BOUGHT WITH THE INCOIVIE FROM THE

SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND'

THE GIFT OF

Hcnrg W. Sage

1891

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THE HISTORY

MY OWN TIME

VOL. I.

Bonbon

HENRY FROWDE, M.A.

Oxford University Press Warehouse

Amen Corner, E.C.

THE MACMILLAN CO., 65 FIFTH AVENUE

BURNET'S HISTORY OF MY OWN TIME

A NEW EDITION BASED ON THAT OF M. J. ROUTH, D.D.

Part I THE REIGN OF

CHARLES THE SECOND

EDITED BY

OSMUND AIRY, M.A.

IN TWO VOLUMES: Vol. I

OXFORD

AT THE CLARENDON PRESS M.ix:cc.xcvii

Cjcforb

PRINTED AT THE CLARENDON PRESS

BY HORACE HART, M.A.

PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITV

PREFACE

In the preparation of a new Edition of Burnet's History several points have especially demanded attention. Errors, positive or probable, required correction or suggested emendation, and omissions supplement ; many statements invited illustration ; it was desirable to indicate as far as possible the probable sources of Burnet's information upon matters which did not come under his personal observation ; the notes of the earlier editions obviously needed revision. Finally it was necessary to provide a trustworthy text.

Probably no historian of Burnet's rank and importance has ever been so vigorously or continuously challenged on the ground of prejudice and inaccuracy. The task of meeting this challenge in any satisfactory manner is one which cannot be undertaken in a Preface, unless it is to extend to a wearisome length. But I do not hesitate to say briefly that, when it is remembered that Burnet was the first to exhibit on a large scale the picture of his time — though Clarendon's Life and Continuation were composed earlier — and that his narrative was drawn up almost without the aid of documentary evidence; and when it is further borne in mind that he himself played an active part in that time, that his temper was impulsive, and that the passions aroused in the varied drama which was

vi Preface.

acted under his eyes were strong, it will be recognized by any careful and competent investigator that his com- parative freedom from grave error — certainly from wilful misrepresentation — is remarkable. This observation is not extended to the later portion of his work, respecting which I do not feel qualified to speak ; but I am satisfied that as regards the age of Charles II, with which alone I am concerned, he is, with but few exceptions, both as to events and persons, conspicuously and honourably fair in tone, even though frequently inaccurate in detail ; especially — and here I speak with still more confidence — is this the case when Scotland and Scotsmen are his theme. It is true that he was an eager and credulous listener; that he often, as indeed must be the case with any one who writes of his own time, speaks from hearsay, sometimes, as he tells us, from hearsay twice or thrice, so to speak, removed; that his information obviously takes its colour at times from his own feeling ; that his character- sketches are frequently overdrawn on the bad side, and that they bear evidence of the repeated alteration mentioned by Dartmouth in his last note to Burnet's Preface — generally however by gentler strokes— according to the tone of his mind at the moment of revision or according to some fresh piece of gossip or information. There is little in all this to detract from the value of Burnet's great work, or to cause surprise. That a man should actively concern him- self with public affairs in that feverish and immoral time, and should be able to hold the scales evenly, however much he might desire to do so, was absolutely impossible. But that he did desire to do so, and that— through sheer honesty of purpose— he has succeeded in a remarkable degree, is the opinion which prolonged attention to the subject has fixed upon my mind. Stories belonging to one set of persons or events are indeed now and then

Preface. vii

transferred to others ; provisions of one Act of Parliament are occasionally credited to another. There are ample opportunities for corrective or illustrative criticism, but — I again limit my remark to the reign of Charles II — for destructive criticism very few; while the tone of the whole is vindicated by the results of all late research.

It is noticeable that the impression of consistency and unity in Burnet's narrative is created in spite of the fact that, except perhaps in the case of Scotland, that narrative is neither continuous nor always correct as regards chronological sequence. There is moreover no conscious artistic arrangement, or sense of proportion, or grace ; the language is often inelegant and even obscure; the literary gait is often clumsy. The lacunae are numerous, and the order of events is sometimes confused. The work is a commentary upon history, a series of notes, some very detailed, some very jejune, rather than a history itself. The addition of marginal dates where necessary will, it is hoped, remove the chronological difficulties. But it has been found impossible, even where desirable, to bridge over in any satisfactory manner the wide gaps in the narrative.

As regards the insertion of notes which are merely illustrative rather than corrective or supplementary, the chief source of embarrassment, almost of despair, has been — not unnaturally, when the date of the last edition, 1833, is remembered — the overwhelming wealth of material now available. I trust that this part of the work has been kept within due limits ; but even where I myself am sensible of a barrenness of illustration I fear that the opposite impres- sion may occasionally be left on the minds of others.

The treatment of the notes to Dr. Routh's edition was the subject of much consideration. In the end it was deter- mined to retain, as nearly as possible in the shape in which they appear there, all which seemed to possess real

viii Preface.

value ; such are the majority of the Onslow and Dart- mouth notes, dealing mainly with matters of which their authors were personally cognizant, and a considerable number of those of Dr. Routh himself. Some of the more pertinent of the contemptuous snarls of Swift have also been preserved, though I have thought it unadvis- able to encumber the pages with simple terms of abuse which tend neither to edification nor to knowledge, such as ' Dunce,' ' Puppy,' ' Scotch dog,' and the like. All these earlier notes are indicated by the initial of the annotator ; my own — with which a few of the others are incorporated — have no initial. It has occasionally been found necessary to insert a few explanatory words in the body of one of the original notes ; these are indicated by square brackets.

It has been thought well to append two sets of paginal references, one to the MS. in the Bodleian Library (e. g. MS. 29), the other^ in simple figures, to the folio edition. The latter are necessary, since in all works pre- viously written on the subject, and in all quotations, the folio edition has been the common standard of reference.

One innovation, in addition to the substitution of the modern form in the spelling of all proper names, has been made in dealing with the text, which will, I hope, add to the convenience of the reader ; I refer to the division into Chapters. Wherever possible this has taken place at obvious pauses in the narrative ; but the absence of any intentional arrangement of the sort in Burnet's plan has made the matter one of some difficulty.

As regards the Text itself the reader is referred to the note by Mr. Macray upon his collation with the Bodleian MS., which follows this Preface.

It remains for me to express my thanks to all those who have aided me with information upon special points. The task, undertaken — perhaps presumptuously

Preface. ix

— in the intervals of official work, has been heavy and prolonged, and could scarcely have been performed thus far without their active and generous help. That any one who attempts to deal seriously with the history of this portion of the seventeenth century should be under deep obligations to Dr. S. R. Gardiner and Mr. C. H. Firth will be taken as a matter of course. To myself their assistance and encouragement have been lavish to a degree which makes the only fitting words of gratitude too personal for expression in this place.

To the Delegates of the Clarendon Press I desire to offer my acknowledgements of their courtesy and of their forbearance with delay.

OSMUND AIRY.

Jan. I, 1897.

The collation of the original MS. (undoubtedly the MS. promised by the original editors to be deposited in some public library, a promise never fulfilled by them) which has been made for the present edition has shown that but few noticeable variations from the text of Dr. Routh's last edition were required. But it has also shown the care with which Burnet, according to his own avowed intention in his Preface, 'over and over again retouched' his work, often softening some harsh expressions, or altering the form of sentences, or changing single words, with a view to improvement of style. All changes in- volving real alteration are now pointed out, but the mere substitution of one conjunction or particle for another, and the omission or insertion of small unimportant words, have been passed over.

The autograph of The History is contained in two folio volumes, now shelf-marked as 'Bodl. Add. D. 18, 19.' The text is written on one side of the leaf, and the marginal notes on the opposite blank page, where also Burnet places the numeration of the leaves : thus, ' page 1 ' is written on the blank page opposite the first page of the MS. and so on consecutively. This is worth pointing out, in order to obviate any possible difficulty in verification of a passage. The volumes when purchased by the Library in 1835 for £fl'i.o, were entrusted to Dr. Routh for his use ; and a letter from him on returning them to the Library, dated March 13, 1840, is inserted in the first volume. Unfortunately the particulars of the purchase do not appear to be now recoverable, and all that is known is that, as stated by Dr. Routh {Hist, of James II, 1852, p. 474), they had belonged 'to a family descended from the bishop.'

W. D. M.

PREFACE^ TO THE EDITION OF 1823

The History of his Own Time by Bishop Burnet lays claim to our regard as an original work containing a rela- tion of public transactions, in which either the author or his connexions were engaged. It will therefore never lose its importance ; but still continue to furnish materials for other historians, and to be read by those, who wish to derive their knowledge of facts from the first sources of information.

The accuracy indeed of the author's narrative has been attacked with vehemence, and often, it must be confessed, with success ; but not so often, as to overthrow the general credit of his work. On the contrary, it has in many in- stances been satisfactorily defended, and time has already evinced the truth of certain accounts, which rested on this single authority. It has also had the rare fortune of being illustrated by the notes of three persons of high rank, possessing in consequence of their situations means of information open to few others. That their observations on this history are now at length submitted to the public eye, is owing to the following fortunate incident.

I. A resolution having been taken by the Delegates of the Clarendon Press to reprint the work, the present Lord

' Revised in 1833.

Preface to the Edition of 182}. xi

Bishop of Oxford' expressed his readiness to communicate to them a copy of it, in which his lordship had transcribed the marginal notes written by his ancestor the first Earl of Dartmouth. The offer was gratefully accepted, and the notes ordered to be printed with the text.

Afterwards, on an application to the Earl of Onslow, made through the late James Boswell, Esq., of the Inner Temple, his lordship was pleased to confide to the Delegates Speaker Onslow's copy of Burnet's History ; in which are contained the Speaker's observations on this work, written in his own hand. Besides these remarks, there appear in the Onslow copy, in consequence of the permission of the second Earl of Hardwicke, not only the notes written by this nobleman on the second folio volume, but also the numerous passages, which were omitted in the first volume by the original editors. The notes likewise of Dean Swift are there transcribed, taken from his own copy of the history, which had come into the possession of the first Marquis of Lansdowne^. We shall now lay before the reader, for his greater satisfaction, a note prefixed to the Onslow copy by George, late Earl of Onslow, the son of the Speaker.

'The notes in these two volumes marked H. were the notes in the present Earl of Hardwicke's copy of this work written by himself, and which he permitted me to copy into this. The earl is the son and heir of that great man the chancellor 3. The others in the same handwriting I had also from him, and they are what are left out in the

1 [Edward Legge, seventh son of stated by us [ed. 1823 : Preface, vii] William, second Earl of Dartmouth ; to have been burnt, contained only- died 1827.] Since the publication a transcript of Swift's autograph, of the former edition we have been R. This note was added in 1833. indulged by the present lord marquis " Better known as Lord Shel- with the use of this copy, and been burne.

enabled by it signally to correct some ' Philip Yorke, first Earl of Hard-

of these notes. The copy formerly wicke ; died 1764.

xii Preface to the

printed history, but are in the manuscript. All the rest of the notes are my father's own. Geo. Onslow, 1775. There are many errors of the copyist. The notes in red ink are by Dean Swift, and are copied (from an edition of this work in the Marquiss of Lansdown's library, in the margin of which they are written in the dean's own hand) by his lord- ship's order for myself. O. 1788.'

With respect to the notes written by the Earl of Dart- mouth, it appears from Sir John Dalrymple's Memoirs of Great Britain and Ireland, and from Mr. Rose's Observa- tions on Fox's History of the early part of the reign of James II, that both these writers had been favoured with the sight as well of these notes, as of a collection of letters which were sent by King James, when Duke of York, and residing in Scotland, to the first Lord of Dartmouth, the earl's father, and from which the earl has frequently inserted extracts ^. Seven or eight only of the notes have been communicated to the public by the above-mentioned authors, and are pointed out as they occur in the following pages. All of them are now printed, with the exception of three, which contained reflections on the private character of as many individuals irrelevant to their public conduct. They have been omitted, with the approbation of the descendants of the noble writer^.

As the Earl of Dartmouth has often treated his author with great severity, it should be remarked, that he was of a party in the state opposed to that which Bishop Burnet uniformly espoused. He appears also to have entertained a great personal dislike to the bishop. At the same time this nobleman, who was secretary of state, and afterwards

' See the Dartmouth Papers, several places in consequence of

H. M. C. Rep. xi. App. Part v. a collation of them with the original

^ In this second edition of Burnet's copy preserved at Sandwell, the seat

work with notes, those by Lord of the Dartmouth family. R. Dartmouth have been corrected in

Edition of 182^. xiii

Lord Privy Seal in the latter end of Queen Anne's reign, never embraced, as may be collected from his notes, the absurd doctrine of non-resistance to government in all supposable cases ; but was, what some have called, a moderate Tory ; and like most of the leading Tories in the reign of the queen, was attached to the Hanover succes- sion. The wiser members of this party held, that the right of the people to govern depends on the different laws and constitutions of different countries ; but that their right to be well governed is indefeasible To which should be added, that the tyranny of the many may as justly be resisted as the misgovernment of the few, or of the individual. The following character of his lordship has been transmitted to us by Swift, whilst eulogizing the chiefs of Queen Anne's last ministry, in the twenty-sixth number of the Examiner, ' My Lord Dartmouth,' he says, ' is a man of letters, full of good sense, good nature, and honour, of strict virtue and regularity in his life ; but labours under one great defect, that he treats his clerks with more civility and good manners, than others in his station have done the queen.' See also Macky's Characters, p. 89. His lordship's notes on this work of Burnet abound in curious and well told anecdotes.

The observations of Speaker Onslow and the Earl of Hardwicke have likewise been hitherto unpublished, except twenty of the former, printed in the twenty-seventh volume of the European Magazine. But more than half of Swift's short and cursory remarks have been already given to the public in that and the two following volumes of the same work by the person who communicated the others, yet often altered in the expression 1. They are shrewd, caustic,

' The notes by Swift which appear Barrett's Essay on the Earlier Pari of in the Magazine were afterwards the Life of Swift. R. affixed, in the year 1808, to Dr.

xiv Preface to the

and apposite, but not written with the requisite decorum ; of six notes omitted by us, three are worded in so light a way, that even modesty forbad their admission. The Speaker's notes, addressed more particularly to his son, contain many incidental discussions on political subjects, and are sensible and instructive. Those of the Earl of Hardwicke are so candid and judicious, that one cannot but wish them to have been more numerous. Earl Spencer, we are eager to acknowledge, condescendingly and most obligingly endeavoured to procure the copy of Burnet's History for our use, in the margin of which the notes were originally written by Lord Hardwicke, it being desirable that some doubtful passages of the transcript in the Onslow copy should have been compared with it ; but unfortunately the book could nowhere be found.

The Earl of Dartmouth and Dean Swift, who although younger than Bishop Burnet, may be considered as his contemporaries, were, as we have already observed in the case of the Lord Dartmouth, opposed to him in politics : but Arthur Onslow, Speaker in five successive parliaments in the reign of George IL enjoyed the confidence of the Whigs, and with it a high reputation for integrity and moderation. The remaining annotator. Lord Hardwicke, son of the Lord Chancellor Hardwicke, and one of the authors of those elegant compositions, the Athenian Letters, always adhered to the same party. Lord Dartmouth uses strong, and Swift much ill language, on Burnet's supposed want of veracity ; and the excellent Latin verses of Dean Moss on the same subject are now, we understand, in print. Yet the bishop's friends need not be apprehensive of a verdict of wilful falsehood against him in consequence of the corrections of his narrative in the subsequent annota- tions. Lord Dartmouth indeed, a man of honour, asserts that this author has published many things which he knew

Edition of 182^. xv

to be untrue. See his note at the beginning of vol. iv. His lordship, it must be allowed, had better opportunities than we have for determining what Burnet knew ; but, as he has adduced little or nothing in support of this charge, we may be permitted to think, that strong prejudice, not wilful falsehood, occasioned the bishop's erroneous state- ments. It ought to be recollected in his favour, that he never professed a belief, either in the discoveries of Oates, or in the alleged murder of the Earl of Essex, although articles of his party's creed. And notwithstanding the idle stories told by him, on the authority of others, concerning the birth of the Prince of Wales, he nowhere, in the present work at least, explicitly avows an opinion of his illegitimacy. Nor, although an active and zealous opposer of King James's measures, does he appear to have been concerned in the other infamous falsehood imposed at the same time on the credulity of the nation ; the intended massacre of the Protestants in this country by the Irish soldiery. There is a story indeed, which used to be told on the authority of the Dowager Countess of Nottingham, that Burnet, in a conversation with her lord, accused him of having professed different sentiments in the House of Peers on some subject from what he then did ; and on Lord Nottingham's denying that he had so expressed him- self, the bishop, as it was stated, rejoined, if his lordship had not, he ought to have done so: and that, notwith- standing this in Burnet's History of his Own Time, Lord Nottingham is represented to have said that which he denied he had said. All this may be true, and yet the bishop might not believe himself to have been mistaken. It must however be confessed, that where either party-zeal or personal resentment was concerned, this author too frequently appears to have been no patient investigator of the truth, but to have written under the influence of those

xvi Preface to the

feelings, even whilst he was delineating the characters of some of the most virtuous persons of the age in which he lived. Amongst these are the Archbishops Sheldon and Sancroft, of whom he frequently speaks with unpardonable severity. He has also directed much indiscriminate censure against public bodies of men. In fact it appears by the preface to his work, that he himself suspected he had treated the clergy in particular with excessive harshness, irritated, he says, ' perhaps too much against them, in consequence of the peevishness, ill-nature, and ambition of many of them.' Nay, from some particulars, which will hereafter be mentioned, it may be collected, that the author actually omitted many passages of his history still more highly reflecting on his brethren.

That he was by no means acceptable to those prelates, who governed the Church of England in the reign of Charles II, seems extremely probable, when we consider that, according to his own account, he was an active opponent and open censurer of the bishops in Scotland, and a great meddler in English politics. Besides this, he professed to regard episcopacy itself as not necessary, although a preferable form of church government ; and, however averse from republicanism, appears to have approved of the settlement made by the Scottish Cove- nanters in 1641 as the best system of civil polity for Scotland. See vol. i. pp. 396, 397, folio edit. The author also, during the reigns of William and Anne, was on very ill terms with the majority of the English clergy, whom he often accuses of inactivity, faction, and ambition. It may be urged on the other hand, in favour of his impartiality, that he does by no means spare the characters of those on his own side in politics ; so little indeed, that for the credit of human nature we would hope, that he knew less of men and of business than he himself supposed.

Edition of 182). xvii

But whether his censures were just or unjust, Burnet himself, as it must be acknowledged even by his enemies, was an active and meritorious bishop, and, to the extent of his opportunities, a rewarder of merit in others. He was orthodox in points of faith, possessed superior talents, as well as very considerable learning ; was an instructive and entertaining writer, in a style negligent indeed and in- elegant, but almost always perspicuous ; generous, open- hearted, and, in his actions, a good-natured man ; and although busy and intrusive, at least as honest as the generality of partisans. It is true, that his conduct to the Duke of Lauderdale after the breach between them was, even in his own apprehension of it, objectionable ; and he forfeited by it the favour of the royal brothers, Charles and James ; who had before this time paid particular attention to him. His spleen and resentment against both these princes are apparent in every part of this history ; except that his final portrait of the latter is less darkly shaded, than the harsh and hideous one which he has drawn of the former. It may be here observed, in contradiction to the report of Burnet and of several other writers, respecting the early reconciliation of Charles to the Church of Rome, that this event, as it appears from authentic accounts of the king's last moments, did not take place till a short time before his death.

3. Thus much concerning the notes on this work ; and the accusation of wilful and deliberate falsehood brought against its author by the Lord Dartmouth and others. We proceed to give an account of the numerous passages omitted in the first folio, volume by the original editors, and now restored to their proper places.

It is known to the readers of English history, that the editors of this posthumous work, on the publication of the first volume in 1 7 24, promised to deposit the copy from

VOL. I. b

XVlll

Preface to the

which it was printed in some public library ; and they are apprised, that in the beginning of the second volume, printed in 1734, there appears the following declaration with the signature of the bishop's youngest son, who was afterwards Sir Thomas Burnet, and a judge. 'The original manuscript of both volumes of this history will be deposited in the Cotton library by T. Burnett.' The advertisement in the former volume, which was the only one prefixed by the editors to the work, is conceived in these terms. ' The editors of the following history intend, for the satisfaction of the public, to deposite the copy from which it is printed (corrected and interlined in many places with the author's own hand) in some public library, as soon as the second volume shall be published.'

