and said he

  was quite satisfied.

  He had given the Prince and the favourite almost unlimited power to

  settle anything with the Pope as to the Spanish marriage; and he

  now, with a view to the French one, signed a treaty that all Roman

  Catholics in England should exercise their religion freely, and

  should never be required to take any oath contrary thereto. In

  return for this, and for other concessions much less to be

  defended, Henrietta Maria was to become the Prince's wife, and was

  to bring him a fortune of eight hundred thousand crowns.

  His Sowship's eyes were getting red with eagerly looking for the

  money, when the end of a gluttonous life came upon him; and, after

  a fortnight's illness, on Sunday the twenty-seventh of March, one

  thousand six hundred and twenty-five, he died. He had reigned

  twenty-two years, and was fifty-nine years old. I know of nothing