BRITAIN. 



569 



commons, James rebuked them for presuming to 

 address him on the subject. When the commons 

 rejoined to this rebuke, he gravely told them, that 

 their capacities and understandings were not able to 

 comprehend his m. ninded them of the 



proverb, that " the cob-Ier should stick to his last." 

 The rights of parliament, he concluded by saying, 

 were not hereditary or inherent, but held by fla- 

 grant and toleration of himself and his predecessors. 

 The commons replied to this abusive and weak de- 

 claration, by a memorable document of English frce- 

 dom, in which they recorded the right of parliament 

 to advise the king in all arduous matters of govern- 

 ment, to redress public grievances ; and maintained 

 the right of each individual in parliament to the free- 

 dom of speech in debate. James, with his own hand, 

 tore out this protestation from the journals of the 

 commons ; and, having dissolved the parliament, im- 

 prisoned Stldon, 1'ym, Coke, and other eminent pa- 

 triots. This parliament was remarkable for a spirited 

 opposition in the peers ; where, although the king 

 had a predominant party, the Earls of Oxford, Es- 

 sex, Southampton, and Warwick, and the Lords 

 Sax, Solle, and Spenser, eminently distinguished 

 themselves by maintaining resistance to an arbitrary 

 court. 



Unsupported by his parliament, James maintained 

 a despised and feeble negotiation for his son-in-law; nor 

 was he discouraged from it, even when the diet of Ra- 

 tisbon, in spite of the remonstrances of all the Protes- 

 tant powers in Germany, transferred the electoral dig- 

 nity from the Palatine Frederic to the Duke of Bavaria. 

 Two armies that fought forFrederic in Germany, were 

 defeated by the Austrian Count Tilly, when James 

 persuaded the p;ilatine to disarm ; the third army, at 

 the head of which the famous Count Mansfeldt, with 

 the scantiest supplies of money from the Palatine 

 and the king of Britain, had supported an unequal 

 contest with Austria. It was not from treating with 

 the emperor, that James expected redress to his son- 

 in-law, but from the mediation of Spain in the event 

 of his son's marriage with the Infanta.* At the end 

 of five years negotiation on that subject, the court 

 of Spain was as lavish of promises as ever; but had 

 not removed the great pretended obstacle of a dif- 

 ference in religion, by obtaining what nvght have 

 soon been obtained, a dispensation fn>m the Pope. 

 To bring the business to a close, Dijby (soon after 

 Earl of Bristol) was dispatched to Philip IV., and 

 one Gage was sent secretly as nn agi-nt to Rome. 

 To render the influence of the latter more effectual 

 with the Pope, writs were issued under the great 

 teal, to release ail Catholic recusants in England from 

 prison; and it was daily expected that the execution 

 of all penal laws against the professors of that reli- 

 gion would be stot t by royal authority. As a hu- 

 mane act of toleration, this edict offended the bigots 

 of that period as an illegal stretch of prerogative ; 

 however humane in the object, it alarmed the best 

 friends of liberty. These writs were contrary to the 



JAMI t I. 



law, to the remonstrance of the common!, even to Briu 

 concessions made by the king himself, and in a ge- ' 

 neral view, to the acknowledged principle! of the con- 

 Btitution. They raised a strong commo'iun in the 

 public mind, which James vainly endeavoured to 

 assuage, by a publication in writing, beginning with 

 the following comparison : " As the sun in the firma- 

 ment appears to us no bigger than a platter, and the 

 stars but as so many nails in the pummel of a saddle, 

 because of the enlargement and disproportion be- 

 tween our eye and the object ; so there is such an im- 

 measurable distance between the deep resolution ot 

 a prince, and the shallow apprehensions of common 

 and ordinary people, that as they will ever be judging 

 and censuring, so they must needs be obnoxious to 

 error and mistaking." Without convincing his sub- 

 jects by the arguments which followed this sublime 

 comparison, the king found, to his joy and triumph, 

 that the court of Spain, after so long amusing him, 

 seemed at last to be sincere in the projected marriage. 

 His concessions to the Catholics at home, and his 

 promise of toleration to the followers of the Spanish 

 princess, when she should come to England, excited 

 the hopes ot Spain that her favourite religion would 

 yet revive in the bosom of England. Lord Bristol him- 

 self, who had formerly opposed the Spanish match, 

 considered it as an infallible prognostic of the Pala- 

 tine's restoration; nor, indeed, was it easy to con- 

 jecture why Philip should be ready to bestow his 

 bister with a dowry of 600,000 sterling on a prince 

 whose demands he meant to refuse at the hazard of 

 a war, unless we suppose that he counted on the 

 cowardice and facility of James's temper. 



But while the king was ixulting in the expected Prince 

 fruits of his pacific wisdom, they were blasted by the Charles lets 

 interference of a worthless favourite. This was Vil- ''"' f ' 

 liers, Duke of Buckingham, who had succeeded to 

 Somerset in the capricious affections of James, and 

 had risen from the rank of his cup-bearer to a duke- 

 dom and the first dignities of the state. Equally 

 worthless with Somerset, he had captivated the sove- 

 reign by the same external beauty and superficial ac- 

 complishments; but he had governed both the king and 

 the court more intolerably. From the mediocrity of his 

 talents, he was unfit to give weight to foreign transac- 

 tions ; and by his insolence, he had become odious to 

 many at horn?. Yet wishing to regain his influence 

 by foreign distinction, and envying the Earl of Bris- 

 tol the reputation he had acquired by managing the 

 Spanish negotiation, he persuaded Prince Charles to 

 the romantic resolution of going in person to Spain, 

 that he might throw himself at the feet of the Spa- 

 ni-h princess, and claim her as his bride in the true 

 spirit of knight errantry. The prince and Bucking- 

 ham, (or baby Charles and Staimy, as the king used 

 ridiculously to call his son and his favourite,) were 

 received at Madrid with all possible courtesy, and 

 the match, atter many delays, teemed on the point of 

 being consummated, when it was broken off on the 

 side of the pnnce. This is ascribed to the influence 



The king's project was to get the infanta's dowry first, and then to dimmid restitution of the I'ulattuatu, \a>\ that resti- 

 tution should be held out as a compensation for the dowry, Lord Di^ln'- u.-ii-.ittioii> nere, " IM.I to nuke tlu air.iir of the 

 Palatinate one of the marriage artitlct^." But the public were Uujjht iu 'jttievc, that the recover} of the 1'alutiuute was out 

 f the king's chief motives for pushing the marriage. 



VOL. IV. PAHT II. * c 