Suspicions had very early arisen, nay, positive testimony had been adduced, that many passages of the original work were omitted by the editors in both the volumes (see note in vol. iv. p. 566) ; when at length, in the year 1795, the same person, who, according to our preceding statement, inserted the greater part of Swift's and a few of Speaker Onslow's notes, in the twenty-seventh volume of the European Magazine, communicated together with them twelve passages of the text of Burnet, which, amongst numerous others, had been omitted by the editors of the first volume. They were, in all probability, published by him from either the Onslow or the Hardwicke copy of Burnet. He mentions the Hardwicke notes, although he has extracted none of them. It has been already stated, that the Hardwicke copy is missing, without hope it should seem of its recovery, and into this copy the Onslow notes had been transcribed, as those by the Earl of Hardwicke had been into the Onslow copy. Now apart from actual testimony, that the omissions were not confined to the first volume, it appeared extremely probable to us, that in

Edition of 182J. xix

proportion as the history drew nearer to their own times, the caution which dictated these omissions to the editors would acquire additional motives, and that as many, if not more, instances of suppression would be found to occur in the second volume.

We had therefore recourse to that noble repository of literature and science, the British Museum, of which the Cotton Library, as is generally known, forms a constituent part. Henry Ellis, E.sq., one of the librarians of that institution, very obligingly complied with our request to make the requisite search for this MS. and he subsequently reported, that, after the most accurate examination, it did not appear that it had ever been deposited in the library. He added, that 'several collections of folio papers, written in various hands, and at different times, contained an im- perfect copy of Bishop Burnet's History of his Own Times, with many variations from the printed editions. That some memorandums on a single sheet at the beginning of this book, dated July 1699, are probably in the bishop's hand, as are also many corrections in the history. Finally, that Dr. Gifford has written several useful remarks in the volume ; among which is one, that "from many particulars it appears, that the printed editions are not taken from these loose papers : yet that though there is great variety of expression, the substance is generally the same." ' This is the account with which we were favoured by Mr. Ellis. It should be further observed, that the well-known fire, by which the Cotton Library suffered considerable injury, happened in 1731, three years before the promise was publicly given of depositing the original MS. in that library.

These circumstances considered, it is probable, that the same reasons which induced the editor or editors to omit certain passages in both volumes of the work, finally

ba

XX Preface to the

determined them, although pointedly expostulated with or\ the subject, to relinquish their purpose of placing the original MS. in an accessible library. It deserves notice, that in page 8 of the second letter addressed by Mr. Beach to Thomas Burnet, Esq., the writer asserts, that he had in his own possession an authentic and complete collection of the castrations. See Nichols's Literary Anecdotes, vol. i. p. 285. It is added by Beach, as we have been informed by a gentleman who inspected this second letter to the younger Burnet, as well as Sinclair's Remarks on the first letter, that these passages were also in the hands of several persons of distinction 1. After all, we are induced by our recollection of the restored passages to think, that although they were unjustifiably omitted, because against the author's express injunctions in his last will, yet that it was not done by the editors through party considerations, but from a desire of abating the displeasure .certain to be conceived against their father, by the friends or relations of those who suffered by the severity of his censure. The editors appear to have consulted their own feelings, in the omission of several traits in the character given by him of his uncle Warriston.

But it must not be omitted, that previously to the first publication of this work in 1734, some extracts from the former part of it, confessed to have been surreptitiously obtained during the author's life, were actually printed ; none of which appear either in the edited work, or amongst the suppressed, and now restored passages of the first

' In Beach's first Letter, as we volume in folio, although the Letter

have found since the first publication viras published in the year 1736 after

of this Preface, are inserted between the appearance of the second volume,

twenty and thirty of the omitted The same is the case with Bowyer's

passages, all of them the same as copy of the omitted passages, now in

those in the Onslow copy of Burnet, the Bodleian Library. R. and all likewise confined to the first

Edition of 182 j. xxi

volume^. In a tract found in the British Museum by a gentleman, who has done much for the literary history of this country, Dr. Philip Bliss, Fellow of St. John's College, Oxford, four passages are brought forward by the author of it, purporting to be extracts from Burnet's history. The title of the pamphlet is, A specimen of the Bishop of Sarum's Posthumous History of the Affairs of the Church and Stale of Great Britain during his life. By Robert Elliot, M.A., 3rd ed. London. 8vo, without date ^- The publisher in his Preface says that he received the contents, consisting of extracts from Burnet's history, and copious remarks upon them, from Mr. Elliot, a deprived episcopal clergyman of Scotland. The extracts are asserted to have been privately made by Elliot, whilst employed together with others in transcribing a manuscript of the work lent by the author to Lord W. P. (perhaps Lord William Paulett). In support of the credibility of the account, it may be observed, that Lord Dartmouth, in a note at page 6, vol. i, mentions an offer made to himself by the author, of in- specting his history; a favour, his lordship adds, which the bishop had conferred on several others. Of these four extracts, the first is a relation of the murder of Archbishop Sharp, and although it agrees in substance with that in the edited copy, yet is much altered in point of expression. The three others contain very severe and acrimonious reflections on the English clergy.

It is observable, that in the Preface by Dr. Hickes to Three Treatises republished by him in 1709 — some years before the death of Bishop Burnet — a part of the fourth

' Cockburn, Specimen of Remarks, that the early portion of the work

64, says that nine or ten years was written about or shortly after

before 1724 portions of the History the publication of Clarendon's first

were in various hands ; and that volume, 1702.

the Preface was written in 1705. ^ The first edition of this pamphlet

From infra, 53, it would appear appeared in the year 1715. R.

xxii Preface to the

and last of these extracts is given in the very words pro- duced by Elliot ; and that Hickes says, he had seen a short specimen of the bishop's anecdot, perhaps communicated to him by this clergyman ^.

Dr. Bliss is of opinion, in case these extracts are authentic, that they were taken from a copy of Burnet's work in its first state, and before he altered, revised, and softened it. That they are genuine, many internal marks of authenticity lead us to suppose ; over and above the circumstance, that, when Elliot, after finishing his extracts, proceeds to set down what he recollects of the substance of nine or ten other passages of the work, all that he produces has a perfect agreement with what was afterwards published as the bishop's. It is proper to remark in this place, that no additional charge of suppression or alteration can fairly be brought against the editors of Burnet's history in conse- quence of these extracts produced by Elliot, as they were made during the author's life, whilst he had the power of altering and revising his own work. On the other hand, against any suggestion, that the passages restored by us to the text had been in a similar way expunged or altered by the author himself, may be adduced the express testimony above referred to, that many things in the copy from which his work was printed, were omitted by the editors in both the volumes ^.

Before this account of the suppressed passages is entirely concluded, we shall take notice, that amongst those which are restored, there is one, in vol. i. p. 544, containing a

' This part of the last extract one of his publications taken notice

appears also m a tract entitled, of some of Elliot's extracts, shown

Speculum Sarisbunanum, printed in hira perhaps in MS. R.

1714, the last year of the bishop's = Compare Beach's Second Letter

life. It should seem too, that the to Thomas Burnet, Esq., p. 13. R. celebrated Leslie had previously in

Edition of 182J. xxiii

severe attack on the character of King Charles I, chiefly- founded on that Prince's letters to the first Duke of Hamilton, and on Bishop Burnet's acquaintance with the Hamilton papers, the basis of his Memoirs of the two dukes of that family. In favour of the king it ought first to be stated, that the series of letters addressed to him by the marquis, afterwards duke, of Hamilton, appears to have formed no part of that collection of papers, Burnet having in his Memoirs inserted few or none of them. Again, that this nobleman so conducted himself in those unhappy times, that he was always suspected by the Royalists of treachery and treason against his benefactor and sovereign ; and was even charged upon oath ' with having agents to raise vile reports to the dishonour of the king and queen, and their whole court, as if it was a sink of iniquity.' See, besides the histories of the times, two tracts, one entitled Digitus Dei, p. 6, and the other the Practices of the Hamiltons, p. 15, together with a note at page 60 [ed. 1896] of this first volume of Burnet. From this source apparently originated a report unfavourable to the character of the queen, whether true or untrue, which is mentioned in a note by the Earl of Dartmouth, vol. i. p. 65. Neither is any additional credit reflected on the Hamilton papers themselves, in case they contained, according to the assertion of some persons, the following incredible story. That in the year 1640 the king sent a warrant to Sir William Balfour, Lieutenant of the Tower of London, to execute immediately the Earl of Loudon for the crime of high treason, although, as it is well known it had formerly been pardoned in consequence of a general act of grace ; which illegal warrant was to take effect without any previous trial ; and that Charles was diverted from insisting on Balfour's obedience to the order, solely by the interference of the Marquis of Hamilton. See the Conclusion of Birch's

xxiv Preface to the

Inquiry into King Charles the First's Transactions with the Earl of Glamorgan, Second Edition, where this tale is brought forward against the king ^. Let the Duke of Hamilton however be heard in his own defence, and at the same time in behalf of his royal master. In his speech before his execution, this nobleman has the following ex- pressions. ' I take God to witness, that I have constantly been a faithful subject and servant to his late majesty, in spite of all malice and calumny. I have had the honour since my childhood to attend and be near him, till now of late, and during all that time I observed in him as eminent virtues and as little vice, as in any man I ever knew.' Burnet's Memoirs of the Dukes of Hamilton, p. 398.

3. Thus much concerning the restored passages. To the notes of the Earls of Dartmouth and Hardwicke, Speaker Onslow, and Dean Swift, several others have been added, for the purpose of correction, and of fuller illustration. They are drawn principally from the pro- fessed answerers of Burnet, from the historians of particular

' Since the former edition of this have rung with it, as Sir William Preface, it has been found, that the Balfour, to whom the warrant is said above relation had previously ap- to have been sent, was afterwards peared in Oldmixon's History of the a distinguished commander in the Stuarts, and that Brodie, in his parliament army. Consult also a History of the British Empire, vol. ii. work lately published, abounding p. 516, professes his belief in its in curious investigation, D'Israeli's authenticity, although he originally Commentaries on the Life and Reign thought it untrue ; grounding, he of Charles the First, vol. iv, ch. xi, says, his opinion, as Birch had done p. 357-361. It is however possible^ before him, on Scott's Staggering that the Marquis of Hamilton might State of the Scotch Statesmen, which himself add terror to allurement was first published in the year 1754, when he brought over the Earl of but written by one, as Brodie remarks, Loudon to the king's interests. We employed by King Charles I and his have just seen, with some surprise, father. It appears, indeed, that the a learned and sagacious writer ex- author of this tract, a favourer of pressing very lately his opinion in the covenanters, had heard of and favour of the truth of this narra- credited the report ; but had it been tion. R. true, all England in those days would

Edition of 182J. xxv

periods of our history, writers of memoirs and of scarce tracts, and occasionally from manuscript authorities. They were selected and appended to the text, whilst the press was going on, in the course of the last year ; and will, it is hoped, as well as the strictures on some doctrines and opinions in the other annotations, appear to owe their situation in the following pages to a zeal for truth, sincere, at least, however mistaken. All these notes are interspersed with the others, and included within a parenthesis ^.

It is proper to apprise the reader, that Ralph's History of the three first reigns contained in Bishop Burnet's work, namely, those of Charles II, James II, and King William, was not procured for consultation before some part of the reign of James II was already printed. But this circum- stance appeared afterwards to be of less consequence than the perusal of the latter part of the same history caused us to apprehend. This historian has obtained from Mr. Fox the praise of impartiality; which he well deserves ^.

It should also be here acknowledged, that a statement in Bishop Burnet's work at pp. 31, 3 a of the first volume, ought to have been corrected from the Earl of Cromarty's Account of the Conspiracies of the Earls of Gowry, published before Burnet's death in the year 1713. The bishop affirms, that the last Earl of Gowry was descended through a daughter of Lord Methuen, from Margaret, daughter of

^ The number of these notes has last mentioned prelate, but are now

been considerably increased in con- deposited in the Bodleian Library,

sequence of the perusal of additional Some notes also, illustrative of his-

authorities, many of them con- torical facts, have been selected from

temporary works lately brought to the vituperative remarks written by

light, and of the still inedited letters Cole the antiquary in a copy of

of the Archbishops Sharp, Burnett, Burnet's History preserved in the

and Boyle, addressed to Archbishop same library. R.

Sheldon. These letters were not ^ Some references to the former

long since in the possession of Sir part of Ralph's History have now

John English Dolben, baronet, a been added. R. descendant from a brother of the

xxvi Preface to the

King Henry the Seventh, although this king's daughter had in reahty no issue, but what died in infancy, by her third husband, Henry, Lord Methuen, whom our author erroneously calls Francis Steward, father of a Lord Methuen. Gowry's grandmother was daughter of Henry, Lord Methuen, by his second wife, a daughter of the Earl of Athol, married to him after Margaret the Queen Dowager of Scotland's death. See the Earl of Cromarty's Account, pp. 8-13. As in this case the Earl of Gowry had no well- founded claim to the succession of the crown of England, if King James of Scotland were removed out of the way, he could scarcely be influenced by any such claim to attempt the assassination of that prince, according to the bishop's surmize, not sanctioned, as he himself owns, by any other historian.

On the other hand a confirmation of our author's testi- mony has lately occurred, and the question, so ably discussed by sergeant Heywood in his Vindication of Fox's Historical Work, as to the conduct of General Monck during the pending trial of the Marquis of Argyle, has been finally set at rest. It now appears, on the authority of Sir George Mackenzie, one of the assigned defenders of the marquis, that Monck, when 'advertised of the scantiness of the probation,' did actually transmit to Scotland several official letters formerly received by him from the marquis for the purpose of procuring that nobleman's condemnation. See vol. i. p. 225, and Sir George Mackenzie's Memoirs of the Affairs of Scotland, just published [1821], p. 4.

In printing the text of Burnet, the first edition has been followed, and the alterations of his style in those subsequent have been neglected. It is true, that in the title-page of the octavo edition printed in 1755, the whole work is said to have been revised and corrected by the editor, the bishop's son ; but allowing this, the original MS. was still

Edition of 182^. xxvii

further departed from, than even in the folio edition. The few alterations which occur in the editor's Life of his father have been adopted.

The Index to the text of Burnet has been improved by Dr. Bliss, whose name we have already had occasion to mention ; the other Index to the principal contents of the notes was entirely prepared by that gentleman ^■

The author finished his history of the reigns of Charles II and James II about the beginning of the eighteenth century ; that of the reign of William, and of the former part of Queen Anne's reign in 1710. The continuation of the work to the conclusion of peace in 1713 was completed by him in that year ; less than two years before his death. The present year 1823 is nearly the hundredth since the publication of the first volume in folio, comprising the two first reigns above mentioned, together with a summary of public affairs before the restoration. It appears to have excited more interest than the second volume, which fol- lowed in 1 734, after an interval of ten years. But this is by no means to be wondered at, if besides taking into account the author's frequent relations in the subsequent volume of military and foreign affairs, amusive indeed, but brief and perfunctory, we consider the diminished influence of the good or ill qualities of individuals on the public events and transactions of this latter period.

The great influence which personal character had formerly on events, together with other causes, occasions the reign of Charles the First, in which the contest for political power commenced, to form the most interesting period of English history, whether we are disposed to triumph with the conquering party, or to espouse and commiserate the cause of high honour and suffering loyalty. The frequent

' It has now been augmented on ac- Text Index is often incorrect, and in countoftheadditionalmatter. R. The many respects is quite inadequate. '

xxviii Preface to the

and remarkable changes of government during the inter- regnum, as well as the singular and energetic character of the protector Cromwell, secure the attention of every reader. The disputes, which afterwards arose between an unprincipled, but good-humoured monarch, regardless alike of his own honour and the national interest, and a restless, violent, and merciless faction, are subjects of deep concern, on account of their melancholy results. At the same time, the mind feels consolation in the virtues of Ormond, Clarendon, and Southampton. And, notwithstanding the enormities of courtiers and anticourtiers, we reflect with pleasure on the freedom then first securely enjoyed, from every species of arbitraiy taxation, and from extrajudicial imprisonment ; on the provision made for the meeting of parliament once in three years at the least ; in a word, on the possession of a constitution, which King William ad- mired so much, that he professed himself afraid to improve it. The gloom of the next reign, ruined as its prospects were by folly and oppression, and finally closed by means of intrigue, falsehood, and intimidation, is in part enlivened by a view of the courageous and disinterested conduct of Sancroft, Hough, Dundee, Craven, and several others. Some. of these persons, desirous of a parliamentary redress of grievances, thought, that instead of the force put upon the person of the king, an accommodation might and ought to have been effected with him ; as he had a little before when threatened with the just and open hostility of his subjects for his perversion of the law, and maintenance of a standing army, made very important concessions. Yet it may reasonably be doubted, whether a composition with a prince of his disposition and feeble judgement, whatever good qualities he was otherwise possessed of, would eventu- ally have been lasting, or even reducible to practice. It was remarked, that the appeal made by him to his subjects

Edition of 182J. xxix

immediately after his retreat to another country, was signed by a secretary of state employed contrary to the intent at least of law.

Times had now passed, which were chequered with great virtues and great vices: but the reigns of William and Anne exhibit to the reader one uniform scene of venality and corruption ; and the mind, instead of being interested, is disgusted with the contests of two parties for the govern- ment of the country, assuming, as it best suited their selfish purposes, each other's principles. The long contemplated change in the executive government was at length effected ; its power being virtually transferred to combinations of persons possessed of great influence in parliamentary elections, and in parliament itself. Hence what has been called the practice of the constitution differed widely from its theory ; and to this depression of the crown and of its direct power, occasioned by the almost constant sitting of parliament, were added maxims annihilating the will of the single person, and, in conjunction with other causes, finally subversive of all dutiful and affectionate attachment to authority. These maxims, not recognized as constitu- tional by Clarendon, Hale, or Locke, were advanced in order to colour and justify the alteration. A wider and more extensive field was now opened for the exertion of talents, contributing to the advancement of the individual, but often more hurtful than useful to the public. In these reigns also, contrary to every principle of justice, were laid the deep and broad foundations of a debt, which no other than the political system then adopted could have entailed on a nation. It ought still however to be re- membered, that at, or soon after the revolution, a solemn recognition was made of the liberties of Englishmen ; the power of dispensing with the laws was abrogated in all cases ; the judges ceased to be dismissed at the sole

XXX Preface to the Edition of 182^.

pleasure of the crown ; a provision was made against the long continuance of parliaments ; freedom of religious worship was secured to the great body of protestant dis- senters ; the important and necessary measure of a union with Scotland was effected ; the liberty of the press established ; trials for treason better regulated ; and a more exact and impartial administration of justice generally introduced in the kingdom. These blessings, and all our constitutional rights, may God's providence, and a virtuous and independent spirit, preserve. Let us venerate the source of our freedom and happiness, the legal monarchy of England, supporting it, when outraged by venal and prodigal factions, or threatened with subversion by reckless and usurping demagogues.

M. J. R.

1702

THE HISTORY OF MY OWN TIME

THE PREFACE.

I AM now beginning to review and write over again the History of my own time, which I first undertook twenty years ago ^, and have been continuing it from year to year ever since : and * I see some reason to review it all. I had while I was very young a greater knowledge of affairs than is usual at that age ; for my father, who had been engaged in great friendships with men of both sides, living then retired from all business, as he took my education wholly into his own hands, so he took a sort of pleasure to relate to me the series of all public affairs. And as he was a man so eminent for probity and true piety that I had all reason to believe him, so I saw such an impartial sense of things in him, that I had as little reason to doubt his judgment as his sincerity. For though he adhered so firmly to the king and his side that he was the singular instance in Scotland of a man of some note, who, from the beginning to the end of the war, never once owned or submitted to the new forms of government set up all that

" now struck out.

' This history he writ some time King William and Queen Mary he

before the year 1705, but how long, dates the continuation of his his-

he has not any where told ; only it tory on the first day of May, 1705.

appears it was then finished, because Original Editors. See Preface

in the beginning of the reign of to the 1823 edition.

xxxii The Preface.

while, yet he did very freely complain of the errors of the king's government, and of the bishops of Scotland. So that upon this foundation I set out first to look into the secret conduct of affairs among us.

I fell into great acquaintance and friendships with several persons who either were or had been ministers of state, from whom, when the secret of affairs was over, I studied to know as many particulars as I could draw from them ^- I saw a great deal more among the papers of the dukes of Hamilton than was properly a part of their Memoirs, or fit to be told at that time : for when a licence was to be obtained, and a work was to be published fit for that family to own, things foreign to their ministry, or hurtful to any other families, were not to be intermixed with the account I then gave of the late wars. And now for above thirty years I have lived in such intimacy with all who have had the chief conduct of affairs, and have been so mach trusted *and on so many important occasions employed by them, that I have been able to penetrate far into the true secrets of '' counsels and designs.

