CHAPTER XIII. 1621. Jan. THE ACCUSATION. XIII. 1. 1. It is no easy berth that Lord Mandeville has bought for his twenty thousand pounds. Soon he becomes aware that greedy eyes are on the Staff, that Buckingham is restless, and the Villiers clan hungry. The more he tries to please, the faster he multiplies his foes. Worse than all, an empty exchequer gapes and yawns. "There is not a mark in the Treasury," he says to Bacon. "Be of good cheer then, my Lord," laughs the Chancellor ; "now you shall see the bottom of your business at the first." 2. Something must be done. Bacon says, Call a parliament. The spirit of reform runs high and grievances groan on every tongue. To meet the country is to court complaint and risk collision; yet Bacon presses this counsel on the King, for a series of astounding events abroad makes a prompt and permanent reconciliation of the English King and Commons a statesman's gravest care. The Reformed Religion is at stake. Deploying her troops and the troops of her Austrian and Bavarian allies into line, Spain has enveloped Germany in cloud and flame, 1. Bacon's Apophthegms, in Resuscitatio, 42. 2. Council Reg., Dec. 27, 1620; Teynham to Edmonds, Dec. 23, 1620, S. P. O.; Howard to Naunton, Dec. 26, 1620, S. P. O.; Replies of Peers and Bishops on the Palatinate Contributions, Undated Papers, cxviii. 43, 44, 45, 57, 58, 59, 60, S. P. O.; Chamberlain to Carleton, Dec. 22, 1620, S. P. O.; Com. Jour., i. 507, 508. opening the Thirty Years' War with the sack of the Palati- XIII. 2. nate and the occupation of Prague. Max is master of the Hradshin, Spinola of the Rhine. England, not less than the Protestant faith, is smitten. by this blow; for Frederick and the Queen of Hearts are fugitives from Prague; the Winter King and Queen, as the fanciful Germans call them, owning neither principality nor kingdom, not even a home, on German soil. James, fooled by the Spanish Jew, Gondomar, is mumbling about a Spanish match for his son Charles when surprised in his cups by news that Max and Spinola have robbed his daughter and her children of their native and elective crowns. What can he do? His purse is empty-his credit gone. The goldsmiths of Lombard-street will not cash his bonds. He tries, indeed, to beg funds from a patriotic and warlike people for the recovery of the Palatinate, making of the great Protestant question a small affair of his own household; but the trick is stale, the confidence of his people gone. No man will give or lend. Used as the King is to evasion, he is startled by the shabbiness of his peers in this great need. The Roman Catholic lords refuse on the ground of sickness, debts, and out of town; their true reason, as he ought to know, is their secret sympathy for Spain and Bavaria as the armed protectors of the Roman Church; but the bishops, the deans, the English clergy, with rare exceptions, close their fists with the same hypocritical lies. The goldsmiths speak like men; they will not part with their money because they feel no confidence in the securities offered for their gold. They will send the King, they say, ten thousand pounds as a free gift, rather than lend him a hundred thousand with his crown for pledge. 1621. Jan. 1621. Jan. XIII. 3. 3. Under such discouragements from his courtiers, James listens to the voice of his Chancellor. If Lord St. Albans, in his earlier days, often had to differ from the House of Commons on subsidies and grants, it had never been through want of patriotism in the knights and burgesses; only through their fears lest the moneys granted by them should be wasted, not on the regiments and fleets, but on the Herberts and Carrs. In the hour of peril St. Albans feels that he can trust their patriotism for supplies. The success of Max on the Weissenberg, the devastations of Spinola on the Neckar and the Main, disasters the most signal which have yet befallen the cause of God and the cause of freedom, bring the external danger to our doors. The nation feels its loss. Men mourn the King's indifference to the cries of religion and the claims of nature; and a popular frenzy breaks into accusing prose and song, pouring its subtle fire through the veins and arteries of the land in defiance of the most rigorous proclamations and the most savage censorship of the press. Bacon would meet the people. Let the King call a parliament together, state the situation, and throw himself heart and soul into the religious war! 4. This time there should be no mistake. The sessions of 1610 and 1614 were lost through quarrels; not one Act passed in either. Grievances must now be met; reasonable men must be gained over to support the Crown. The enemy must see in England only one party, one flag. 3. Thomas Scot's Vox Populi, 1620; Second edition of the same, revised, 1620; Undated Domestic Papers, exviii. 102, 105, S. P. O.; Murray to Morton, Jan. 11, 1621, S. P. O. 4. Bacon to James, Oct. 10, 1620, Mar. 11, 1621; to Buckingham, Oct. 19, Dec. 19, 1620, printed in Birch, 1763, orig. at Lambeth Palace, 936; Statutes of the Realm, iv. 1207. Therefore let the King become the leader of the Commons,. XIII. 4. let the Government adopt the business of reform ! Many voices in the Council rise against these proposals of the Lord Chancellor. But the Queen of Hearts cries loud for help; the bankers will lend no more, the nobles will give no more; so James, with many a pause and doubt, with many a sigh for the days, now gone for ever, when he could chase the stag and quaff his strong Greek wine untroubled by the clash of arms or the brawl of tongues, consents to Bacon's plan. The Chancellor, with the help of four great lawyers, including Montagu and Coke, draws up a scheme to promote a safer feeling between the House of Commons and the Crown; a scheme of reform as well as of defence; involving an immediate issue of writs, an honest hearing of public complaints, an abolition of unjust or unpopular monopolies, a withdrawal of some of the more obnoxious patents, above all an instant increase of the royal fleet. 5. This statement, addressed through Buckingham to the King, and signed by Bacon, Montagu, Heath, Coke, and Crewe, has not heretofore been printed: MY VERY GOOD Lord, November 29, 1620. It may please his Majesty to call to mind, that, when we gave his Majesty our last account of Parliament's business in his presence, we went over the grievances of the last Parliament in 7mo., with our opinion, by way of probable conjecture, which of them are like to fall off, and which may perchance stick and be renewed. And we did also then acquaint his Majesty that we thought it no less 5. Tanner MSS. 290, fol. 33. 1621. Jan. 1621. Jan. XIII. 5. fit to take into consideration grievances of like nature which have sprung since the said last session, which are the more like to be called upon by how much they are the more fresh, signifying withal that they were of two kinds. Some proclamations and commissions, and many patents, which, nevertheless, we did not then trouble his Majesty withal, in particular; partly, for that we were not then fully prepared (it being a work of some length), and partly for that we then desired and obtained leave of his Majesty to communicate them with the council-table. But since, I the Chancellor received his Majesty's pleasure by Secretary Calvert that we should first present them to his Majesty with some advice thereupon provisional, and as we are capable, and thereupon know his Majesty's pleasure, before they be brought to the table, which is the work of this despatch. And herein his Majesty may be likewise pleased to call to mind that we then said, and do now humbly make remonstrance to his Majesty, that in this we do not so much express the sense of our own minds or judgments upon the particulars, as we do personate the Lower House, and cast with ourselves what is like to be stirred there. And, therefore, if there be anything, either in respect of matter, or the persons that stand not so well with his Majesty's good liking, that his Majesty would be graciously pleased not to impute it unto us, and withal to consider that it is to this good end that his Majesty may either remove such of them as in his own princely judgment, and with the advice of his council, he shall think fit to be removed, or be the better provided to carry through such of them as he shall think fit to be maintained in case they should be moved, and so the less surprised. First, therefore, to begin with the patents. We find |