570 



BRITAIN. 



War with 

 Spain. 

 1623. 



The earl 

 of Bristol 

 committed 

 to the 

 Tower. 

 1624. 



Affairs on 

 the conti- 

 nent. 



of Buckingham, who is said to have quarrelled with 

 the Spanish nobility, and to have hated the Infanta ; 

 but we must also take into account, that Charles had 

 seen at Paris, on his way to Spain, Henrietta the 

 daughter of Henry IV., and for her he conceived a 

 passion, to which he continued faithful all his life. 

 The match with the homely Infanta was broken off, 

 and a war between the two countries appeared ine- 

 vitable. 



To meet the consequences of the broken treaty, a 

 parliament was called. Buckingham, in the peers, pub- 

 licly laid the blame of the rupture on the insincerity of 

 Spain with regard to the match, and appealing to 

 the Prince of Wales, at the end-.of every solemn as- 

 sertion, received a sign or word of assent. It might 

 have required but little penetration to discover, that 

 this was a collusion in falsehood between the prince 

 and the favourite ; but the idea of a Spanish war was 

 so popular, and the joy so great at the breach of a 

 Catholic alliance, that Buckingham for a time grew 

 popular, and was hailed even by Sir Edward Coke, 

 as the saviour of the nation. 



James lamented to his parliament, that, after having 

 borne so long the name of the Pacific Monarch, he 

 should be plunged into war in his old age. He de- 

 manded supplies to meet the event, but offered that 

 the war funds should be managed by a committee ap- 

 pointed by parliament. The commons took him at 

 his word, with respect to the management of money, 

 but voted a smaller sum than he had demanded. 

 Availing themselves too, of the more submissive cha- 

 racter which he began to discover in his old age, 

 they corroborated their power of impeachment, and 

 obtained a declaratory act against monopolies. 



Troubled at the prospect of war, the king now 

 longed for the arrival of the Earl of Bristol, an en- 

 lightened statesman, who had managed his interests 

 at the court of Spain with great fidelity and intelli- 

 gence. But Buckingham was conscious of the false- 

 hoods he had told respecting the Spanish treaty, and 

 sensible that Bristol could expose' them. From the 

 absurd weakness of his master, he obtained an order 

 for Bristol's commitment to the Tower; and though 

 he was soon released, he was ordered to retire to his 

 country seat, and to be absent from parliament. 

 Prince Charles and Buckingham had the meanness 

 and tyranny to offer him the king's favour, if he 

 would acknowledge his conduct to have been wrong, 

 an offer at which he spurned with proper spirit ; but 

 though the king expressed his opinion of his treat- 

 ment being unjust, he had now no will of his own, 

 and could never obtain an interview with Bristol. 



The United Provinces were at this time governed 

 by Prince Maurice, who, on the breaking of the 

 truce with Spain in 1621, took the field against the 

 celebrated Spinola ; but the force of the latter was 

 so much stronger, that Maurice was obliged to act 

 on the defensive. A reinforcement of six thousand 

 men, who were now expected from England, under 

 the young Lords Oxford, Southampton, Essex, and 

 Willoughby, promised an important accession to his 

 strength. It was determined also to reconquer the 

 Palatinate, a state in the heart of hostile Germany, 

 and cut off from all communication with England. 

 Count Maiufeldt was taken into pay, and twelve 



Britai 



thousand Englishmen were levied by press through- 

 out the kingdom, whose bravery, it was hoped, 

 would penetrate the whole continent, and restore 

 Ferdinand to his throne. 



France did not behold with indifference the ex- 

 tended encroachments of the house of Austria, nor 

 without satisfaction, the combination of England and 

 her ally to oppose them. But the first project of 

 Louis and Richelieu was to humble the Hugonots. 

 The proposal of a marriage, however, between Prince 

 Charles and the Princess Henrietta, was favourably 

 received on the part of France. The same terms as 

 to Catholic toleration were agreed to by the English 

 court, which had been promised in the negotiation 

 for the Infanta, and the new treaty was signed at 

 Paris on the 16th of November 1624. The marriage 

 portion promised by Henrietta was 800,000 crowns ; 

 and it was stipulated, that the prince should settle a 

 jointure of 60,000 crowns a year. Fatally for the 

 house of Stuart, the French princess was to have 

 the education of the children till thirteen years of 

 age. 



During the whole negotiation, promises had been 

 made, (though in general terms,) that the English 

 troops should have a passage through France, and 

 even be joined by succours for the Palatinate ; yet 

 when Mansfeldt's troops sailed to Calais, no orders 

 had arrived for their admission. They sailed to Zea- 

 land, but the States had some scruples to admit them, 

 on account of the scarcity of provisions. A distem- 

 per in the mean time broke out in the fleet, which 

 carried off one half of the forces, and as the rest were Dec. 1 

 too few to think of reaching the Palatinate, the ex- 

 pedition was given up. James, however, did not live 

 long to witness a state of affairs so foreign to his pa 

 cific dispositions. About the middle of March he 

 was seized with a tertian ague, and though such a 

 disorder was not thought dangerous in the spring, 

 he died on the 27th of March, in the 59th year of his 

 age, after a reign over England of 22 years. His 

 reign over Scotland was almost of equal duration with 

 his life. 



James, the son of Queen Mary and Lord Darnley, 

 the handsomest coup:e of their age, was homely in 

 his person, and ungainly in his manners. He possess- 

 ed learning and some ingenuity of speculation in mo- 

 ral and general bubjects, but neither his judgment 

 nor morals were of a high cast. W itliout the digni- 

 fied reserve which should accompany a proud king, 

 or the art of condescension which makes aff.ibihty 

 popular, he b'ended a vulgar statelmess and a famili- 

 arity, so incongruously together, that during his 

 whole reign he reminds us mure of some mock king 

 in ;t farce, than of a real one on the theatre of history. 

 His pretensions to arbitrary power, whilst he had not 

 a regiment of guards to enforce them, betray such 

 ignorance of human nature, and so much of the vul- 

 gar and childish notion of kingly right, that they 

 lose all resemblance to lofty and imposing ambition. 



The colonization of North America, is the most 

 memorable circumstance in the history of James's 

 reign. Elizabeth had done little more than given a 

 name to Virginia : the feeble colony which she planted 

 was abandoned entirely. Even after Argal had dis- 

 covered a more direct tract to that continent, and aft 



Death I 

 James) 



Hiscl 