This made me twenty years ago write down a relation of all that I had known to that time : where I was in the dark, I past over all, and only opened those transactions that I had particular occasions to know. My chief design in writing was to give a true view of men and of "counsels, leaving public transactions ^ to gazettes and the public his- torians of the times ^. I writ with a design to make both my self and my readers wiser and better, and to lay open the good and the bad of all sides and parties, as clearly and impartially as I my self understood it, concealing nothing that I thought fit to be known, and representing things in their natural colours without art or disguise, with- out any regard to kindred or friends, to parties or interests.

" by them struck out. ^ councills. " councills.

^ originally, io be found in Gazettes and the common historians.

' See Cockburn, Specimen of Remarks, is'C, p. 66, for Burnet's industry in acquiring information ; and infra, 358.

The Preface. xxxiii

For I do solemnly say this to the world, and make my humble appeal upon it to the great God of truth, that I tell the truth on all occasions, as fully and freely as I upon my best inquiry have been able to find it out ; " where things appear doubtful, I deliver them with the same incertainty to the world.

Some may perhaps think, that, instead of favouring my own profession, I have been more severe upon them than was needful. But my zeal for the true interests of religion and of the clergy made me more careful to undeceive good and well meaning men of my own order and profession for the future, and to deliver them from common prejudices and mistaken notions, than to hide or excuse the faults of those who will be perhaps gone off the stage before this work appears on it. I have given the characters of men very ''impartially and copiously''; for nothing guides one's judgment more truly in a "relation of matters of fact than the knowing the tempers and principles of the chief actors ^.

If I have dwelt too long on the affairs of Scotland, some allowance is to be made to the affection all men bear to their native country '^. I alter nothing of what I wrote in

" a«rf struck out. '' OTi%va2!&.y, fully and freely. " co^'o«s struck out.

' Bishop Burnet was a man of the when what he said would not have

most extensive knowledge I ever been thought so, delivered in a lower

met with ; had read and seen a great voice, and a calmer behaviour. His

deal, vrith a prodigious memory, and vast knowledge occasioned his fre-

a very indifferent judgment : he quent rambling from the point he

was extremely partial, and readily was speaking to, which ran him into

took every thing for granted that he discourses of so universal a nature,

heard to the prejudice of those he that there was no end to be expected

did not like : which made him pass but from a failure of his strength and

for a man of less truth than he really spirits, of both which he had a larger

was. I do not think he designedly share than most men ; which were

published any thing he believed to accompanied with a most invincible

be false. He had a boisterous vehe- assurance. Dartmouth.

ment manner of expressing himself, ^ Swift's criticism was to call Bur-

which often made him ridiculous, net's book the 'History of (Scotland

especially in the house of lords, in) my Own Time.' See Cockburn, 68.

VOL. I. C

xxxiv The Preface.

the first draught of this work, only I have left out a great deal that was personal to my self, and to those I am descended from : so that this is upon the matter the same work, with very little change made in it.

I "^ look on the perfecting of this work, and the carrying it on through the remaining part of my life, as the greatest service I can do both to God and to the world ; and there- MS. 2. fore I set about it | with great care and caution. For I reckon a lie in history to be as much a greater sin than a lie in common discourse, as the one is like to be more lasting and more generally known than the other. I find that the long experience I have had of the baseness, the malice, and the falsehood of mankind, has inclined me to be apt to think generally the worst both of men and of parties : and indeed the peevishness, * the ill nature, and the ambition of many hot clergymen, has sharpened my spirit perhaps too much against them : so I warn my reader to take all that I say on these heads with some grains of allowance, though I have watched over my self and my pen so carefully that I hope there is no great occasion for this apology.

I have shewed this ° history to several of my friends i, who were either very partial to me, or they esteemed that this work (chiefly when it should be over and over again retouched and polished^ by me^, which very probably

" reckon struck out. ^ the meanness struck out. ■= originally work.

' He offered to shew it to me, ^ Rarely polished ; I never read

which I avoided, knowing it was so ill a style. S. See Editor's Pre-

a favour he had granted to several face (ed. 1823). ' Perfect, requiring

others, and if any part of it had been no mending' is the verdict of C T

published before its time, he might Fox. The ' vain solemnity ' of

have thought it came from me : Burnet's Preface is commented upon

though he was so civil as to tell me in an anonymous Review of Bumefs

I would be the last he should sus- History, 1724, p. 3.

pect; and whenever I did read it, ■' I do not know who his friends

I should find accounts both of per- were, or how partial they might be

sons and things, that I did not expect but I beUeve generally people will

from him ; but truth, he said, must be of opinion that this is the worst

be followed by an historian, wher- of his performances ; in most others

ever it led him. D, that are of any value, the materials

The Preface.

XXXV

I shall be doing as long as I live^) might prove of some use to the world. I have on design avoided all laboured periods or artificial strains, and have writ in as clear and plain a style as was possible, choosing rather a copious enlargement than a dark conciseness.

And now, O my God, the God of my life and of all my mercies, I offer up this work to Thee, to whose honour it is chiefly intended ; that thereby I may awaken the world to just reflections on their own errors and follies, and call on them to acknowledge thy providence, to adore it, and ever to depend on it.

were ready furnished, and he had only the putting of them together ; in this, which is entirely his own, he has exposed his excessive partiality, and great want of judgment. D. ^ Mr. Secretary Johnston, who was

his intimate friend and near relation, told me, that after a debate in the house of lords he usually went home, and altered every body's character, as they had pleased or displeased him that day. D.

THE HISTORY

MY OWN TIME

VOL. I.

THE

HISTORY OF MY OWN TIME

BOOK I.

A summary recapitulation of the state of affairs in Scotland, both in Church and State, from the beginning of the troubles to the restoration of K. Charles the second, 1660 '.

CHAPTER I.

TO THE ACCESSION OF CHARLES I.

The mischiefs of civil wars are so great and lasting, and Chap. I. the effects of ours branching * themselves out by many accidents that were not thought on at first, much less in- tended, into such mischievous consequences, [that] I have thought it an enquiry that might be of great use both to prince and people, to look carefully into the first beginnings and occasions of them, to observe their progress, and the errors of both hands, the provocations that were given, 6 and the jealousies that were raised by these, together with the excesses into which both sides have run by turns. And though the wars be over long ago, yet * since they have left among us so many seeds * of lasting feuds and animosi- ties, which upon every turn are apt to ferment and to break out " anew, it will be an useful as well as a pleasant enquiry

^ M^m struck out; themselves\Ti.\£.T\\r\^^. ^ substituted for 50 wzaim;' scars still remain, which as they are the remembrances of what is past, so they the seeds. - o/' struck out.

' The last part of this Book — in England, would appear from this chapter v in the present arrange- heading to have been an after- ment — ^which deals with Cromwell thought.

B a

4 A Summary of Affairs

Chap. I. to look back to the first original of them, and to observe by what degrees and accidents they gathered strength, and at last broke forth into such a flame.

The Reformation of Scotland was popular and parlia- mentary : the crown was during that time either on the head of a queen that was absent, or of a king that was an infant. During his minority matters were carried on by the several regents, so as was most agreeable to the pre- vailing humour of the nation. But when king James grew 1587- to be of age, he found two parties in the kingdom : the one was of those who wished well to the interests of the queen his mother, then a prisoner in England ; these were either professed papists, or men believed to be indifferent as to all religions : the rest were her inveterate enemies, zealous for the Reformation, and fixed in a dependence on the crown of England " and a jealousy of France "- When that king saw that those who were most in his interests were likewise jealous of his authority, '' and apt to encroach upon it ^ he hearkened first to the insinuations of his mother's party, who were always infusing in him a jealousy of these his friends, and saying, that by ruining his mother and setting him in her room while a year old, they had ruined monarchy, and made the crown subject and precarious, and had put him in a very unnatural posture of being seised of his mother's crown while she was in exile and a prisoner ; adding, that he was but a king in name, the power being in the hands of those who were under the management of the queen of England.

Their insinuations would have been of less force if the House of Guise ^ who were his cosin-germans, had not been then engaged in great designs, of transferring the crown of France from the House of Bourbon to themselves • in order to which it was necessary to embroil England and to draw the king of Scotland into their interests. So under the pretence of keeping up the old alliances between

" interlined. * interlined.

■ His grandmother, Mary, the wife Duke of Guise, and of Charles cardinal of James V, was the sister of Francis, of Lorraine.

before the Restoration.

1579-

' Esme Stuart, third son of John, Sieur d'Aubigny. John was brother to Matthew, fourth Earl of Lennox, who was the husband of Margaret Douglas, daughter of the Earl of Angus and Margaret Tudor. Esm6 was thus first cousin of Darnley, James's father. He arrived in Scot- land in 1579, and acted under the direction of the Duke of Guise. Al- though a Catholic, he was allowed to pretend to be a Protestant, and this he did successfully to his death, actually subscribing the Confession of Faith in August 1580, and March ^Slf ■ ^^ ^^^ created Earl of Len- nox in March 15^ ; and, after the death of Morton, of which he was the author, Duke of Lennox. Driven from Scotland in Dec. 1583, he died in Paris in the following year. See Spottiswoode (1851 ed), 324, from which it appears that James believed, or wished it thought that he believed, in Lennox's protestantism at his death, and Bevill Higgons, Remarks on Bishop Bumefs History, 315-

320. The danger of his influence over James was fully recognized by the English ministers. Hatfield MSS., parts ii, iii, in the H. M. C. Reports.

^ A mean expression, often made use ofbyKingJamestheFirst, though little to the reputation of his integrity or understanding, but suitable to the pedantic education they had given him in his youth ; which the Earl of Marr told me was done designedly, to make him contemptible both at home and abroad ; and that George Buchanan said, he would take care to make him the lively image of his mother. D. A similar charge was made regarding Mazarin and Louis XIV, and regarding John de Witt and William of Orange ; and it was doubtless no more true in this case than in those. Dartmouth, in his note above, imports into the word ' Kingcraft ' a suggestion of trickery, which it does not properly imply ; cf. infra 9, note.

MS. 3.

France and Scotland, they sent creatures of their own to Chap. I. be ambassadors there ; and they also sent a graceful young man ^, who, as he was the king's nearest kinsman by his father, was of so agreeable a temper that he became his favourite, and was made by him duke of Lennox. He was known to be a papist, though he pretended he changed his religion, and became in profession a protestant.

I The court of England discovered all these artifices of the Guisians, who were then the most implacable enemies of the Reformation, and were managing all that train of plots against queen Elizabeth that in conclusion proved fatal to the queen of Scots. And when the English ministers saw the inclinations of the young king lay so strongly that way that all their applications to gain him were ineffectual, they infused such a jealousy of him into all their party in Scot- land, that both nobility and clergy were much alarihed at it.

But king James learnt early that piece of kingcraft^,

6 A Summary of Affairs

Chap. I. of disguising, or at least denying, every thing that was observed in his behaviour that gave offence.

The main instance in which the French management appeared was, that he could not be prevailed on to enter into any treaty of marriage. It was not safe to talk of marrying a papist ; and as long as the duke of Guise lived, the king, though then three and twenty, and the only person of his family, would hearken to no proposition for marrying a protestant. 1588. But when the duke of Guise was killed at Blois, and that 1589- Henry the third was murdered soon after, so that Henry the fourth came in his I'oom, king James was no more in a French management : so presently after he married a Nov. 23. daughter of Denmark, and ever after that he was wholly ^5^9 managed by queen Elizabeth and her ministers^. I have

seen many letters among Walsingham's papers that dis- cover the commerce between the House of Guise and him [king James] ; but the most valuable of these is a long paper of instructions to one sir Richard Wigmore ^, a great man for hunting and for all such sports, to which king James was out of measure addicted ^^ The queen affronted him publicly, upon which he pretended he could live no

' Not before 1601. Correspondence more lived in close companionship

of James VI with Sir R. Cecil (ed. with James for nine or ten years

Bruce, Camden Soc.),Introd. James's without raising any suspicion that

wifewas Anne, daughterof Frederick he was a spy. There are letters

II of Denmark. Upon the import- from Wigmore to Cecil in the Hat-

ance of this marriage, see Ranke, field MSS. part iii, 434, 435, 460, and

Hist. Kngl. 1. 367. in the Salisbury MSS., H M. C

' This is doubtless the paper of Report, iii. instructions 'in his secret employ- = See many amusing instances of

ment into Scotland upon the execu- this in the Hamilton MSS H M C

tion of the Queen of Scots, the . . . Report, xi, App. part vi ;' especially

of May, A^a X588,' Parley MSS. 67. Welwood, 35, asserts that 'his

290 S 248-256 ; Cotton MSS. Cali- standish, his bottle, and his hunting

gula D. 1. f. 160 ; Titus C. vii, f 149. were all he cared for ' There is

Welwood had also seen the paper. a long and brilliant character-sketch

See his Memoirs (1700), 9, ' Sir F. of James in a letter from Fontenav

Walsingham gives him above ten an agent of Mary in James's court to

sheets of paper of instructions, all Nau, her secretary. Hatfield M^S

writ with his own hand, which I have part iii. 47, August i s, 1584 Froude'

read in the Cotton Library.' Wig- Hist. Engl. xi. 457 ('s^ ed )

before the Restoration. 7

longer in England, and therefore withdrew to Scotland. Chap. I. But all this was a contrivance of Walsingham's, who "

thought him a fit person to get into that king's favour : so that affront was designed to give him the more credit. He was very particularly instructed in all the proper methods to gain upon the king's confidence, and to observe and give an account of all he saw in him : which he did very faith- fully. By these instructions it appears that Walsingham thought that king was either inclined to turn papist or to be of no religion. And when the court of England saw that they could not depend on him, they raised all possible opposition to him in Scotland, infusing strong jealousies into those who were enough inclined to receive them.

This is the great defect that runs through archbishop s Spotswood's history ^, where much of the rude opposition that king met with, particularly from the assemblies of the Kirk, is set forth ; but the true ground of all the jealousies they were possessed with is suppressed by him. After his marriage the king studied to remove these suspicions all that was possible ; and he granted the Kirk all the laws they desired, and got his temporal* authority to be better established than it was before : yet as the jealousies of his fickleness in religion were never quite removed, so *the party gave him * many new disgusts : this wrought in him a most inveterate hatred of presbytery and of the power of the Kirk ; and he, fearing an opposition in his succeeding to the crown of England from the popish party, which, though it had little strength in the House of Commons, yet was very great in the House of Lords, and was very con- siderable in all the northern parts, and among the body of the people, employed several persons who were known to

" altered from, so they raised.

' ' The History of the Church of Archbishop of St. Andrews and

Scotland, beginning the year of our Privy Councillor to King Charles the

Lord, 2a^, and continued to the end of First.' London, 1665. Spottiswoode

the reign of King James VI of ever died in 1639. The work has since

blessed memory. Sec, written by that been republished by the Spottis-

grave and reverend prelate and wise woode Society, 1851, edited by Dr.

counsellor, John Spotswood, Lord Russell, Bishop of Glasgow.

8 A Summary of Affairs

Chap. I. be papists, though they complied outwardly. The chief of these were Elphinstone, secretary of state, whom he made lord Balmerino, and Seaton, afterwards chancellor and earl of Dunfermline ; by their means he studied to assure the papists that he would connive at them. A letter was also writ to the pope by him, giving him assurance of this, which when it came to be published by Bellarmine, upon the prosecution of the recusants after the discovery of the gunpowder plot, Balmerino did affirm that he out of zeal to the king's service got his hand to it, having put it in * the bundle* of papers that were signed in course, without the king's knowing any thing of it ^. Yet when that discovery drew no other severity on the secretary, but the turning him J 609. out of office, and the passing a sentence condemning him to die for it (which was presently pardoned, and he was after a short confinement restored to his liberty), all men believed that the king knew of the letter, and that the pre- tended confession of the secretary was only collusion to lay the jealousies of the king's favouring popery, which still hung upon him, notwithstanding his writing on the Revelation, and his affecting to enter on all occasions into controversy, asserting in particular that the pope was antichrist.

•"As he took these methods to manage the popish party,

he was much more careful to secure to himself the body of

the English nation. Cecil, afterwards earl of Salisbury,

secretary to queen Elizabeth, entered into a particular con-

1601-1603. fidence with him : and this was managed by his ambassador

9 Bruce ^ a younger brother of a noble family in Scotland,

" altered from, a croud and a company. t But struck out.

' Mr. S. R. Gardiner has convinced cousin of David II ; he vi^as born

himself of the truth of Balmerino's about 1549. In 1601 he went Mv'\t\i

statement, Hist, of Engl. i. 81 note, the Earl of Mar on an embassy to

ii. 32. See especially H. M. C. Elizabeth. He then became Cecil's

Rep. iii. 55. correspondent with James, i6oa. In

^ Edward Bruce, titular abbot of 1603 he was made Master of the Rolls

Kinloss, an eminent Scotch lawyer, and Baron Bruce of Kinloss • and

second son of Sir Edward Bruce, diedini6ii. Corresp.ofJatnesVIwith

and grandson of Sir David Bruce Sir R. Cecil, Introd. I am not aware

of Clackmannan, was lineally de- of any evidence supporting Burnet's

scended from Robert de Bruce, statement regarding an ' engage-

before the Restoration.

who carried | the matter with such address and secrecy, Chap. i. that all the great men of England, without knowing of one ^^ another's doing it, and without the queen's suspecting any- thing concerning it, signed in writing an engagement to assert and stand by the king of Scots right of succession. This great service was rewarded by making him Master of the Rolls, and a peer of Scotland : and as the king did raise Cecil and his friends to the greatest posts and dig- nities, so he * raised Bruce's family here in England ^

When that king came to the crown of England he dis- 1603. covered his inveterate hatred to the Scottish Kirk on many occasions, in which he gratified his resentment without consulting his interests ^. He ought to have put his utmost strength to the finishing what he did but faintly begin for ^ the union of both kingdoms, which was lost by his unreason- able partiality in pretending that Scotland ought to be considered in this union as the third part of the isle of Great Britain, if not more ® : so high a demand ruined the design.

° very much struck out. " substituted for, in order to.

ment.' See Salmon's Examination, 306. It should be remembered that by an arrangement made at Berwick on July 2, 1 586, James received a pen- sion of £4,000 a year, and there was a tacit engagement that, so long as he was loyal to England, his claims to the succession would be recognized. Froude, xii. 133.

■ Robert Cecil, great-grandson to the first Earl of Salisbury, told me that his ancestor inquiring into the character of King James, Bruce's answ^er was, ' Ken ye a John Ape ? en I's have him, he'l bite you : en you's have him, he'l bite me.' D. Compare Ralph, i. 499, note [quoted from Ferguson's ' Second Letter to a person of honour,' which was written at the time of Charles I I's declaration that he had not been married to Monmouth's mother ; see Ferguson's Robert Ferguson thePlotter,$i'] where Lord Burleigh's name instead of that

of his son the Earl of Salisbury is brought forward on this occasion. R.

^ The Earl of Seafield told me that King James frequently declared that he never looked upon himself to be more than King of Scotland in name, till he came to be King of England ; but now, he said, one kingdom would help him to govern the other, or he had studied kingcraft [cf. supra 6, note] to very little purpose from his cradle to that time. D. He congratulated himself upon having exchanged the ' wild and unruly colt ' for a ' towardly riding horse.' Corresp. of James VI with Sir R. Cecil, Introd. xlv. In Scotland he was ' a king without state, without honour, without order ; where beard- less boys (the Presbyterian ministers) would brave me to the face.'

" Gardiner, Hist, of Engl. i. 176, 328. There is no evidence for the statement in the text. The title of

10 A Summary of Affairs

Chap. I. But when that failed him, he should then have studied to keep the affections of that nation firm to him : and certainly his being secured of that kingdom might have been so managed as to have prevented that disjointing which hap- pened afterwards both in his own reign, and more tragically in his son's. He thought to effect this by his profuse bounty to many of the nobility of that kingdom, and to his domestic servants : but as most of these settling in England were of no further use to him in that design, so his setting up episcopacy in Scotland, and his constant aversion to the Kirk, how right soever it might be in itself, was a great erroi' in policy; for the poorer that kingdom was, it was both the more easy to gain them, and the more dangerous to offend them. So the terror which the affections of the Scotch nation might have justly given the English was soon lost, by his engaging his whole government to support that which was then very contrary to the bent and genius of the nation.

