126 TWO CHAPTERS ILLUSTRATIVE OF 



he should so repeatedly have withstood the importunities of the first 

 dignitary of the church in hehalf of those who were so near and 

 ought to have been so dear to him ? From the first to the last, and 

 at the hazard of incurring the mortal displeasure of his sovereign, 

 Archbishop Abbot was the zealous partizan of Frederic and Eliza- 

 beth. In the letter addressed by him to Secretary Naunton, he 

 strongly urges, " that there should be no going back, but a counte- 

 nancing of the new king against all the world ;" while the- follow- 

 ing suggestion of the patriotic archbishop must have been as unpa- 

 latable to the favourites of James and himself as the bitter waters 

 of Marah to the Jews : — " We must try once again what can be 

 done in this business of a higher nature, and all the money that 

 may be spared is to be turned that way. And perhaps God pro- 

 vided the jewels that were laid up in the Tower to be gathered 

 by the mother for the preservation of her daughter, who, like a no- 

 ble princess, hath professed to her husband not to leave herself one 

 jewel, rather than not maintain so religious and righteous a cause.'"' 

 But notwithstanding the whole church with its primate was here 

 inclined to be militant, the following eminently trust-worthy docu- 

 ments will prove that this base-minded sovereign still preferred 

 truckling to Count Gondomar, the celebrated Spanish ambassador, 

 who, like his other dictator, Buckingham, really ruled him at times 

 with a rod of iron, though the pageant of royalty, enthralled as he 

 was by one or the other of his vicegerents, could luxuriate in the 

 idea — for the idea was a belief — that he stood all the while in as 

 proud a position as if the chief potentates of Europe were his tribu- 

 taries. And even when there were indications of his putting forth 

 something stronger for the interests of his son-in-law than state 

 papers and remonstrances, he soon stopt from fear, or started back 

 from fickleness. King James, says the French ambassador, Jilliers, 

 " throws the affairs of Bohemia into confusion every way, and says 

 sometimes one thing, sometimes another." The same authority 

 again tells us — " The Col. Gray has received permission to levy 

 1 000 men for the King of Bohemia, and has placarded it every 

 where in London, even on the door of the Spanish ambassador, that 

 it is open to every man to take service with that king. Beyond 

 doubt, Gondomar will rouse all the louder complaints of this, know- 

 ing how much may be obtained by that method from James. In 

 the end, the latter will sacrifice the colonel in order to satisfy the 

 ambassador," while another report from the same says, " he dure 



* See Bioff. Brit., art. Abbot. 



