1619 THE NEW WHITEHALL. 297 induced to interfere. Message after message was sent by James to the reluctant citizen. But the course which had proved so successful with Coke failed utterly with Harvey. His child, he said, was too young to marry yet. James was highly displeased, and, as he rode into London, his first thought was to rate the Lord Mayor soundly. But the Lord Mayor was not to be seen. The old man was lying sick at home, worn out by the importunity which he had found it so difficult to resist. Six weeks afterwards James suddenly appeared at the Mansion House, and used all his eloquence with the father of the heiress. Harvey, who needed neither place nor pension, remained unconvinced, and Christopher Villiers did not succeed in finding a wife for many years to come. Lady Hatton had proved equally obdurate in her refusal. to make over her Dorsetshire property to Sir John Villiers. Sir John raised to the The new James was obliged to console him with a peerage. The new Viscount Purbeck took his title from the very lands which his mother-in-law had refused him. In passing through London, after his recovery, James remained a single night at Whitehall. No doubt he found time to look at the works which had been commenced under Inigo Jones. In 1606, a stately banquetinghouse had been erected in the place of the old one in which Elizabeth had kept state. The new building had just been burnt down, and James, whose designs had risen with his fortunes, now thought of nothing less than of replacing the whole palace by a splendid pile which would be worthy of his exalted dignity. The banqueting-house, which still remains to look down in fragmentary solitude upon the busy throng, was all that was ever completed of this magnificent scheme. Few buildings have been more closely associated with events which have left their impress upon the history of our country. From one of its windows Charles I. stepped upon the scaffold. It witnessed the orgies of the second Charles, and the intrigues of the second James. Within its walls the crown, forfeited by 'Lorkin to Puckering, May 24, Harl. MSS. 7002, fol. 476. Chamberlain to Carleton, May 31, June 5, S. P. Dom. cix 61, 75. the last of the Stuart kings, was offered to William of Orange. From that day its glory was at an end. The new Sovereign turned away from a spot in which his health would not suffer him to live; and the deserted building remained to be as completely a monument of the past as the wilderness of brick which attracts the gay and thoughtless crowd of sightseers to Versailles. Yet, if stones can speak, it is of James I., rather than of his successors, that the tall pile declares itself to be a monument. It is the fitting memorial of a king whose whole life was unfinished; who never either counted the cost of his undertakings, or put forth the energy which was needed to overcome the difficulties in his way. Nor was the long array of columns, which were to have arisen in marshalled ranks in the place of the irregular and loosely planned palace of the Tudors, an unsuitable emblem of the ideas of ordered government which floated before his mind, and which he vainly hoped to substitute for the uncouth but living forms of the Elizabethan constitution. The banqueting-house at Whitehall marks the culminating point of James's life. He had just completed a thorough reform Prosperity of the administration. He had effected considerable of James. economy in his expenditure. He had crushed the last semblance of independence amongst the officers of state. He was bringing to terms the great commercial Company of the Netherlands in the East, and he was sending out a new Governor, who would doubtless put an end to to the difficulties of the Virginian colony in the West. Spain and France were bidding against one another for his alliance, and his own people had thronged in multitudes to St. Paul's to give thanks to God for his recovery from sickness. The great comet. That the cloud had already risen in Germany which was to overshadow this brilliant prospect, was as yet unthought of by the vast majority of James's subjects. Everything rather than this rose before their minds as they tried to peer into futurity in search of the evil to come. In the preceding November, all England had been startled by the appearance of that comet of astonishing brilliancy, to which 16:9 THE COMET. 299 James had made reference in the verses which he had written on his wife's death. For some weeks the rich and the poor, the learned and the ignorant, were asking one another what it could possibly portend. The fate of the great man who had so recently perished on the scaffold in Palace Yard was almost forgotten in the general excitement. The comet, men said, had something to do with the fall of Barneveld. It might be a warning against the Spanish match, and the design which James was supposed to entertain for the overthrow of the Protestant religion. Perhaps some great disaster-famine, plague, or war-was to be expected. It had come to herald the funeral of the Queen, or to proclaim the death of the King himself.1 The name of Prague was never mentioned with anxiety. Yet the conflagration which was to involve all Europe in its flames, and which was incidentally to ruin James's pretensions to statesmanship, had been for many months raging in Bohemia. Corbet's Poetical Epistle. 300 CHAPTER XXX. DONCASTER'S MISSION TO GERMANY, AND THE BOHEMIAN Doncaster's ELECTION. Let Let all IN offering his mediation in Germany, James believed that he had found a basis on which he might effect a reconciliation between Ferdinand and his revolted subjects. The instructions. ideal which he had set before himself in The Peacemaker was now to be realised. "Let the King," he said in effect, "keep the oath which he took at his coronation. the Jesuits cease to meddle with political affairs. prisoners on both sides be released, and let the Protestants enjoy the rights and liberties to which they are entitled."1 The advice was excellent, but the man could have but little knowledge of human nature who fancied that a deep and envenomed quarrel could be appeased by such vague generalities. April. Tendency of James's policy. On the whole, however, though James was on excellent terms with the Spanish agents, and honestly professed to be anxious for a good understanding with Philip, his actions could not but be affected by the strong anti-Spanish feeling around him. It was not, therefore, without reason that Sanchez and Lafuente eagerly expected the return of Gondomar, as the best means of fixing James in his resolutions. They had much to tell which had given them little pleasure. At the time when Doncaster was preparing to start, orders were given to stop the equipment of the fleet, on 'Instructions to Doncaster, April 14, 1619, Letters and Documen's, 1619 DONCASTER SETS OUT. 301 the ground that it was impossible at this conjuncture to join forces with Spain against the pirates. So hopeless did the project now appear to James, that he actually returned to the merchants the money that he had levied from them for the purpose.' What was more significant still, the Council was listening to a proposal from Arundel and Lennox to send out Roger North, one of Raleigh's captains, to the Amazon. It is true that he was not to sail to the westward of the Oyapok. But even with this restriction his voyage would be extremely galling to the Spaniards. Nor can they have been otherwise than annoyed at the advancement, at Buckingham's request, of their declared enemy, the Earl of Southampton, to a seat in the Privy Council.3 May. Doncaster sets out. 2 At last, after many delays, Doncaster set out, on May 12. At Brussels he made a fruitless effort to procure from the Archduke more than a languid assent to his diplomatic efforts. On his arrival at Heidelberg he found that the Elector was absent at Heilbronn, presiding over June. an assembly of the Union. As England was represented at the meeting by Wotton, Doncaster did not think it necessary to follow him. Wotton was then upon his way home from Venice. He had been commissioned to assure the Princes of the Union, as Wotton at he passed, of the friendly dispositions of the Venetian Republic, and to urge them to join his master in a scheme for the erection of colleges for the reception of converts from Popery.4 Heilbronn. For such solemn trifling the Princes of the Union had no time to spare. They were agitated by the news which reached Moravia had thrown them from various quarters. Silesia and Calvert to the Council, 1 The Council to Sir T. Smith, March 18. April 8. Resolution of the Council, April 28, 1619. 2 Resolution of the Council, March 14. March 18, 1619. Ibid. Council Register. The Council to Coventry, 3 Ibid. April 30. Salvetti's News-Letter, May 4 Instructions to Wotton, March 1. Answer to Wotton, June 12. Letters and Documents, 46, 112. The idea had been Bacon's. Letters and Life, iv. 254. |