But though he set up bishops, he had no revenues to give them but what he was to purchase for them. * During his minority, all the tithes and the church lands were vested in the crown : but this was only in order to the granting them away to the men that bore the chief sway'. It is true, 1587- when he came of age, he, according to the law of Scotland, past a general revocation of all that had been done in his infancy: and by this he could have resumed all those grants. He, and after him his son, succeeded in one part of his design : for by Act of Parliament ^ a court was erected that was to examine the state of the tithes in every parish, and to make a competent provision out of a third pail to 10 those who served ^ the cure ^ ; which had been reserved in the great alienation for the service of the church. This

" for struck out. » them intei-lined.

' King of Great Britain, France and ready inalienably in the hands of the

Ireland, Defender of the Faith, &c.' nobles were annexed to the Crown

was assumed by James by proclama- James gave them away lavishly,

tion on Oct. 20, 1604. Prothero, ^ Ads of Parliament of Scotland,

Select Statutes and Documents of iii. 24, 90, 303, 546. The last of

Elizabeth and James I, 393. these, June 5, 1592, is a ratification

' In 1587 all church lands not a of the Act made in February, 1587.

before the Restoration. ii

was carried at first to a proportion of about thirty pound Chap. I.

a year, and was afterwards in his son's time raised to about

fifty pound a year ; which, considering the plenty, and way of living in that country, is a very liberal provision, and is equal in value to thrice that sum in the southern parts of England. * In this he had both the clergy and the body of the people on his side ; but he could not so easily provide for the bishops. They were at first forced to hold their former cures, with some small addition.

But as they assumed at their first setting out little more authority than that of a constant president of the presbyters, so they met with much rough opposition. The king intended to carry on a conformity in matters of religion with England, and he began to buy in from the grantees many of the estates that belonged to the bishoprics. It was also enacted that a form of prayer should be drawn for Scot- land : and the king was authorized to appoint the habits in which the divine offices were to be performed. Some of the chief holydays were ordered to be observed ; the sacrament was to be received kneeling, and to be given to the sick. Confirmation was enacted ; as also the use of the cross in bap- tism. These things ^ were first past '' in General Assemblies, which were composed of bishops and the deputies chosen by the clergy, who sat all in one house : and in it they reckoned the bishops only as single votes. Great opposition was made to all these steps : and the whole force "= of the government was strained to carry elections to those meet- ings, or to take off those who were chosen ; in which it was thought that no sort of practice was omitted. It was pre- tended that some were frighted, and others were corrupted.

The bishops themselves did their part very ill ^. They generally grew haughty* : they neglected their functions, and

" but struck out. >* substituted for enacted. " substituted for

business. ^ and disdainful, vain and luxurious struck out.

1 Articles of Perth, accepted by the " The use of the cross in baptism

Assembly, August 37, 1618; ratified was not enacted. See Gardiner, i.

by Parliament on Black Saturday, 222-236. August 4, 1621.

12 A Summary of Affairs

Chap. I. Were often at court, and ^ lost all esteem » with the people. Some few that were stricter and more learned did lean so grossly to popery, that the ''heat and violence of the Reforma- tion became the main subject of their sermons and discourses. King James grew weary of this opposition, or was so appre-

MS. 5. hensive | of the ill effects that it might have, that, what

through sloth or fear, and what by reason of the great disorder

into which his ill conduct brought his affairs in England in

his latter years, he went no further in his designs on Scotland.

He had three children. His eldest, prince Henry, was

a prince of great hopes ; but so very little like his father,

11 that he was rather feared than loved by him. He was so

zealous a protestant, that, when his father was entertaining

i6ir. propositions of marrying him to popish princesses^, once"

to the archduchess, and at another time to a daughter of

Savoy, he in a letter that he wrote to the king on the twenty-

1612. second of that October in which he died (the original of

which sir William Cook shewed me), desired that if his

father married him that way, it might be with the youngest

person of the two, of whose conversion he might have hope,

and that any liberty she might be allowed for her religion

might be in the privatest manner possible. Whether this

aversion to popery hastened his death or not, I cannot

tell. ''Colonel Titus ^ assured me that he had it from

" altered from they lost all sort of esteem. •> unjust ■sXtmcV. out.

" substituted for sometimes. ^ but struck out.

' Viz. the Infanta Anne and her to his death ; he died of typhoid,

sister Maria: the daughter of the Nov. 6, 1612, in his nineteenth year.

Duke of Savoy; the two daughters See The Illness and Death of Henry

of the Queen Regent of France ; Prince of Wales— a historical case of

and one of the sisters of the Grand typhoid fever; by Norman Moore

Duke of Tuscany. Gardiner, //(s/. 0/' M.D. ; reprinted from the St. Bar-

Engl. ii. 137, 153. Possibly the last tholomew Hospital Reports, vol.

was the 'Archduchess' of whom xvii. For his character, see Gardiner

Burnet speaks. The only person who ii. 159, 347. The report of the doctors

really bore that title in James's reign who were present at the post-mortem

was the Infanta Isabella, married to examination is in Birch's Z,j/eo/7/<;«ry

the Archduke Charles Albert, in con- Prince of Wales, 1760, 359, and in Wel-

junction with whom she ruled the wood, iW^moj'ra, App. 233. Welwood

Netherlands. Cf. m/''« 83, note. was Physician to William III. Upon

' There was really no mystery as Titus, see infra 76, note.

before the Restoration. 13

king Charles the first's own mouth, that he was well assured Chap, I. of it that he was poisoned by the earl of Somerset's means. It is certain that from the time of the gunpowder plot king James was so struck with the terror of that danger he was then so near, that ever after he had no mind to provoke the Jesuits ; for he saw what they were capable of.

And since I name that conspiracy which the papists in our days have had the impudence to deny^, and to pretend it was an artifice of Cecil's to engage some desperate men into a plot, which he managed so that he could discover it when he pleased, I will mention what I my self saw, and had for some time in my possession. Sir Everard Digby * suffered for "that conspiracy: he was 1605. the father of the famous sir Kenelm Digby. '' The family being ruined upon the death of sir Kenelm's son, "when the executors were looking out for writings to make out the title of the estates they were to sell ^, '^ and were directed by an old servant to a cupboard that was very artificially hid, in which some papers lay, that she had observed sir Kenelm was oft reading, they, looking into it, found a velvet bag, within which there were two other silk bags : (so care- fully were those relics kept :) and there was within these a collection of all the letters that sir Everard writ during his imprisonment. In these he expresses great trouble, because he heard some of their friends blamed their under- taking: he highly magnifies it ; and says, if he had many lives, he would willingly have sacrificed them all in carrying it on. " In one paper he says, they had taken that care that there

* suffered for (altered). ' and when struck out. <> substituted

for while. ^ they struck out. ° and struck out.

' See what Lord Stafford says of They were found 'by us, Sir Rice

this plot, in his trial. O. Cobbett's Rudd, Bart., and William Wogan of

State Trials, vol. vii. 1357. Grajr's Inn, about the month of

'^ At Gothurst, near Newport September, 1675, at the house of

Pagnell, in Bucks. Cole's MS. note. Charles Cornwallis, Esq., executor

Everard Digby^s Letters and Poems of Sir Kenelm Digby, son and heir

were first published in the appendix of the said Sir Everard, tied up in

to The Gunpowder Treason, reprinted two silk bags ; ' id. 239. See also

in 1679 vaith a Preface by Thomas Jardine, Narrative of the Gunpowder

IBarlow] Lord Bishop of Lincoln. Plot, 153.

14 A Summary of Affairs

Chap. I. were not above two or three worth saving to whom they had not given notice to keep out of the way : and in none of those papers does he express any sort of remorse for that which he had been engaged in, and for which he suffered.

Upon the discovery of that plot, there was a general prosecution of all papists set on foot : but king James was very uneasy at it : which was much increased by what sir 12 Dudley Carleton told him upon his return from Spain, where he had been ambassador^; which I had from the lord Holies, who said to me that Carleton told it to himself, and was much troubled when he saw it had an effect contrary to what he had intended. When he came home, he found the king at Theobald's hunting in a very careless and unguarded manner : and upon that, * in order to the put- ting him * on a more careful looking to himself, he told the king he must either give over that way of hunting, or stop another hunting that he was engaged in, which was priest hunting : for he had intelligence in Spain that the priests were comforting themselves with this, that if he went on

" altered from to put him.

' Carleton was born 1573 and died he was made Vice-Chamberlain, and

1632. There is no trace of his having was placed on the Privy Council,

been employed officially in Spain. He then went on a joint embassy

In June, 1602, he accompanied Sir with the Earl of Holland to France,

T. Parry, ambassador to France, as returning March i62f. In May he

secretary; in 1603 he became private was created Lord Carleton of Imber-

secretary to Henry, Earl of North- court. He again went to the Hague,

umberland, and in 1605 went with remaining there for two years. On

Lord Norris on a tour in Spain. In July 25, 1628, he became Viscount

May, 1610, he was named ambas- Dorchester, and, in December, Chief

sador to Brussels, but succeeded Sir Secretary of State. Many of his

H. Wootton instead at Venice be- Letters during the Venice embassy

tween August and December ; Win- are in Winwood, iii. Those during

wood. Memorials of State Affairs his first embassy at the Hague were

(i725),iii.2i3,236. He was knighted published in 1755 by the second Earl

in Sept. 1610, returned in 1615 after of Hardwicke ; and those relating to

being instrumental in concluding the the 1627 embassy by Sir T. Phillipps

treaty of Asti, and in Jan. 161 J sue- in 1841. See also Cabala, siveScrinia

ceeded Winwood at the Hague, Sacra {i65^);-&\r<:h., Court and Times

remaining there for five years ; Eglin- of James I and Charles I ; Clarendon

ton MSS., H. M. C. Rep. i. 520-606. Rebellion (ed. Macray, i888), i. 141'

In 1625 he was again at the Hague 143 ; Carleton's Negotiations (ed!

with Buckingham. Upon his return Sawyer, 1725).

before the Restoration. 15

against them they would soon get rid of him. Queen Chap. I. Elizabeth was a woman of form, and was always so well attended ^, that all their plots against her failed, and were never brought to any effect : but '' a prince who was always in woods or forests would be easily overtaken. The king sent for him in private to inquire more particularly into this : and he saw it had made a great impression on him, but wrought otherwise than as he intended. For the king, resolving to gratify his humour in hunting, and in a careless and irregular way of life, did immediately order all that prosecution to be let fall. I have the minutes of the council books of the year 1606, which are full of orders to discharge and transport priests, sometimes ten in a day. From thence to his dying day he continued always writing and talking against popery, but acting for it. He married 1613. his only daughter to a protestant prince, one of the most zealous and sincerest, but one of the weakest, of them all, the elector palatine ; upon which a great revolution hap- pened in the affairs of Germany. The eldest branch of the house of Austria retained some of the impressions that their father Maximilian the second studied to infuse into them, who, as he was certainly one of the best and wisest princes of these latter ages, so he was unalterably fixed in I his opinion against persecution for matters of conscience : MS. 6. his own sentiments were so very favourable to the protes- tant doctrine that he was thought inwardly theirs. His brother Charles of Gratz was on the other hand wHblly managed by the Jesuits, was a zealous patron of theirs, and as zealously supported by them. Rodolph and Matthias ^ reigned one after another, but without issue ; their brother Albert was then dying in Flanders : so Spain with the whole popish interest joined to advance Ferdinand, the son of Charles of Gratz : and he forced Matthias to re- sign the crown of Bohemia to him, and got himself to be 1617 elected king. But his government became quickly severe : he resolved to extirpate the protestants, and began to

° on struck out. '' substituted for one.

' Rodolph and Matthias were the two elder sons of Maximilian.

i6 A Summary of Affairs

Chap. I. break through* the privileges that were secured to them by the laws of that kingdom. 13 This occasioned a general insurrection, which was followed

1618. by an assembly of the states, who, together with those of Silesia, Moravia, and Lusatia, joined in deposing Ferdi- nand : and they offered their crown first to the duke of

1619. Saxony, who refused it, and then to the elector palatine, who accepted of it, being encouraged to it by his two uncles, Maurice prince of Orange, and the duke of Bouillon. But he did not ask the advice of king James : he only gave him notice of it when he had accepted the offer. Here was the probablest occasion that has been offered since the Reformation for its full establishment.

The English nation was much inclined to support it : and it was expected that so near a conjunction might have prevailed on the king : but he had an invincible aversion to war; and was so possessed of the opinion of a divine right in all kings that he could not bear that even an elec- tive and limited king should be called in question by his subjects : so he would never acknowledge his son-in-law king, nor give him any assistance for the support of his new dignity^- And though it was also reckoned on, that France would enter into any design that should bring down the house of Austria, and Spain by consequence, yet even 1621. that was diverted by the means of De Luines ^ ; a worth- less but absolute favourite, whom the archduchess Isabella, princess of the Spanish Netherlands, gained to oblige the king [of France] into a neutrality by giving him the richest heiress then in Flanders, the daughter of Pecquigny, left to her disposal, whom he married to his brother.

" altered from invade.

' The want of money and the desire ment in their behalf would be able

to satisfy Spain were additional, to awaken him.' and powerful, motives. Welwood, ''■ It was the revolt of the Hugue-

28, quotes a saying of Gondomar, nets in Beam which prevented the

the Spanish ambassador : ' He had intended interference. Charles d'Al-

willed King James so fast asleep that bert, Sieur de Luines, Constable of

he hoped neither the cries of his France, died whilst suppressing it

daughter nor her children, nor the Dec. 14, 1621. Martin Hist, de

repeated solicitations of his Parlia- France, xi. iia-180.

before the Restoration. 17

Thus poor Frederick was left without any assistance. Chap. I. The jealousy that the Lutherans had of the ascendant that the Calvinists might gain by this accession had an unhappy share in the coldness which all the princes of that confession shewed "towards him*. Saxony only declared for Fer- dinand, who likewise engaged the duke of Bavaria ^ at the head of a catholic league to maintain his interests. Maurice prince of Orange had embroiled Holland by the espousing the controversy about the decrees of God in opposition to the Arminian party, and by erecting a new and illegal court by the authority of the States General to judge of the affairs of the province of Holland ; which was plainly contrary to their constitution, by which every province is an entire sovereignty within itself, not at all subordinate to the States General, who act only as the plenipotentiaries of the several provinces to maintain their union and their common concerns by that assembly^. Barneveldt was condemned and executed : Grotius and others were con- 1619. demned to perpetual imprisonment : and an- assembly of the 14 ministers of the several provinces met at Dort by the same authority, and condemned and deprived the Arminians^. Maurice his enemies gave out that he managed all this on design to make himself master of the provinces, and to put those who were like to oppose him out of the way. But though this seems a wild and groundless imagination, and not possible to be compassed, yet it is certain that he looked on Barneveldt and his party as men who were so jealous of him and of a military power, that as they had forced the truce with Spain, so they would be very un- willing to begin " a new war ; though the dispute about

» substituted for on this occasion. ^ substituted for court, and the full

stop is after that word. " substituted for engage in.

1 Sc. Maximilian II. United Netherlands, iv. passim.

" James sent commissioners to the In another aspect the conflict was

Assembly of Dort both for England one of the commercial and pro-

and for Scotland. Upon the ffliany fessional oligarchy against central

causes of quarrel between Maurice government. Cf, D'Estrades, Am-

andBarneveldt, and between Holland bassades et Negotiations (i-] 18), 155.

and the other States, see Motley's On Maurice's espousal of Calvinism

VOL. I. C

i8 A Summary of Affairs

Chap. I. Juliers and Cleves had almost engaged them, and the truce was now near expiring ; at the end of which he hoped, if delivered from the opposition that he might look [for] from that party, to begin the war anew. By these means there was a great fermentation over all the provinces, so that Maurice was not then in condition to give the elected king any considerable assistance; though" indeed he needed it much, for his conduct was very weak. He affected the grandeur of a regal court and the magnificence of a crowned head too early : and his queen set up some of the gay diversions that she had been accustomed to in her father's court, such as balls and masks, which very much disgusted the good Bohemians, who thought that a revolu- tion made on the account of religion ought to have put on MS. 7. a greater appearance of seriousness and simplicity. | These particulars I had from the children of some who belonged to that court. The elected king was quickly overthrown,

1622. and driven not only out of those his new dominions but like- wise out of his hereditary countries. He fled to Holland,

1631- where he ended his days. I will go no further in a matter so well known as king James's ill conduct in the whole series of that war, and that unheard-of practice of send-

1623. ing his only son through France into Spain, of which the relations we have are so full that I can add nothing to them.

I will only here tell some particulars with relation to Germany that Fabricius, the wisest divine I ^ knew ■= among them", told me he had from Charles Lewis ^ the elector palatine's own mouth. He said, Frederic the 2d. who first reformed the palatinate, whose life is so curiously writ by Thomas Hubert of Liege ^, was resolved to shake off popery, and to set up Lutheranism in his country: but

» substituted for and. " ever crossed out. <= substituted for in Germany.

and Barneveldt's of Arminianisra 2 Hubert Thomas, of Liege was

against their own convictions, for a Belgian historian who in 1622

politicalreasons, compare f 316; and became Secretary to the Elector

Motley, United Netherlands, iv. 546. Palatine Frederick II. He wrote

' Son of Frederick of Bohemia Annalium de vita ei rebus testis

and EUzabeth, daughter of James I. FrederidU Comitis Palatini libri xiv

before the Restoration. 19

a counsellor of his laid before him, that the Lutherans Chap. I. would always depend chiefly on the house of Saxony : so ' it would not become him who was the first elector to be only the second in the party. ° It was more for his dignity to become Calvinist : he would be the head of that party : it would give him a great interest in Switzerland, and make the Huguenots of France and in the Netherlands depend on 15 him. ^ He was by that determined to declare for the Hel- vetian confession. But upon the ruin of their family the 1609. duke of Neuburg had an interview with the elector of Brandenburg about their concerns in Juliers and Cleves : and he persuaded that elector to turn Calvinist ; for since their family was fallen, nothing would more contribute to raise the other than the espousing that side, which would naturally come under his protection : but he added, that for himself he "= had turned ° papist, since his little principality lay so near both Austria and Bavaria ' . This that elector told with a sort of pleasure, when he made it appear that other princes had no more'* sense of religion than he himself had. Other circumstances concurred to make king James's reign so inglorious. The States having borrowed great sums of money of queen Elizabeth, they gave her the Brill and Flushing, with some other places of less note, as pawns, till the money should be repaid. Soon after his coming to the crown of England he entered into secret treaties with Spain^, in order to the forcing the States to a peace: one article was, that if they were obstinate he would deliver up

" Bxtt struck out. ' and struck out. " altered from would turn.

^ substituted for other. ^ . . .

(1604); De Palatinorum origine; about the cautionary towns was ' un-

Historia Belli rusiicani in Germania meaning verbiage,' explained to the

(1609); and other works. Zedler, States. Gardiner, Hist, of Engl. i.

Universal Lexicon, vol. 43, 1528. 209. Bameveldt came to England

' The facts are here given very in 1603, not about the cautionary

incorrectly; see Gardiner, Thirty towns, but to get help for Ostend

Years War (Epochs of Modern against Spain. Id. 105. The debt

History), 21. was ;^6oo,ooo, of which ;^2i5,ooo

^ The treaty was public in July, only was paid in 1616. Elizabeth

1604. The States refused to be in- appears to have lent, in 1576,

eluded in it. All that was said another sum of jC40,ooo, for which

C 2

20 A Summary of Affairs

Chap. I. these places to the Spaniards. When the truce was made,

Barneveldt, though he had promoted it, yet knowing this

secret article, he saw they were very unsafe while the keys of Holland and Zealand were in the hands of a prince who might perhaps sell them or make an ill use of them : so he persuaded the States to redeem the mortgage by repaying the money that England had lent, for which these places 1616. were put in their hands : and he came over himself to treat about it. King James, who was profuse upon his favourites and servants, was delighted with the prospect of so much money ; and immediately, without calling a parliament to advise with them about it, he did yield to the proposition. So the money was paid, and the places were evacuated ; an action more to be commended for its honesty than wisdom. But his profuseness drew two other things upon him, which broke the whole authority of the crown, and the dependence of the nation upon it. The crown had a great estate over all England, which was all let out upon leases for years, and a small rent was reserved. So most of the great families of the nation were the tenants of the crown, and a great many boroughs were depending on the estates so held. The renewal of these leases brought in fines both to the crown and to the great officers : besides that the fear of being denied a renewal kept all in a depen- dence "on the court"- King James obtained of his parlia- ment a power of granting, "that is selling % those estates for ever, with the reserve of the old quit-rent ^- and all ''the money raised by" this was profusely squandered away. Another main part of the regal authority was the wards, 16 which anciently the crown took into their own management. ''Our kings were, according to the first institution, the

" interlined. •> and struck out.

Antwerp, Bruges, Ghent, and Ypres ^ There is nothing in the Statutes

became bound. About 1657 Charles to show that James ever obtained

II tried in vain to get these towns to this power. In 1609 he entailed

advance him money upon condition upon the Crown all lands in his

of release from this debt. H. M. C. possession, which enabled him to

Rep. viii. 30. limit the effects of his own profusion.

before the Restoration. 21

guardians of these wards ^ : they bred them up in their Chap. i. court, and disposed of them in marriage as they thought fit. Afterwards they compounded or forgave them, or gave them to some branches of the family, or to provide the younger children. But they proceeded in this very gently : and the chief care after the reformation was to breed the wards protestants. Still all * were under a great dependence by this means ; much money was not raised this way, but families were often at mercy, and were used according to their behaviour. | King James granted these MS. 8. generally to his servants and favourites, and they made the most of them. So that what was before a dependence on the crown, and was moderately compounded for, became then a most exacting oppression, by which several families were ruined. *" This went on in king Charles's time in the same method. Our kings thought they gave little " when they disposed of a ward", because they made little of these. All this raised such an outcry, that Mr. Pierpoint at the Restoration gathered so many instances of these and represented them so effectually to that house of com- mons that called home king Charles the second, that he persuaded them to redeem themselves by an offer of excise, i66r. which produces indeed a much greater revenue, but took away the dependence in which all families were held by the dread of leaving their heirs exposed to so great a danger. Pierpoint valued himself to me upon this ser- vice he did his country, at a time when the thing was so little considered on either hand, that the court did not seem to apprehend the value of that they parted with, nor the country the value of that they purchased ^

" families struck out. '' and struck out. " interlined.

' See the case of the young Duke was one of the objects of the con-

of Ormondin Carte's Ormond, i. 7-10 spirators of the Gunpowder Plot ;

(Clarendon Press). For the revenue Gunpowder Treason, with Preface by

raised from the Court of Wards by Thomas, Lord Bishop of Lincoln

Cottington, and for the discontent (.1679), 25°-

thus caused, see Clarendon, if«6«//;bK, ^ The right of wardship accrued

ii. 102. The abohtion of wardships when a tenant by knight service

22

A Summary of Affairs

Chap. I. Besides these public ^ actings, king James " suffered much in the opinion of all people *> by his strange way of using one of the greatest men of that age, sir Walter Raleigh ; 1618. against whom the proceeding at first was much censured, but the last part of them was thought both barbarous and illegal''- The whole business of Somerset's rise and fall, the matter of the countess of Essex and Overbury, the putting the inferior persons to death for that infamous poisoning and the sparing the principals, both Somerset and his lady, were so odious and inhuman, that it quite sunk the reputa- tion of a reign that on many other accounts was already much exposed to contempt and censure, which was the more sensible because it succeeded such a glorious and 17 happy one ^. In the end of James's reign he was become

° substituted for proceedings, the king. ' These four lines are struck out.

happened to be a minor, and con- sisted in an absolute control over the revenue of his lands during his minority, without the necessity of rendering any account on his coming of age. Wardship was abolished by an order of the Long Parliament on February 24, 1645, and again by Act of Parliament in 1656, the abolition to count from the former date. Scobell, Ads and Ordinances of the Long Parliament, 375. Purveyance and composition for purveyance were abolished May, 1657. Id. 383. Clarendon had made up his mind, before the Restoration, that the Court of Wards could not continue. The Act of 1661 turned all military tenures into ' free and common soccage,' from Feb. 24, 1645, and was probably a leading cause of English agricultural pros- perity. Broixick, English Land and English Landlords, 44. Half of the Excise, reckoned at £100,000, was given to the Crown in perpetuity, half to the king for life. Hansard's Pari. Hist, iv. 146-151, 159, 162. The latter provision was rejected

on Nov. 21 by 151 to 149 (Hansard's Pari. Hist, is incorrect on this point), but carried on Nov. 27. C J. Nov. 21, 27. The original proposal had been to lay the burden on the land. Andrew Marvell to the Corporation of Hull; Grosart's Edu. of MarveWs Works, ii. 19-38. Hallam, Hist, of Engl. sm. ed. ii. 312, 313. See the Statutes at large, iii. 192. There is an important paper of reasons against abolishing the Court of Wards in the Cal. St. P. Dom. 1660-1, 361.

' See the curious work The None- Such Charles, his Character, extracted out of divers Originall Transactions, &c. published by authority, xi,^^, anon., 96. According to a statement of Balthasar Gerbier, who was accused of the authorship upon internal evidence, and who had already disclaimed it in 1652 {Clarendon MSS.), it was written by Hugh Peters. Cal. St. P. Dom. i66i-2, 79. But Peters was dead and could not deny the fact; while there is no reason to suppose that he should have pub- lished anonymously words about Charles 1 far less severe than those

before the Restoration. 23

"weary of the duke of Buckingham, who treated hhn with Chap. I. such an air of insolent contempt that he seemed at last resolved to throw it off, but could not think of taking the load of government on himself, and so resolved to bring in the earl of Somerset again into favour, as that lord himself reported it to some from whom I had it. He met him in the night in the gardens at Theobald's : two bed-chamber men were only in the secret. The king embraced him tenderly, and with many tears ^ complained how ill he was used. ^ The earl of Somerset '' believed the secret was not well kept ; for soon after the king was taken with some fits of an ague, and died '-^ of it "■ My father was then in London, and did very much suspect an ill practice in the matter : but perhaps doctor Craig, my mother's uncle, ^ who was one of the king's physicians ^, possessed him with these apprehensions ; for he was disgraced for saying he believed the king was poisoned. It is certain no king could die less lamented or less esteemed than he was. This sunk the credit of the bishops of Scotland, who, as they were his creatures, so they were obliged to a great dependence on him, and were thought guilty of gross ° and abject flattery towards him ^ His reign in England was a continued course of mean ^ practices. The first condemnation of sir W. Raleigh, one of the greatest men of the age, was '' very black ^ : but the executing him after so many years, and after an employment that had been given him, was counted a barbarous sacrificing him to the Spaniards. The rise and fall of the earl of Somersets and the swift progress

" so struck out. '' substituted for He. ' substituted for quickly

after. ^ interlined. " substituted for ^rea*. ' The passage from

here to the end of the paragraph, 'corruption of Spain,'' is added on the reverse side of the opposite leaf/. 7''. ^ substituted for base and infamous. ^ substituted for a piece of black villainy. ' and the pardoning him and

his lady for the poisoning of Sir Tho. Overbury, when their agents suffered but they who were the principals were pardoned, and the unaccountable rise struck out.

which he owned. Gerbier had, of ^ This story of a reconcih'ation

course, in 1661 good reason for his appears to be absolutely groundless,

disclaimer. See Wheatley's edition Somersetwaspaidonedafew months

of Pepys, iii. 148 note. before the death of James. Craig

24 A Summary of Affairs

Chap. I. of the duke of Buckingham's greatness, were things that

exposed him to the censures" of all the world. I have

seen the originals of about twenty letters that he wrote to the prince and that duke while they were in Spain, which shew a meanness as well as a fondness that render him very contemptible. •> The great figure the crown of England had made in queen Elizabeth's time, who had rendered" herself the arbiter of Christendom and the wonder of the age, was so much eclipsed, if not quite darkened, during this reign, that king James was become the scorn of the age ; and while hungry writers flattered him out of measure at home, he was despised by all abroad as a pedant without true judgment, courage, or steadiness, subject to his favourites, and delivered up to the counsels, or rather the corruption, of Spain ^-

The puritans gained credit as the king and the bishops lost it ^- They put on external appearance of great strict- ness and gravity : they took more pains in their parishes than those who adhered to the bishops, and were often preaching against the vices of the court ; for which they were sometimes punished, though very gently, which raised 18 their reputation, and drew presents ^ to them '^ that made up their sufferings abundantly. They began some parti- cular methods of getting their people to meet privately with them : and in these meetings they gave great vent to extemporary prayer, which was looked on as a sort of inspiration : and by these means they grew very popular. They were very factious and insolent ; and both in their sermons and prayers were always mixing severe reflections on their enemies. Some of them boldly gave out very many predictions ; particularly two of them who were held

° substituted for contempt. ^ and struck out. <: substituted for

made, struck out. ^ interlined.

was one of the regular physicians in doctor at Dunmow. Gardiner, v. 313.

attendance upon the king, and was ' On this passage see Remarks on

jealous on the score of remediesbeing Bishop Burnefs History by a True

applied by Buckingham's mother, Briton (London, n.d.)

which were suggested by a country ^ Sc. in Scotland.

before the Restoration. 25

prophets, Davison and Bruce ^- Some of the things that Chap. I. they foretold came to pass : but my father, who knew them both, told me of many of their predictions that he himself heard them throw out, which had no effect : but all these were forgot, and if some more probable guessings which they delivered as prophecies were accomplished, these were much magnified. They were very spiteful against all those who differed from them ; and were wanting in no methods that could procure them either good usage or good pre- sents. Of this my father had great occasion to see many instances : for my great grandmother, | who was a very rich woman, and much engaged to them, was most obse- MS. 9. quiously courted by them. Bruce lived concealed in her house for some years : and they all found such advantages in their submissions to her, that she was counted for many years the chief support of the party : her name was Rachel Arnot. She was daughter to sir John Arnot, a man in great favour, and lord treasurer depute. Her husband Johnston was the greatest merchant at that time ; and left her an estate of 2000/. a year, to be disposed of among his children as she pleased: and my father marrying her eldest grandchild saw a great way "^ into all the methods of the puritans.

Cowrie's conspiracy was by them charged on the king, as a contrivance of his to get rid of that earl, who was then 1601. held in great esteem : but my father, who had taken great pains to inquire into all the particulars of that matter, did always believe it was a real conspiracy ^. "^ One thing,

" substituted for deal. ^ and struck out.

' Davison was minister of Lib- consequence. Spottiswoode, iii. 90,

berton. Bruce, the most popular 103.

presbyterian minister of his day, '^ There is no valid reason for

officiated at the coronation of James's doubting its genuineness. Burton's

queen ; withstood James to the face History of Scotland, vi. 86-135 ;

when the catholic earl of Huntly Ciom3.Tt-fs History of the Conspiracies

returned in 1596 ; and was banished of the Earl of Gowrie. Upon Gowrie

for refusing to answer as was and his descendants see Bruce,

desired about Gowrie. He gave Papers relating to William, ist Earl

way, and was allowed to return in of Gowrie, and Patrick Ruthven his

1602; but incurred the displeasure $th and last surviving son, privately

of the Kirk and was discharged in printed, London, 1867.

26 A Summary of Affairs

Chap. I. which none of the historians have taken any notice of, might have induced '^ the earl of Gowrie " to put king James out of the way, but in such a disguised manner that he should seem rather to have escaped out of a snare than to have laid one for the king. ^ Upon the king's death he stood next to the succession to the crown of England'; for king Henry the seventh's daughter that was married to king James the fourth did after his death marry Douglas earl of Angus : but they could not agree : so a precontract was proved against him, upon which, by a sentence from 19 Rome, the marriage was voided, with a clause in favour of the issue, since born under a marriage de facto and bona fide. Lady Margaret Douglas was the child so provided for. 1 " did peruse ° the original bull confirming the divorce. After that, the queen dowager married one Francis Stewart, and had by him a son made lord iVlethven by king James the fifth. In the patent he is csOA&A f rater noster uterimis. He had only a daughter, who was mother ^ or grandmother ^ to this earl of Gowrie : so that by this he might be glad to put the king out of the way, that so he might stand next to the succession of the crown of England. He had a brother then a child, who when he grew up and found he could not carry the name of Ruthven, which by an act of parliament made after this conspiracy none might carry, he went and lived beyond sea ; and it was given out that he had the philosopher's stone. He had two sons, who died without issue ; and one daughter, married to

" substituted for him to have wished. ^ was that struck out.

" substituted for read. ^ interlined.

' See Preface to the 1823 edition. Burnet has been completely misled. ' Francis Stewart ' should be Henry Stewart, ist Earl of Methven, who married and had heirs as follows : —

(i) Margaret Tudor, widow of the Earl of Angus. She had one child who died in infancy. Henry Stewart, =^ (2) Janet Stewart, eldest daughter of John 2nd ist Earl of Methven | Earl of Athol.

Henry, 2nd Joanna Dorothea =p William, Master of Ruthven Earl of Methven. | ist Earl of Gowrie.

James, 2nd Earl of Gowrie. John, 3rd Earl of Gowrie.

From which it is clear that Gowrie had absolutely no claim.

before the Restoration. 27

sir Anthony Vandyke the famous picture drawer^, "who Chap. I. according to this pedigree stood very near the succession of the crown ^ It was not easy to persuade the nation of the truth of that conspiracy : for eight years before that time king James, on a secret jealousy of the earl of Murray, then esteemed the handsomest man of Scotland, set on the marquis of Huntly, who was his mortal enemy, to murder 1592. him ; and by a writing^, all in his own hand, he promised to save him harmless for it. He set the house in which he was on fire : and the earl flying away was followed and murdered, and Huntly sent Gordon of Buckey with the news to the king. ''All '^who were" concerned in that vile fact were pardoned, which laid the king open to much censure. And this made the matter of Gowrie ° to be " the less believed.

CHAPTER II.

Charles I.

To the outbreak of the Civil War,

When king Charles succeeded to the crown, he was at 1625.

first thought favourable to the pui'itans ; for his tutor and

all his court were of that way ^ : and Dr. Preston, then

" interlined. '' struck out. " interlined.

' William and Patrick Ruthven Jane Hepburn, sister of Bothwell,

were the 4th and 5th sons of the ist husbandof Mary Queen of Scots; and

Earl of Gowrie. At the accession of was created Earl of Bothwell in 1587.

James to the English throne, William For his turbulence see Spottiswoode

escaped from the country ; but and Burton. The writ was issued

Patrick was arrested, and remained after his raid upon Holyrood in 1592.

in the Tower from 1603 to 1624, Huntly treated Murray, the 'bonnie

dying in 1652. He, like his brother. Earl of Murray,' as an accomplice ;

was a noted chemist, and practised he was son-in-law to the great Earl

medicine for a livelihood in London of Murray who had oppressed

after his release. It was his Huntly's clan, the Gordons. As

daughter Mary who married Van- Huntly was a papist, this commission

dyke in 1640. 'Bruce, Papers relating caused great anger among the

&c. 57. Supra 25, note. ministers.

^. The writ, ' letters of fire and ' He was always very partial

sword,' was against Francis Stewart, to the Scottish nation. Dr. Heylin,

Earl of Bothwell, son of an illegiti- in his history of the Presbyterians,

mate son of James V ; he married says, that a little before their break-

28 A Summary of Affairs

Chap. II. the head of the party, came up in the coach ''from Theo-

bald's to London^ with the king and the duke of

Buckingham ; which being against the rules of the court gave great offence : but it was said, the king was so over- charged with grief that he wanted the comfort of so wise and so great a man. It was also given out that the duke of Buckingham offered Preston the great seal : but he was wiser than to accept of it ^. I will go no further into the beginning of that reign with relation to English affairs, which are fully opened by others ; only I will tell one par- ticular which I had from the earl of Lothian ^, who was bred up in this court, and whose father, the earl of Ancram, was gentleman^ of the bedchamber, though he himself was 20 ever much hated by the king. He told me, that king Charles was much offended with king James's light and familiar way, which was the effect of hunting and drinking, on which occasions he was very apt to forget his dignity, and to break out into great indecencies : on the other hand the solemn gravity of the court of Spain was more suited to his own temper, which was sullen even to a morose-

"■ interlined. " interlined.

ing out into rebellion the court It is asserted that he 'was nominated

might well be called an academy of to be Lord Keeper' in the Life of

that nation ; most of the officers of the renowned Dr. Preston, writ by his

the household, and seven out of eight pupil, Master Thomas Ball, D.D.,

of the grooms of the bedchamber, 1628, ed. E. W. Harcourt, 1885, 117.

which proved of very great use to Preston was the author of a large,

them in being constantly informed number of devotional and contro-

of his majesty's most private trans- versial works. He died in 1628 at

actions during the civil war. D. the age of 41. In Fuller's Worthies

Cp. f. 244 for the case of William tfie is described as a successful private

Murray, afterwards Earl of Dysart, /tutor, 'the greatest pupil monger in

upon whom see also infra, 106. Mingland.' On Preston's influence

' Preston, chaplain to Prince with Buckingham see Hackett, Life

Charles, was made master of Em- of Archbishop Williams, i. 203-206

manuel College, Cambridge, in 1622, (1692).

through Buckingham's influence. In ^ See the Correspondence of Sir

1626 he published an attack upon Robert Kerr, ist Earl of Ancrum

Montagu's ' Appello Caesarem.' (d. 1654), ""(i his son William, srd

There does not appear to be any Earl of Lothian (d. 1675) ed. David

good evidence upon this point; but Laing, 1875. Cf. infra, 87.

before the Restoration. 29

ness. This led him to a grave reserved deportment, in Chap. II. which he forgot the civilities and the affability that the nation naturally loved, and to which they had been long accustomed : nor did he in his outward deportment take any pains to oblige any | persons whatsoever : so far from MS. 10. that, he had such an ungracious way of shewing favour that the manner of bestowing it was almost as mortifying as the favour was obliging. " I turn now to the affairs of Scotland, which are but little known ^.

The king resolved to carr)' on the two designs that his father had set on foot, but had let the prosecution of them fall in the last years of his reign. The first '' of these '' was about the recovery of the tithes and church lands. He resolved to prosecute his father's revocation, and to void all the grants made in his minority^ ; and to create titular 1625. abbots as lords of parliament, " but lords as bishops only for life °. And that the two great families of Hamilton and Lennox might be good examples to the rest of the nation, he, by a secret purchase and with English money, bought the abbey of Aberbroth of the former, and the lordship of Glasgow of the latter, and gave these to the two arch- bishoprics. These lords made a shew of zeal * after a good bargain '^, and surrendered them to the king ^- He also

° But struck out. '' interlined. ° interlined. ^ interlined.

' Nor worth knowing. S. Byway Clarendon, the lands purchased of of censure on the author's diffusive- the Duke of Lennox were not to be ness when mentioning the affairs of settled on either of the arch- Scotland Swift has thus interlined bishoprics, but on the bishopric of the title of the work ; The History of Edinburgh, which was at this time (Scotland in) his own Times. R. erected. To the same purpose

''■ In 1625 Charles I revoked all Collier's Eccles. Hist. ii. 756, Dr.

the acts of his father prejudicial to Bliss's MS. note on this history.

the Crown, as a first step towards Lockhart of Carnwark, in his Letters

the resumption of the Church lands written in the year 1724 respecting

whether granted away before or after Burnet's History, asserts that the

the annexation of 1587 ; supra, 10. original deeds are still extant in the

' Lord Clarendon says [i. 182], register of public records at Edin-

that the Duke of Lennox sold his burgh, by which the abbey of Ar-

estate much the cheaper, that it broath, or Aberbroth, was resigned

might be consecrated to so pious an to the king by the Marquis of

end. Besides, according to Lord Hamilton for the abbey lands of

30 A Summary of Affairs

Chap. II. purchased several estates of less value to the several sees ;

and all men who pretended to favour at court offered their

church lands ^ to sale at low rates ^

In the third year of his reign the earl of Nithisdale\ then believed a papist, which he afterwards professed, having 1626. married a niece of the duke of Buckingham's, was sent down with a power to take the surrenders of all church lands, and to assure all who did readily surrender that the king would take it kindly, and use them all very well, but that he would proceed with all rigour against those who would not submit their rights to his disposal. Upon his coming down, those *> who were most concerned in those grants met at Edinburgh, and agreed that when they were called together, if = no other argument did prevail ° to make the earl of Nithisdale desist, they would '^ fall upon him and all his party in the old Scotch manner, and knock them on the head. ^ Primrose^ told me one of these lords, Belhaven, 21 of the name of Douglas, who was blind, bid them set him by one of the party, and he should make sure of one ^ So

° substituted for ai easy pennyworths. ^ substituted for all. <= altered from if other arguments did not prevail. * substituted for resolved to.

o and struck out. ^

Lasmahago, and that Arbroath was hand upon his own, as if he designed

given, not to the archbishopric of St. to draw it immediately, which created

Andrews, but to William Murray, a great disorder, and everybody

afterwards created Earl of Dysart, seemed preparing to do the like :

who sold it to the Earl of Panmure, upon which the Duke of Bolton said

in whose family it long continued. he got as near to the Marquis of

See Lockhart Papers, i. 598. R. Halifax as he could, being resolved

Compare Gardiner, vii. 278, note. to make sure of him, in case any

' Nithisdale's mission was in 1626. violence had been offered : and that

' Sir Archibald Primrose, Clerk there were more who had taken the

Register under Charles II, see infra., same resolution, though he did not

190. name them. D. There is good

' This brings to my remembrance reason for thinking the story in the

a story I heard the first Duke of text untrue, though well reflecting

Bolton tell of himself before a great the spirit of the time. Mr. Gardiner

deal of company : that when the bill points out (vii. 278, Kofe)— though

of exclusion was debating in the this is not conclusive, as Burnet

house of lords, the old Earl of Peter- sometimes speaks of men by their

borough said that was a cause in later styles - that the titles of Bel-

which every man in England was ob- haven and Dumfries did not exist

liged to draw his sword, and laid his until 1633. Sir Robert Douglas of

before the Restoration. 31

he was set next the earl of Dumfries : he was all the while Chap. II. holding him fast : and when the other asked him what he meant by that, he said, ever since the blindness was come on him he was in such fear of falling, that he could not help the holding fast to those who were next him : he had all the while a poinard in his other hand, with which he had cer- tainly stabbed Dumfries, if any disorder had happened. The appearance at that time was so great, and so much heat was raised upon it, that the earl of Nithisdale would not open all his instructions, but came back to court, looking on the service as desperate. So a stop was put to it for some time. In the year 1633 the king came down in person to be crowned. In some conventions of the states that had been 1633. held before that, all the money that the king had asked was given ; and some petitions were offered setting forth grievances, which those whom the king employed had assured them should be redressed : but nothing was done, and all was put off till the king should come down in person. His entry and coronation were managed with such magnificence, that the country suffered much by it : all was entertainment and shew^- When the parliament sat, the loi'ds of the articles^ prepared an act declaring the royal prerogative as it had been asserted by law in the year 1606 ; to which an addition was made of another act passed in the year 1609, by which king James was impowered to prescribe apparel to churchmen with their own consent. This was a personal thing to king James, in consideration of his great learning and experience, of which he had made no use during the rest of his reign. And in the year 1617, when he held a parliament there in person, an act was

Spott, and William, seventh Lord rebellion. The coronation, moreover, Crichton of Sanquhar, were created was conducted so as to wound respectively Viscount Belhaven and presbyterian feeling to the utmost. Earl of Dumfries in that year. ^ A committee of the estates, ' C\3X^TxAoT\, Rebellion, i. 170, goes which settled the details of measures so far as to say that the impoverish- before they were submitted to Parlia- ment of the nobles through their ment. The estates themselves voted extravagant expenditure on this on a measure as a whole. See infra, occasion had much to do with the 209, and note thereto.

32 A Summary of Affairs

Chap. II. prepared by the lords of the articles, authorizing all things

that should thereafter be determined in ecclesiastical affairs

by his majesty, with consent of a competent number of the clergy, to have the strength and power of a law. But the king either apprehended that great opposition would be made to the passing the act, or that great trouble would follow on the execution of it : so when the rubric of the act was read, he ordered it to be suppressed, though passed in the articles. In this act of 1633 these acts of 1606 and 1609 were drawn into one. To this great opposition was made by the earl of Rothes, who desired the acts might b2 divided : but the king said it was now one act, and he must either vote for it or against it. He said he was for the prerogative as much as any man, but that addition was contrary to the liberties of the church, and he thought no 22 determination ought to be made in such matters without the consent of the clergy, at least without their being heard. The king bid him argue no more, but give his vote : so he voted not content. Some few lords offered to argue : but the king stopped them ^, and commanded them to vote. "Almost the whole commons voted in the negative : so that the act was indeed rejected by the majority : which the MS. II. king knew, | for he had called for a list of the numbers, and with his own pen had marked every man's vote : yet the clerk of register, who gathers and declares the votes, said it was carried in the affirmative. Rothes affirmed it went for the negative : so the king said, the clerk of register's declaration must be held good, unless Rothes would go to the bar, and accuse him of falsifying the record of parlia- ment, •'which was capital'': and in that case, if he should fail in the proof, he was liable to the same punishment. " But the earl of Rothes " would not venture on that. Thus the act was published, though in truth it was rejected.

' but struck out. * interlined. = altered from so he.

' Napier (Montrose and the Covenanters, i. 521) disposes of this story. It is not mentioned in the supplication for which Balmerino was prosecuted.

before the Restoration. 33

The king expressed a high displeasure at all who had con- Chap. II. curred in that opposition. Upon that the lords had many meetings : they reckoned that now all their liberties were gone, and a parliament was but a piece of pageantry, if the clerk of register might declare as he pleased how the vote went, and that no scrutiny were allowed. Upon that, Haig^, the king's solicitor, a zealous man of that party, drew a petition to be signed by the lords, and to be offered by them to the king, setting forth all their grievances, and praying redress : he shewed this to .some of them, and among others to the lord Balmerino '^, who liked the main of it, but was for altering it in some particulars : he spoke of it to Rothes " in the presence of the earl of Cassillis and some others : none of them approved of it. Rothes carried it to the king ; and told him, that "■ there was a design to offer a petition in order to the explaining and justifying their proceedings, '' and that he had a copy to shew him "^ : but the king "= would not look upon it, and" ordered him to put a stop to it, for he would receive no such petition. Rothes told this to Balmerino : so the thing was laid aside : only he kept a copy of it, and * interlined it in some places ^ with his own hand. While the king was in Scot- land he erected a new bishopric at Edinburgh, and made one Forbes bishop, who was a very learned and pious man : he had a strange faculty of preaching five or six hours at a time : his way of life and devotion was thought monastic, and his learning lay in antiquity : he studied to be a recon- ciler between papist and protestant, leaning rather to the first, as appears by his Consider atioites modestce: he was a very simple man, and knew little of the world : so he fell 23 into several errors in conduct, but died soon after suspected

» substituted for who told the king. '' interlined. " interlined.

* substituted for titled it on the back.

• William Haig of Bemerside ; the Maxwells of Pollock, i. ao.

Burton, vi. 379. See The Haigs of « gg^ gf the Balmerino mentioned

Bemerside, by John Russell (i8Si), supra, 8. For the whole story see

194, &c. ; Masson, Drummond of Gardiner, vii. 294, and H. M. C.

Hawihomden, 233, 235 ; State Trials, Rep. ix. part ii. 262. iii. 605-607, 699-702 ; Memoirs of VOL. I. D

34 A Summary of Affairs

Chap. II. of popefy \ which suspicion was increased by his son s

turning papist. The king left Scotland much discontented,

but resolved to prosecute the design of recovering the church lands : and sir Thomas Hope, a subtle lawyer, who was believed to understand that matter beyond all the men of his profession, though in all respects he was a zealous puritan, was made king's advocate, upon his undertaking to bring all the church lands back to the crown ^ : yet he proceeded in that matter so slowly that it was believed he acted in concert with the party * that opposed it ^ Enough was already '^ done to alarm all that were possessed of the church lands : and they, to engage the whole country in their quarrel, took care to infuse it into all people, but chieily into the preachers, that all was done to make way for popery. The winter after the king was in Scotland, ^ Balmerino was thinking how to make the petition more acceptable : and in order to that he shewed it to one Dun- moor, a lawyer in whom he trusted, and desired his opinion of it, and suffered him to carry it home with him, but charged him to shew it to no person, and to take no copy of it : yet he took a copy of it, and shewed it under a promise of secrecy to one Hay of Naughton, and told him from whom he had it. Hay looking on ^ the paper, and

" interlined. ^ The words ' Balmerino ' to ' Hay looking on ' are substituted for the following, which are crossed out : a gentleman came to visit Balmerinoch, Hay of Nachton, who was kindly received by hint, and was brought by him into his closet. While they were there one came to speak to Balmerinoch, who went to the door, not suspecting any foul dealing from his neighbour, but he fell immediately to look into the papers that lay on his table, and seeing one marked on the back The Petition of those that voted against the Act, he put it in his pocket, and the other misdoubting nothing they parted very fair. He looking into.

' Quam insigniter reverendo viro Bishop Bedell. The Considerationes (Guil. Forbesio) injurii sint, qui eum Modestae was a posthumous work, Catholicum Rom. praedicant, inter edited by Sydserfe, and published in alia perspicuum est concione publica 1658 (Brit. Mus. E. 1772 (i)). ab eo habita Edinburgi coram rege " Hope, one of the most noted of

Carolo I. an. 1633. Vit. Joh. Forhesii Scotch lawyers and statesmen, drew a Corse, p. 10. R. William Forbes the Act of Revocation of 1625, and was appointed in January, 163J, and was made Advocate-General in May, died in the April or May following. 1626, and Baronet of Nova Scotia in See Burnet's Preface to the Life of 1628. He died in 1646. See the

before the Restoration. 35

seeing it a matter of some consequence, carried it to Spottis- Chap. tl. woode, archbishop of St. Andrews ; who, apprehending it was going about for hands, was alarmed at it, and went immediately to London, beginning his journey, as he often * did, on a Sunday, which was a very odious thing in that country. There are laws in Scotland very loosely worded, that make it capital '' to spread lies of the king or his government, or to alienate his subjects from him ^ It was ° also made capital to know of any that do it, and not discover them : but this last * was never once put in execution. The petition was thought within this act : so an order was sent down for committing Balmerino, the reason of it being for some time kept secret ; so it was thought done 1634. because of his vote in parliament. But after some con- sultation, a special commission was sent down for his trial. In Scotland there is a court for the trial of peers distinct from the jury, who are to be fifteen, and the majority deter- mine the verdict, the fact being only | referred to the jury MS. tz. or assize, as they call it, and the law is judged by the court : and if the majority " of the jury " are peers, the rest may be gentlemen. At this time a private gentleman of the name of Stewart was become so considerable that he was raised by several degrees to be made earl of Traquair and lord treasurer, and was in high favour ^ ; but suffered afterwards such ^ a reverse of fortune that I saw him so low that he 24 wanted bread, and was forced to beg, and it was believed he died of hunger. He was a man of great parts, but « of too 8 much craft : he was thought the capablest man for business, and the best speaker in that kingdom. So he was

" substituted for usually. ^ substituted for criminal. " substituted for is. "^ /o»^ struck out. « interlined. ' substituted for so ^yra^. ^ interlined.

Diary of the Public Correspondence of ^ Sir J. Stewart of Traquair,

Sir Thomas Hope of Craighall (Ban- created Lord Stewart of Traquair in

natyne Club, 1843); and, upon his i628,takenprisoneratPreston, 1648;

whole career, Omond, Lord Advo- died 1659. ' The only counsellor or

cates of Scotland, i. layman relied upon by the archbishop

' Rushworth, ii. 281, mentions the of Canterbury in that business [sc. of

belief at court that the petitioners the Liturgy].' Clarendon, Rebellion,

intended to make the paper public. ii. 12.

D a

36 A Summary of Affairs

Chap. II. charged with the care of * the lord * Balmerino's trial : but when the ground of the prosecution was known, Haig, who drew the petition, writ a letter to ''the lord'' Balme- rino, in which he owned that he drew the petition without any direction or assistance from him " : and upon that he went over to Holland. The court was created by a special commission : in the naming of judges there appeared too visibly a design to have that lord's life, for they were either very weak or very poor ^. Much pains was taken to have a jury ; in which so great partiality appeared that when *the lord* Balmerino was upon his challenges, and excepted to the earl of Dumfries for his having said, that if he were of his jury though he were as innocent as St. Paul he would find him guilty, some of the judges said that was only a rash word : yet the king's advocate allowed the challenge if proved, which "could not be" done. The next called on was the earl of Lauderdale, father to the duke of that title : with him '' the lord *' Balmerino had been long in enmity : yet instead of challenging him, he said he was omni exceptione major. It was long considered upon what the prisoner should be tried : for his hand inter- lining « the paper, >" which did plainly soften it^ was not thought evidence that he drew it, or that he was accessory to it : and they had no other proof against him : nor could they from that infer that he was the divulger, since it appeared it was 'only shewed by him to a lawyer for counsel '. So it was settled on to insist only on this, that the paper tended to alienate the subjects from their duty to the king, and that he, knowing who was the author of it, did not discover him ; which by law was capital. The court judged the paper to be seditious, and to be a lie of the king and of his government : the other point was clear that he knowing the author did not discover him. He

" interlined. ' interlined. c substituted for that lord.

•J interlined. » substituted for was. ' interlined. b substituted

for on the back of. i> interlined. ' substituted for stole from him.

' This also is disproved by Napier, Montrose and the Covenanters, i. 526.

before the Restoration. 37

pleaded for himself, that the statute *for discovery* had Chap. II. never been put in execution ; that it could never be meant but of matters that were notoriously seditious ; that till the court judged so of this, he did not take ^ this paper '' to be of that nature, but considered it " as a paper full of duty, designed to set himself and some others right in the king's opinion ; that upon the first sight of it, though he approved of the main yet he disliked some expressions in it ; that he communicated the matter to ^ the earl of'' Rothes, who told the king of the design ; and that upon the king's saying he would receive no such petition it was quite laid 25 aside. This was attested by ''the earl of* Rothes. A long debate had been * much insisted on f, whether ^ the earl of « Traquair or the king's ministers might be of the jury ^ or not *" : but the court gave it in their favour. When the jury was shut up, Gordon of Buckey, who was one of them, being then very ancient, who forty-three years before had assisted in the murder of the earl of Murray, and was thought upon this occasion a sure man, spoke first of all, excusing his presumption in being the first that broke the silence. He desired they would all consider what they were about : it was a matter of blood, and they would feel the weight of that as long as they lived : he had in his youth been drawn in to shed blood, for which he had the king's pardon, but it cost him more to obtain God's pardon : it had given him many sorrowful hours both day and night : and as he spoke 'this,* the tears run over his face ^. This struck a damp on them all. But ^ the earl of "^ Traquair took up the argument ; and said they had it not before them whether the law was a hard law or not, nor had they the nature of the paper 1 before them \ which was judged "by the court to be"" leasing-making ; they were only to consider whether the prisoner had discovered the contriver of the paper or not.

" only struck out. '' interlined.

8 interlined- ■> interlined.

> interlined., "" interlined.

° interlined.	" for it.
" interlined.	' interlined,
1 interlined.	' interlined.

1 Haigs of Bemerside, ai2, 213.

38 A Summary of Affairs

Chap. II. Upon this *the earl of* Lauderdale took up the argument against him, and urged that severe laws never executed were looked on as made only to terrify * people*" ; that though now, the court having judged the paper to be seditious, after that it "would be capital to conceal" the author, yet before such judgment the thing could not be thought so evident that he was bound to reveal it. Upon these heads those lords argued the matter many hours : but when it 1635. went to the vote, seven acquitted, but eight cast him : so sentence was given. Upon this many"* meetings were held : and it was resolved either to force the prison and to set him at liberty, or, if that failed, to revenge his death both on the court and on the eight jurors ; some undertaking to kill MS. 13. them, and others to burn their houses. When | ^ the earl of Traquair" understood this, he went to court, and told the king that 'the lord' Balmerino's life was now in his hands, but the execution was in no sort advisable : so he procured his pardon, with which he^ was often reproached for his ingratitude : but he thought he had been so much wronged in the prosecution, and so little regarded in the pardon, that he never looked on himself as under any obligation on that account^. My father knew the whole steps of this matter, having been "^the earl of '' Lauderdale's most particular friend: he' often told me that the ruin of the king's affairs in Scotland was in a great measure owing to that prosecution ; and he carefully preserved the petition 26 itself, and the papers relating to the trial, of which I never saw any copy besides that which I have. "^And that raised in me a desire of seeing the whole record, which was copied out for me, and is now in my hands. It is a little volume, and contains, according to the Scotch method, the whole abstract

" interlined. •> interlined. « for it had been capital to have concealed.

■^ ioT great. » interlined. ' interlined. e he iov the party.

^ interlined. ' for and. * added on opposite page.

1 See the letter from Warriston to History of Great Britain in the reign Balmerino of Feb. 27, 1641, in Me- of Charles I, ed. by David Dalrymple mortals and Letters relating to the (i^ee), 107.

before the Restoration. 39

of all the pleadings and all the evidence that was given ; and Chap. II. is indeed a very noble piece, full of curious matter '^. '

While the design of recovering the tithes went on, though but slowly, another design made a greater progress. The bishops of Scotland fell on the framing a liturgy and a body of canons for the worship and government of that church ^. 1636. These were never examined in any public assembly of the clergy : all was managed by three or four aspiring bishops, Maxwell, Sydserfe, Whitford, and Banantyne, the bishops of Ross, Galloway, Dumblane, and Aberdeen 2. Maxwell did also accuse ''the earl of* Traquair, as cold in the king's service, and as managing the treasury deceitfully ; and he was aspiring to that office. Spottiswoode, archbishop of St. Andrews, being then lord chancellor, was a prudent and mild man, but of no •• great '' decency in his course of life ; for he was a frequent player at cards, and used to eat often in taverns ^ : besides that, all his livings were scan- dalously exposed to sale by his servants. "The earl of"=

° interlined. '' interlined. " interlined.

' Issued in 1636 on the sole and Leiters, Sec, 18.

authority of the king. Compare = Bellenden — often spelt as in the

Clarendon, Rebellion, i. 177, 183, and text— had been passed over for pro-

ii. I, 4. The draft of the liturgy, motion for failing to read the English

prepared by the Scotch prelates, prayer book in the Chapel Royal,

was revised by Laud, Juxon, and the deanery of which was attached

Wren of Norwich ; and Clarendon to the bishopric of Dumblane, then

notes the national jealousy caused held by him. Upon his acquiescence

by the attempt to enforce an English he was made Bishop of Aberdeen in

liturgy, as well as the feeling aroused May, 1635. See Laud's severe letters

among the nobility by the placing of inMemorials and Letters, Sec. See also

Spottiswoode and several bishops, the letter of Burnet's father in praise

for the first time, on the Privy of Sydserfe, written about 1639.

Council. He also emphasizes the Id. ii. 72.

mistake of the issuing of the canons, * John Livingstone relates that

which were, as Burnet points out, Spottiswoode and Law were on one

never submitted to any assembly of occasion censured by the provincial

the clergy, previous to the intro- synod of Lothian for playing foot-

duction of the liturgy. Juxonatleast ballon the Sabbath. Wodrow Society :

had no doubt of the immediate effect. Select Biographies, Livingstone, 296.

' The new canons will,' he says, ' at This adds point to his description of

first make as much noise as the can- Archbishop Usher, ' ane godly man

nons in Edinburgh castle.' Memorials although ane Bishop.' Id. 145.

40 A Summary of Affairs

Chap. II. Traquair, seeing himself so pushed at, was more earnest

than the bishops themselves in promoting the new models

of worship and discipline ; and by that he recovered the ground he had lost with the king, and with archbishop Laud. He also assisted the bishops in obtaining commis- sions, subaltern to the high commission court, in their several dioceses, which were thought little different from the courts of inquisition. Sydserfe set this up in Galloway : and a complaint being made in council of his proceedings, he gave nhe earl of* Argyll the lie in full council. He was after all a very learned and good man. but strangely heated in those matters. And they all were so lifted up with the king's zeal, and so encouraged by "^ archbishop '' Laud, that they lost all temper ^ ; of which I knew Sydserfe make great acknowledgments in his old age.

" The ^ most ^ unaccountable part of the king's proceedings was, that all this while, when he was endeavouring to re- cover so great a part of the property of Scotland as the church lands and tithes were from men that were not like to part with them willingly, and ^was going ° to change the whole constitution of that church and kingdom, he raised no force to maintain what he was about to do, but trusted the whole management to the civil execution. By this means all people saw the weakness of the government, at the same time that they complained of its rigour. ^AU that came s downs from court complained of the king's inexorable stiffness, and of the progress popery was making, 27 of the queen's power with ^ the king, of the favour shewed the pope's nuntios, and of the many proselytes * who were daily falling off to the church of Rome ^ Traquair infused this more effectually, though more covertly, than any other '^man'^ could do: and when the country formed the first opposition they made to the king's proclamations, and

« interlined. i" interlined. « But struck out. ^ interlined.

" interlined. ' ^wrf struck out. e interlined. " for over.

' interlined. '' interlined.

' Of this ' encouragement ' there are some curious instances in Burton, vi. 388.

before the Restoration. 41

protested against them, he drew the first protestation, as Chap. II.

Primerose assured me ^ ; though he designed no more than

to put a stop to the credit the bishops had, and to the fury

of their proceedings : but the matter went much further

than he seemed to intend : and he himself was fatally caught

in the snare he laid for others. A troop of horse and a

regiment of foot had prevented all that followed, or, rather,

had by all appearance established an arbitrary government

in that kingdom ''' : but, to speak in the language of a great

man, those who conducted matters at that time had as little

of the prudence of the serpent as of the innocence of the

dove : and, as my father often told me, he and many others,

who adhered in the sequel firmly to the king's interest, were

then much troubled at the whole conduct of affairs, as being

neither wise, legal, nor just. I will go no further in opening

the beginnings of the troubles of Scotland : of * these ^ a full

account will be found in the memoirs of the dukes of

Hamilton ' : of which I will take the boldness to set down

the character which sir Robert Moray *, who had a great

share in the affairs of that time, and knew the whole secret

of them, gave, after he read it in manuscript, that he did

not think there was a truer history writ since the apostles'

days °. '' The violence with which that kingdom did almost

unanimously engage against the administration, may easily

convince one that the provocation must | have been very MS. 14.

great, to draw in such an entire and vehement concurrence

against it ^-

° for which. ^ And indeed struck out.

* That Traquair drew the first * See infra 104, note,

protestation is clearly erroneous. ' Compare Napier, Montrose and

Burton, vi. 480. See, however, John the Covmanters,\rAxoi. zo.

Lockhart's letter to Traquair, Nov. ' The plans above mentioned for

a8, 1639. Dalrymple, Memorials and recovering the bishops' lands, and

Letters, ii. 76. purchasing the tithes for the better

2 'Sendingdowngoodshipswould maintenance of the clergy, were, in

do more than sending proclamations.' the opinion of the Earl of Clarendon,

Juan de Maria (a feigned name) to the real grounds of the Scottish re-

an unknown correspondent, April bellion ['by lessening the authority

17, 1638. Id. i. 25. and dependence of the nobility and

8 Published in 1677. See f agS. great men '],/?«'fe/&«,i.i74- ' These

42 A Summary of Affairs

Chap. II. After the first pacification, upon the new disputes that arose, when * the earls of Loudoun and Dunfermline ^ were sent up with the petition from the Covenanters, the lord Savile came to them, and informed them of many parti- culars, by which they saw the king was highly irritated against them : •> he took great pains to persuade them to come with their army into England. They very unwillingly hearkened to that proposition, and looked on it as a design from the court to ensnare them by making the Scots invade England, by which this nation might have been provoked to assist the king to conquer Scotland. It is true, "he hat,ed ''the earl of'' Strafford so much, that they saw no 1639. cause to suspect him ^ : so they entered into a treaty with him about it. The lord Savile assured them, he spake to them in the name of the most considerable men in England : and he shewed them an engagement under their hands to join with them, if they would come into England, and refuse any treaty but what should be confirmed by a parliament of England. They desired leave to send 'this paper to Scotland ; to which, after much seeming difficulty, he con- 28 sented : so a cane was hollowed, and this was put within it ; and one Frost, afterwards secretary to the committee of both kingdoms, was sent down with it as a poor traveller. It was to be communicated only to three person^, the earls of Rothes and Argyll and to Warriston, the three chief confidents of the covenanters. The earl of Rothes was

" interlined. '' and struclj: out. " they saw struck out. * interlined.

were the concealed and private plot of theirs took effect.' Tract

grounds,' says a contemporary entitled Bella Scot-Anglica, printed

writer; 'the open and avowed causes in 1648, 14. R.

were the introduction of our liturgy, ' See my^a, 47, 73, 224.

the book of canons, ordination, and ' November, 1639. Savile was the

consecration, with the high commis- son of a former rival of Strafford,

sion court, among them ; and it hath and shared his father's hatred. He

been found since, that those things was made a Privy Councillor in 1641,

were introduced by the cunning of having been won over by the queen,

those discontented spirits, that there- Compare Gardiner, ix. 179. He

by there might be some ground to was created Earl of Sussex, May 25

suscitate the people to rise, which 1644.

before the Restoration. 43

a man of pleasure, but of a most obliging temper : his Chap. II. affairs were low. * Spottiswoode had once made the bargain between the king and him before the troubles, but the earl of Traquair broke it, seeing he was to be raised above himself. The earl of Rothes had all the arts of '' making himself popular ; only there was too much levity in his temper, and too much liberty in his course of life. The earl of Argyll was a more solemn sort of a man, grave and sober, free of all scandalous vices ^, of an invincible calm- ness of temper, and a pretender to high degrees of piety : ° [but he was a deep dissembler, and great oppressor in all his private deahngs, and he was noted for "^a defect in his courage ^ on all occasions where danger met him. ^ This had one of its usual effects on him, for he was cruel in cold blood :] <= he was much set on raising his own family to be a sort of king in the Highlands.

Warriston was my own uncle ^ : ^ [but I will not be more tender in giving his character, for all that nearness in blood.] ^ He was a man of great application, could seldom sleep above three hours in the twenty-four. He had studied the law carefully, and had a great quickness of thought, with an extraordinary memory. He went into very high notions of lengthened devotions, in which he continued many hours a day. He would often pray in his family two hours at a time, and had an unexhausted copiousness that way. s [He was a deep enthusiast, for] 8 what thought soever struck his fancy during those effusions, he looked on it as an answer of prayer, and was wholly determined by it. He looked on the Covenant as the setting of Christ on his throne, and so was out of measure zealous in it; ""[and he had 'an unrelenting severity of temper' against all that opposed it.] ^ He had no regard to the raising himself

' And struck out. * obliging struck out. " the bracketed passage is struck out. ^ substituted for cowardice. ^ and struck out. ' struck out. ^ struck out. ■" struck out. ' substituted for the fury of an inquisitor.

' As a man is free of a corporation, married respectively the second he means. S. and third daughters of Sir Thomas

^ Warriston and Burnet's father Craig.

44

A Summary of Affairs

Chap. II. 01" his family, though he had thirteen children : but pres- bytery wa.s to him more than all the woi'ld. He had a readiness and vehemence of speaking, that made him very considerable in public assemblies ; »■ [but he had no clear nor settled judgment, yet that was supplied by]* And he had a fruitful invention, so that he was at all times furnished with expedients. * [And though he was a very honest man in his private dealings, yet he could make great stretches, when the cause seemed to require it.] '' To these three only this paper was to be shewed upon an oath of secrecy ' : and it was to be deposited in Warriston's hands. They were only allowed to publish to the nation that they were sure of a very great and unexpected assistance, which, though it was then to be kept secret, would appear in due time. This they published : and it was looked on as an artifice to draw in the nation : but it was afterwards found to be a cheat indeed, but a cheat of Savile's, who had forged all these subscriptions.

" struck out. * struck out.

' See my note in my printed copy of Oldmixon's History of the Stuarts, 145. O. Mr. Gardiner's note (ix. 179) on Oldmixon's trust- worthiness in this particular matter makes a transcription of Onslow's MS. note (which occurs in his hand- writing in the copy in the Birming- ham Free Library) advisable. ' The author had these letters, as I have reason to believe, from Mr. Johnston of Twittenham (Secretary of State for Scotland to William), who was son of the Lord Warriston now mentioned. Mr. Johnston once showed me some letters that seemed to be of the handwriting of that age which he told me related to the sub- ject that these are upon. A. O. I have now (Nov. 7, 1742) these letters in my custody, and had them from the son of Secretary Johnston. What

authority the writer of these letters had for the names of the seven lords now printed I do not know, unless he took them from an endorsement in Secretary Johnston's handwriting on the copy of that letter which I also have, and the endorsement does mention these names, and only them. In the original the subscrip- tion is cut out, as this author says. A. O.' The names in Oldmixon are the same as those in Gardiner, ex- cept that the name of Lord Saye and Sele is substituted for that of Scrope. Mr. Gardiner, it will be observed (ix. 179 note), thinks that Burnet's story refers to earlier negotiations. See also Welwood's Memoirs, 81, for an account somewhat different from that in the text. Welwood had seenBurnet'sprevious narrative in the Lives of the Dukes of Hamilton (1677).

before the Restoration. 45

The Scots marched with a very sorry equipage ^ : every Chap. II. soldier carried a week's provision of oatmeal ; and they had a drove of cattle with them for their food. They had also 29 an invention of guns of white iron, tinned and done about with leather, and corded: so that they could serve for two or three discharges. These were light, and were carried on '

horses : and when they came to Newburn, the English army August 28, that defended the ford was surprised with a discharge of '^*°" artillery : some thought it magic, and all ( were put in such MS. 15. disorder, that the whole army did run with ^so great '^ precipitation, that sir Thomas Fairfax, who had a command in it, did not stick to own that till he passed the Tees his legs trembled under him ^. This struck many of the enthu- siasts of the king's side as much as it exalted the Scots ; who were next day possessed of Newcastle, and so were masters, ''not only* of Northumberland and the bishopric .- of Durham, "= but of the coaleries ; by which, if they had not been in a good understanding with the city of London, they could have distressed them extremely : but all the use the city made of this was, to raise a great outcry, and to complain of the war, since it was now in the power of the Scots to starve them. Upon that, petitions were sent from the city and from some counties, to the king, "Spraying a treaty with the Scots. The lord Wharton and the lord Howard of Escrick undertook to deliver some of these ; which they did, and were clapt up ^upon it^°. 'A council

» substituted for such. *■ substituted for both. " substituted for and

so were masters. ** substituted ior for. " interlined. ' And

struck out. .

'■ Livingstone states (Wodroiu Soc. On the skirmish see Hardwicke St.

Sel. Biog. i. 162) that while lying Papers, ii. 183 ; and Lord Conway's

at Dunse, before the march into Relation concerning the passages in

England, the Scotch army was in the the late Northern Expedition, 1640;

utmost need. Memorials and Letters relating, &c.,

' Clarendon notes with satisfac- i. 81. tion (ii. 90) that ' from this infamous ^ Dignity of expression. S. There

defeat at Newburn to the last entire is no evidence for this. Upon

conquest of Scotland by Cromwell, Howard of Escrick, see Clarendon,

the Scots army never performed one v. 17. He was expelled from

signal action against the English.' Parliament and fined £10,000 in

46 A Summary of Affairs

Chap. II. of war was held * ; and it was resolved on, as the lord Wharton told me, to shoot them at the head of the army, as movers of sedition. This was chiefly pressed by the earl of Strafford. Uuke Hamilton spoke nothing till the council rose ; and then he asked Strafford, if he was sure of the army, who seemed surprised at the question : but he upon inquiry understood that very probably a general mutiny, if not a total revolt, would have followed, if any such execution had been attempted. This success of the Scots ruined the king's affairs. And by '' it the necessity of the union of the two kingdoms may appear " very " evident : for nothing but a superior army able to beat the Scots can hinder their doing this at any time : and the seizing the coaleries must immediately bring the city of London into great distress. Two armies were now in the north as a load on the king, besides all the other grievances. The lord Savile's forgery came to be discovered. The king knew it ; and yet he was brought afterwards to trust him, and May 25, to advance him to be earl of Sussex. The king pressed ^ *''■ my uncle to deliver him the letter, who excused himself upon his oath ; and not knowing what use might be made of it, he cut out every '^subscription, and sent it to the person for whom it was forged. The imitation was so exact, that every man, as soon as he saw his hand simply by itself, acknowledged that he could not have denied it. 30 The king was now in great straits : he had laid up seven hundred thousand pounds before the troubles in Scotland began ; and yet had raised no guards nor force in Eng- land, but trusted a very illegal administration ° to a legal execution. His treasure was now exhausted ; his subjects were highly irritated ; the ministry were all frighted, being ''exposed to the anger and justice of the parliament: so

" upon it struck out. •> substituted for this. c interlined.

■• substituted for man's hand. " substituted for with. 1 all

struck out.

1650 for taking a bribe from a delin- 0/ Harrison, 30, American Antiqua- quent, upon the information of "'«« Sooc^, April 26, 1893; Ludlow Harrison the regicide. Firth's Life Memoirs, ed. Firth, i. 259.

before the Restoration. 47

that he had brought himself into great distress, but had Chap. II. not the dexterity to extricate himself out of it. He loved high and rough methods, but had neither the skill to conduct them, nor the height of genius necessary to manage them. He hated all that offered prudent and moderate counsels : he thought it flowed from a meanness of spirit, and a care to preserve themselves by sacrificing his autho- rity, or from republican principles : and even when he saw it was necessary to follow such advices, yet he hated those that gave them. His heart was wholly turned to the gaining the two armies. "In order to that, he gained Rothes entirely^, who hoped by the king's mediation to have married the countess of Devonshire, a rich and magnificent lady, that lived long in the greatest state of any^ in that age. He also gained the earl of Mont- rose, who was a young man well learned, "who had travelled'*, but had taken upon him the port of a hero too much, ® [and lived as in a romance ;] ° for his whole manner was stately to affectation. When he was beyond seas, he travelled with the earl of Denbigh, and they consulted all the astrologers they could hear of ^. I plainly saw the earl of Denbigh relied on what had then been told him, to his dying day ; and the rather because the earl of Montrose was promised a glorious fortune for some time, but all was to be overthrown in conclusion. When the earl of Montrose returned from his travels, he was not considered by the king as he thought he deserved : so he studied to render himself popular in Scotland ; and being ^ [vain and] ^ forward, he was the first and fiercest man in the opposition the)' made during the first war. sHe both advised and drew the letter to the king of France, for which the lord Loudoun, who signed it, was imprisoned in the tower of London^. But the earl of

• and struck out, ■> lady struck out. " substituted for and.

d much struck out. " struck out. ' struck out. » and struck out.

' John, fifth earl. He died this ^ Compare m/ra, 63, 163, and f. 196.

same year, 1641. See Clarendon, ' This letter, drawn up in the

iii. 38, 251 ; iv. 23. early part of 1640, addressed 'au

48 A Summary of Affairs

Chap. II. Lauderdale, as he himself told me, when it came to his turn to sign that letter, found false French in it ; for instead of rayon de soleil, he had writ raye de soleil, which in French signifies a sort of fish ; and so the matter went no further at that time ; and the treaty came on so soon after that "it was never again taken up. The earl of Montrose was gained by the king at Berwick, and under- took to do great services : ^ he made the king fancy, that he could turn the whole kingdom : yet indeed he could do nothing. He was again trying to make a new party : and he kept a correspondence with the king when he lay MS. 16. at Newcastle ; | and was pretending he had a great interest among the covenanters, whereas he had none at all " at that time." All these little plottings came to be either known or at least suspected. The queen was a woman of great vivacity in conversation, and loved all her life long to be in intrigues of all sorts, but was not so secret in them as such times and such affairs required. She was a woman of no manner of judgment : "^she was bad at contrivance, but much worse in the execution : but by the liveliness of her discourse she made always a great im- pression on the king: and to her little practices, as well as to the king's own temper, the sequel of all his misfor- tunes was owing. I know it was a maxim infused into

" substituted for this matter. ^ for he rather fancied it himself, and had

struck out. " interlined. ^ substituted for and.

Roy,' and signed by Rothes, Mont- arm opposition inScotland(m/ra, 224';.

rose, Mar, Loudoun, &c., was inter- A second letter, dated February 19,

cepted by Traquair and handed to 164?^, and signed by ArgylI,Montrose,

Charles, who sent it through the Earl Lothian, &c., but not by Loudoun,

of Leicester, English ambassador reached Louis safely by the hands

to France, for Louis XIII to see and of William Colvill, and is in the

disavow. Loudoun and James Colvill Biblioiheque Nationale Fr. 15 915

were committed to the Tower in fol. 410. See Hamilton's Pref. to

April. The reasons of Loudoun's dis- Co/. o/S. P. 1639-40, xii; Clarendon

charge in June, and of the favour ii. 60 note; Gardiner, ix. 97; Burnet,

into which he was received (he was Memoirs of the Dukes of Hamilton

madechancellorand an earl, Sept 30, 160, 161. See also William Colvill's

1641) are obscure, though Clarendon letter to Balmerino, Memorials and

(ii. 87) says that it was supposed Letters, &c., ed. David Dalrymple,

that Charles wished thereby to dis- i. 57, 60.

before the Restoration. 49

his sons, which I have often heard from king James, that Chap. II. he was undone by his concessions. This is true in some respect : for his passing the act that the parliament should sit during pleasure, was indeed his ruin, which he was drawn to by the queen ^. But if he had not made great concessions % he had sunk without being able to make a struggle for it ^ ; and could not have divided the nation, or engaged so many to have stood by him : since by the concessions that he made, especially that of the triennial parliament, the honest and quiet part of the nation was satisfied, and thought their religion and liberties were secured : so they broke off from those violenter propo- sitions that occasioned the war.

* The truth was, the king did not come into those con- cessions seasonably, nor with a good grace : " all appeared to be extorted from him. There were also grounds, whether true or plausible, to make it to be believed that he intended not to stand to them longer than as he lay under that force that visibly drew them from him contrary to his own inclinations. *The proofs that appeared of some particulars, ^ that made this seem true ^, made other things that were only whispered to be moi-e readily be- lieved : for in all critical times there are deceitful people of both sides, that pretend to merit by making discoveries, on condition that no use shall be made of them as witnesses ; which is one of the most pestiferous ways of calumny possible. Almost the ' whole ^ court had been concerned in one illegal grant or another: so these courtiers, to get their faults passed over, were as so many

" in other matters struck out. *> But struck out. ' so that struck

out. ^ and struck out. « interlined. ' interlined.

' There is no evidence to sustain such a strait, that I do not know

this. how he will possibly avoid (without

^ In a letter of the Earl of North- endangering the loss of the whole umberland (printed among the kingdom) the giving way to the re- Sydney papers, ii. 663) to the move of divers persons, as well as Earl of Leicester, and dated Nov. other things, that will be demanded 13, 1640, he says, ' the king is in by the parliament.' O.

VOL. L E

50 A Sitmmary of Affairs

CiiAP. II. spies upon the king and queen : they ^ told all they heard, and perhaps not without large additions, to the leading men in the house of commons. This inflamed the jealousy, and put them on to the making still new demands. One eminent passage was told me by the lord Holies :

The earl of Strafford had married his sister ^ : so, though ''in that parliament'' he was one of the hottest men of the party, yet when that matter was before them he always 32 withdrew. When the bill of attainder was passed, the king sent for him to know what he could do to save the earl of Strafford. Holies answered, that if the king pleased, since the execution of the law was in him °, he might legally grant him a reprieve, which must be good in law ; but he would not advise it. That which he proposed was, that Strafford should send him a petition for a short respite, to settle his affairs, and to prepare for death ; upon which he ^ advised the king to come next day with the petition '^in his hand ^, and lay it before the two houses, with a speech which he drew *for the king"; and ^Holies said s to him «, he would try his interest among his friends to get them to consent to it. He prepared a great many by assuring them, that if they would save lord Strafford, he would become wholly theirs, in consequence of his first principles : and that he might do them much more service by being preserved, than he could do, if made an example of upon such new and doubtful points. In this he had wrought on so many, that he believed ^ if the king's party had struck into it, he might have saved him. It' was carried to the queen, as if Holies had engaged that the earl of Strafford would accuse her, and discover all he

" substituted for and. * substituted for at first. c substituted

for the king. d interlined. ' interlined. ' then struck out.

6 interlined. ^ that struck out. i substituted for this.

^ Strafford married, as his second eldest daughter of Francis, Earl of

wife, Arabella Holies, younger Cumberland. She died in 1622.

daughter of Lord Clare, in Feb. 1624. = Sc. Strafford. His first wife was Margaret Clifford,

before the Restoration.

5^

knew : so the queen not only diverted the king from going Chap. II. to the parliament, changing the speech into a message all writ with the king's own hand, and sent to the house of lords by the prince of Wales : which Holies said, would have perhaps done as well, the king being apt to spoil things by an unacceptable manner : but to the wonder of the whole world, the queen prevailed with him to add that mean postscript, If he must die, it were charity to reprieve him to Saturday : which was a very unhandsome giving up of the whole message ^. " When it was commu- nicated to both houses, the whole court party were plainly against it: and so he fell, truly by the queen's means ^- May, 1641.

" and struck out.

' Burnet's story is opposed to every other authority. That Holies tried to save Strafford is confirmed by Laud. But Laud states the nature of the proposed arrangement differently, and says that the scheme was frustrated by Strafford's refusal to listen to it. LaucCs Works, Library of Anglo-Catholic Theology, iii. 442. Laud further says, that after the passing of the Attainder Bill, Strafford made by his friends two suits to the king {ibid.). One was that his death might be respited till the Saturday, that he might have a little time to settle his estate. This evidently suggested the postscript. In the explanation of the letter which the king gave to the Lords he says that he asked for a respite ' on cer- tain information that his estate was so distracted that it necessarily re- quired a few days for settlement' {Lords' Journals, iv. 245). On the other hand, there is no trace of a petition for reprieve in the Journals, with which indeed the king's post- script and explanation would have been incompatible, though the fact of there being no such petition is- consistent with Laud's statement.

and with that of Burnet that such a petition was proposed to be made to the king. If this explanation be true, Burnet's statement that the postscript was added at the queen's suggestion — which is unconfirmed by other evidence — cannot be correct. Perhaps Burnet has mixed up some of the various expedients put forward to save Strafford's life. It is very likely that Holies misrepresented the queen's attitude. Strafford's sugges- tions to the king for his behaviour 'when the Bill of Attainder is pre- sented to him for the Royal assent ' may be read in the Camden Miscel- lany for 1894, with an introduction by Mr. Firth (to whom the substance of this note is due). The letter of the king to the Lords (sent, as Burnet says, by the Prince of Wales), with its numerous erasures, seems to have been an expedient adopted at the last moment, not in pursuance of a scheme deliberately selected at the first. See the letter in the H. M. C. Report, i. 10. 2 Carte {Bodleian MSS.) says, that when Cardinal Richelieu heard of the king's consenting to Lord Strafford's death, he observed that the king had cut off the only head

E 2

52 A Summary of Affairs

Chap. II. The mentioning this makes me add one particular con-

cerning archbishop Laud: when his impeachment was

brought to the lords' bar, he, apprehending how it would end, sent over Warner, bishop of Rochester, with the keys of his closet and cabinets, that he might destroy, or put out of the way, all papers that might either hurt himself or any body else. He was at that work for three hours,

MS. 17. till, upon I Laud's being committed to the black rod, a messenger went over to seal up his closet, who came after all was withdrawn. Among the writings " which he took away, it is believed the original Magna Carta \ passed by king John in the mead near Staines, was one. '' This was 33 found among his papers by his executor, Dr. Lee : and that descended to his son and executor, colonel Lee, who gave it to me. So it is now in my hands ; and it came very fairly to me ^ " For this conveyance of it we have nothing but conjecture.

" substituted for papers. •> but struck out. "^ and struck out.

in the nation that could secure his bishop Laud's papers, at the impeach-

own from the like fate. R. Mazarin ment of the latter in 1640. When

also pointed to this as a fatal conces- Blackstone published his work The

sion to popular demands. Great Charter and Charter of the

' The term ' the original Magna Forest, Oxford, 1759, it was in the

Carta' is misleading, unless indeed possession of David Mitchell, the

Burnet means to distinguish between executor of Sir Thomas Burnet, the

John's charter and later ones. The bishop's son ; and, ten years later,

document was not signed by King in 1769, it was presented by Philip,

John, but copies were prepared and second Earl Stanhope, to the British

sealed in the Chancery in the usual Museum.'

way, and one was sent to every ^ There was reason enough for

cathedral town. There are at present the bishop's giving an account how

five extant, of which that mentioned he came by this most valuable piece

in the text, and now in the British of antiquity : his having been trusted

Museum (Add. MSS. 4838), is one. (especially after his publication of

It has been printed by the authorities the History of the Reformation) in

with the following note : ' The docu- searching all records, private and

ment was formerly in the possession public, gave good grounds to sus-

of Gilbert Burnet, Bishop of Salis- pect he had obtained it in a less

bury, and had previously been in the justifiable manner. D. The foUow-

hands of John Warner, Bishop of ing remarkable article in relation to

Rochester, who is supposed to have our Magna Carta is in the remarks

takenchargeofitjtogetherwithArch- of M. des Maizeaux upon the Colo-

before the Restoration. 53

CHAPTER III.

TO THE DEATH OF CHARLES I.

I DO not intend to prosecute the history of the wars. I have told a great deal relating to them in the Memoirs of the dukes of Hamilton. Rushworth's collections contain many excellent materials : and now the first volume of the earl of Clarendon's history gives a faithful representation i7°2- of the beginnings of the troubles, " though writ in favour of the court, and full of the best excuses that such ill things were capable of^. I shall therefore only set out what I had particular reason to know, and that is not to be met with in books.

The kirk was now settled in Scotland with a new mixture of ruling elders, which, though they were taken from the Geneva pattern, to assist, or rather to be a check on, the minister in the managing the parochial discipline, yet " these " never came to their assemblies till the year 1638, that they thought it necessary to make them first go and carry all the elections of the ministers ^ at the several presbyteries, and next come themselves and sit in the assembly ^. ' The nobility and chief gentry offered them- selves upon that occasion: and the ministers, ^ since they saw they s were like to ^ act in opposition to the king's orders, were glad to have so great a support. But the elders that i^ow came to assist them, beginning to take, as the ministers thought, too much on them, they grew weary

" zjjfe'cA struck out. ^ yet is indeed a noble work sXrw^ omI. " interlined. ^ interlined. " and struck out. ' finding that struck out. " substituted for would.

mesiana of Monsieur du Colomies, d'Angleterre en original avec les

p. 538 of the Amsterdam edition in seings et tons les sceaux. II cut

1740: 'J'ai oui dire que le chevalier pour quatre sous cette rare piece,

Robert Cotton etant alle chez un qu'on avoit cru si long terns perdue,

tailleur, trouva qu'il alloit faire des et qu'on n'esperoit pas de pouvoir

mesures de la Grande Chartre jamais retrouver.' Cole.

54 A Summary of Affairs

Chap. III. of such imperious masters : so they studied to work up the

^inferior" people to much zeal : and as they wrought any

up to some measure of heat " and knowledge, they brought them into their eldership ; and so got a majority of hot zealots who depended on them. ° One out of these was deputed to attend on the judicatories. They had synods of all the clergy, in one or more counties, who met twice a year: and a general assembly that met once a year: and ^at parting nhat body ^ named some, called the Commission of the Kirk, who were to sit in the intervals, to prepare matters for the next assembly, and to look to all the concerns of the church, to give warning of dangers, and to inspect all the proceedings of the state, as far as they related to the matters of religion : ^ by these means they became terrible to all their enemies. In their ser- mons, and chiefly in their prayers, all that passed in the state was canvassed : men were as good as named, and either recommended or complained of to God as they were acceptable or odious to them. This grew 8 up in time « to an insufferable degree of boldness, i" The way that was given to it, when the king and the bishops were their com- 34 mon themes, made that afterwards the humour could not be restrained when it grew so petulant that the pulpit was a scene of noise and passion. ' For some years this was managed with '^ great appearances of fervour by men of age and some authority : but when the younger and hotter zealots took it up, it became odious to almost all sorts of people, except some sour enthusiasts, who thought all ^ their impertinence ' was zeal, and an effect of inspiration ; which flowed naturally from the conceit of extemporary prayers being praying by the Spirit^.

"■ interlined. ^ substituted for seal. " and struck out. "^ these

struck out. " interlined ' and struck out. s interlined. ■■ and

struck out. ' Yet struck out. ' such struck out. ^ interlined.

' Compare with this account the written just after the battle of impressions of an observant and well- Dunbar : ' Instead of having no God educated soldier in Cromwell's army but one, the generality of people do

before the Restoration. 55

Henderson, a minister of Edinburgh, was by much the Chap. ill. wisest and gravest of them all : but as all his performances that I have seen are flat and heavy, so he found it was an easier thing to raise a flame than to quench it. ^ He studied to keep his party to him, yet he found he could not moderate the heat of some fiery spirits : so when he saw he could follow them no more, but that they had got' the people out of his hands, he sunk both in body and mind, and died soon after the papers had passed between the king and him at Newcastle ^. The person next him was Douglas, believed to be descended from the royal family, though the wrong way : for he was, * as was said **, the bastard of a bastard of queen Mary of Scotland, by a child that she secretly bare to Douglas, who was half brother to the earl of Murray, the regent, and had the keeping of her in the castle of Lochleven trusted to him ; from whence he helped to make her escape on that consideration. There was an air of greatness in Douglas, that made all that saw him inclined enough to believe he was of no ordinary descent. He was a reserved man : he had the Scriptures by heart, to the exactness of a Jew ; for he was as a con- cordance : he was too calm and grave for the furious men,

" But tho struck out. ^ interlined.

idolize and set up their ministers, ever the Church of Scotland did believing what they say, though enjoy.' Baillie, iii. 12. He died at never so contrary to religion and Edinburgh, August 19, 1646. Royal- reason, and they stand more in awe ists like Clarendon ascribe his death of them than a school boy does of to remorse for the evil he had caused, his master : ' and again, ' The Pres- or, like Barwick, to shame at his byteriall government withthe several defeat in argument at Newcastle by formes, rights, and practices of it is Charles I ; while earnest Presbyte- the graven image which they have rians lay it to his ' displeasure at the set up.' Charles II and Scotland in king's ways ' and to vexation at the 1650, ed. Gardiner, Scottish Hist. Soc. failure of the Westminster Assembly 137. See also, for another impres- to establish Presbyterianism in the sion of Scotland and the Scotch (in full Scotch sense. See Baillie, ii. 1672), the Portland MSS., vol. iii. 398, 399; Hetherington's Hist, of H. M. C. Rep. xiv. App. ii. 327. the Westminster Assembly ; and, for ' 'The fairest ornament, after John the Newcastle controversy, H. M. C. Knox of incomparable memory, that Report, iii. 88.

56 A Summary of Affairs

Chap. III. but yet he was much depended on for his prudence. I knew him in his old age : and saw plainly he was a slave to his popularity, and durst not own the free thoughts he had of some things for fear of offending the people ^-

I will not run out in giving the characters of the other

MS. 18. leading preachers among them, such | as Dickson, Blair, Rutherford, Baillie, Cant, and the two Gillespies ^. They were men all of a sort : affected great sublimities in de- votion : they poured themselves out in their prayers with a loud * voicCj and often with many tears. They had but an ordinary proportion of learning among them ; something of Hebrew, very little Greek : books of controversy with the PapistSj but above all with the Arminians, was the height of their study. A dull way of preaching by doctrine, reason, and use, was that they set up on : and some of them affected a strain of stating cases of conscience, not with relation to moral actions, but to some reflexions on their condition "^ and temper, " that was occasioned chiefly by their conceit of praying by the Spirit, which every one could not attain to, or keep up to the same heat in it at all

" substituted for roaring. •> substituted for state.

" substituted for which.

' The father of Robert Douglas 1669 ; and died in 1674. As corn- was an illegitimate son of Sir George missioner, with James Sharp, to Douglas of Lochleven, who aided Charles II at the Restoration, he Mary in her escape, the brother of was completely hoodwinked by his William Douglas, sixth Earl of colleague. Lauderdale Papers (Cam- Morton. This descent of Douglas den Soc), vol. i. 36, &c. is denied, in a note to the Introd. '^ Dickson, minister of Ruther- to Crookshank's Hist. Church of Scot- glen ; Blair, minister of St. Andrews ; /aKrf, but no authority is given. That Rutherford, author of Lex Rex Mary was his father's mother is im- (Scottish Divines, St. Giles's Lectures, possible. She could not have borne 3rd series ; Howie's Scots Worthies, a child after her escape without the ed. Carslaw, 233) ; Baillie, of the fact being well known. Douglas Letters and Journals; Cant, minister had been chaplain of the Scots troop of Aberdeen. See Life of Living- in the service of Gustavus Adolphus. sto««, i. 305, 311 (Wodrow Soc. Sel. Burton, vii. 286. He was a leader Biog.). Patrick Gillespie was prin- of the Resolutioners ; refused the cipal of Glasgow College ; George bishopric of Edinburgh in 1660; was Gillespie, minister of Wemyss and • deprived ' in 1662 ; ' indulged ' in Edinburgh.

before the Restoration. 57

times. " The learning they recommended to their young Chap. III. divines was some German systems, some commentators on the Scripture, books of controversy, and practical books. 35 '' They were so careful to oblige them to make their round in these, that if they had no men of great learning among them, yet none were very ignorant : as if they had thought an equality in learning was necessary to keep up the parity of their government. ''None could be suffered to preach as \ expectants, as they called them ", but after a trial or two in j private before the ministers alone : then two or three ser- j mons were to be preached in public, some more learnedly, j some more practically : then a head in divinity was to be 1 commonplaced in Latin, and the person was to maintain theses upon it : he was to be also tried in Greek and Hebrew, and in Scripture chronology. "^The questionary trial came last ; every minister asking such questions as hej pleased. / When any ^ had passed through all these with' approbation, which was done in a course of three or four months, he was allowed to preach when invited, and if he was presented or called to a church, he was to pass through^ a new set of the same trials^. This made that there was a small circle of knowledge in which they were generally well instructed. True morality was little studied or esteemed by them. They were generally proud and passionate, insolent and covetous ; yet they took much pains among their people to maintain their authority 8. They affected all the ways of familiarity ^ that were like to gain on them'': even in sacred matters they got into a set of very indecent phrases.

" ^// struck out. '' y«^ struck out. '^ thatis,proposants,\-D.\.ex\vae.&. ^ and struck out. " the person struck out. ' substituted for over. 6 among them struck out. ^ interlined.

' See especially, for a good in- ford Club. Burnet himself passed his

stance, the account of the trials of trials for Saltoun in Nov. and Dec.

James Sharp, when presented by 1664 ; was inducted Jan. 29, 1665 ;

Crawford to the Sand Kirk of Craill, instituted June 15, 1665 ; approved

before the Presbytery of St. Andrews, Julys, 1666. Nov. 3, 1647 — June 27, 1648. Abbots-

58 A Summary of Affairs

Chap. III. They forced all people to sign the covenant ^ : and the greatest part of the episcopal clergy, among whom there were two " bishops, came to them, and renounced their former principles, and desired to be received into their body. At first they received all that offered themselves : but afterwards they repented of this, and the violent men among them were ever pressing the purging the Kirk, as they called it, that is, the ejecting all the episcopal clergy. Then they took up the wicked term of malignants, by which all who differed from them were distinguished : but'' the strictness of piety and good life, which had gained them so much reputation before the war, began to wear off; and instead of that, a fierceness of temper, and a copiousness of many long sermons, and much longer prayers, came to be the distinction of the party. This they carried even to the saying grace before and after meat sometimes to the length of a whole hour. But " as every new war broke out ", there was a visible abatement of even the outward shews of piety. Thus the war corrupted both sides. When the war broke out in England, the Scots had a great mind to go into it. The decayed nobility, the military men, and the ministers, were violently set on it. They saw what good quarters they had in the north of England ; and they hoped the umpirage of the war would fall into their hands. The division appearing so near an equality in England, they 36 reckoned they should^ turn the scales, and so be courted of both sides : and they did not doubt to draw great advantages from it, both for the nation in general and

" or three struck out. b all struck out.

° altered from at every new opening. ^ altered from would.

See the striking letter of remon- three kingdoms destroyed, and every-

stranceagainst the intolerance of the one weltering in another's blood.

Covenanters from Burnet's father before you get not your will. God for-

(who had himself taken the Covenant, give your bloody and cruel preachers

Z.oc4AaWPa/<;ra,i. sg7)tohisbrother- who have not known, nor will not

in-lawWarriston, written about 1639, know, the way of peace." See also

in Memorials and Letters relating. Eye., Drummond's Irene ; Masson, Drunt-

11. 72 : ' 'Who will rather have all the mond of Hawthornden, 273 ei seq

before the Restoration. 59

themselves in particular. Duke Hamilton was trusted by Chap. III. the king with the management of his affairs in that king- dom\ and had powers to offer, (but so secretly that if discovered it could not be proved, for fear of disgusting the English), that if they would engage in the king's side he " would consent to ^ the uniting Northumberland, Cum- berland, and Westmorland, to Scotland ^ and that Newcastle should be the seat of the government ; that the prince of Wales should hold his court always among them ; that every third year the king should go among them ; and every office in the king's household should in the third turn be given to a Scotchman. This I found not among duke Hamilton's papers, but the earl of Lauderdale assured me of it, and that at the Isle of Wight they had all the engage- ments from the king to make it good upon their success that he could then give ^ Duke Hamilton quickly saw it was a vain imagination to hope that kingdom could be brought to espouse the king's quarrel ; the inclination ran •^ strong the other way : '^ all | he hoped to succeed in was MS. 19. to keep them neuter for some time : and this he saw could not hold long : so after he had kept off their engaging

" substituted for might offer. •> so struck out. <^ so struck out.

' He was a kinsman of the king, their assistance with a promise to

being descended from a daughter of reward so great a service with the

James 11 of Scotland. four northern counties,' &c.

'^ See Ludlow's Memoirs, i. 19 : ' See this document, dated Caris-

' The Scots army [in 1641] was also brooke, Dec. 26, 1647 (erased), and

tried, and the four northern counties sealed with Charles's signet, printed

offered to be given to them in case in the Lauderdale Papers, Camden

they will undertake the same design Soc. i. 2. There is, however, of

[the dissolution of the Parliament].' course nothing in it about uniting

The charge of offering the northern the northern counties to Scotland. It

counties to th"fe Scots was made was drawn up solely in favour of the

also against the Parliament by the Scotch nobles, and contains not a

Royalists. Lives of the Duke and wordupon Church matters. Gardiner,

Duchess of IVewcastle,Pre{ace,Hn{ed. Great Civil War, iii. 272-275, and

Firth) : ' A very considerable thing I especially Constitutional Documents

have heard . . . that the rebellious of the Puritan Revolution, 264, and

Parliament did call the Scots to 265 note.

6o

A Summary of Affairs

Chap. III. with England all the year 1643, he and his friends saw it was in vain to struggle any longer. The course they all resolved on was, that the nobility should fall in ^ heartily with the inclinations of the nation to join with England, that they might '' procure to themselves and their friends the chief commands in the army : and then when they were in England, and that their army was as a distinct body separated from the rest of the kingdom, it might be much easier to gain them to the king's service than it was at that time to work on the whole nation ^-

This was not a very sincere way of proceeding, but it was intended for the king's service, and would very probably have had the effect designed by it if some accidents had not happened that changed the face of affairs, which are not rightly understood : and therefore I will open them

^ so struck out.

*> substituted for should.

^ Compare Clarendon, Rebellion^ vii. 379-387 ; and Dr. Hickes's de- claration attested in Carte's MSS., that he had read a copy, shown him by the Duke of Lauderdale, of Burnet's Memoirs of the two Dukes of Hamilton, all in the bishop's hand- writing, in which he imputes to them and their counsels all the miseries of Scotland, and the ruin of the king's affairs in that country. [No such statement appears in the published work, 1677. But in the Preface Burnet refers to the fact that there was an earlier copy, un- printed, and that the book was re- written by Sir R. Moray's advice.] As to the dark afl'air named the Incident, professedly left unexplained by Burnet, and which has occasioned reflections to be thrown on the king by some writers, because Hamilton, with his brother and the Earl of Argyll, quitted the king's court at Edinburgh in the year 1641, the several parties concerned seem at the

time to have agreed not to disclose to the public all the circumstances relating to it. And it now appears, from one of Sir Edward Nicholas's letters to the king, Evelyn's Memoirs, [Bray's ed. ii. 59], that the lords of the privy-council in England, having read the examinations con- cerning this affair, ' as they had re- ceived no command to publish them, contented themselves with declaring to such, as should converse with them about them, that they found nothing in all those examinations that in any sort reflected on his majesty's honour.' The king in the margin of the letter has written, that ' they neede to doe no more, but as they have, and resolve to doe.' R. Com- pare Burton, vii. 151, and Gardiner, X. 26, where the ' Incident ' is de- tailed as minutely as the evidence will allow. See also Hardwicke State Papers, ii. 299 ; Rushworth, v. 421 ; Baillie, i. 392.

before the Restoration. 6i

clearly. The earl of Montrose and a party of high royalists Chap. III. were for entering into an open breach with the country in the beginning of the year 1643, but offered no probable methods of managing it ; nor could they reckon themselves assured of any considerable party ^. They were full of big words and bold undertakings : but when they were pressed to shew what concurrence might be depended on, nothing was offered but from the Highlanders : and on this wise men could not rely : so duke Hamilton would not expose the king's affairs by such a desperate way of proceeding. Upon this they went to Oxford, and filled all people there 37 with complaints of the treachery of the Hamiltons ; and 1643- they pretended they could have secured Scotland if their propositions had been entertained. This was ^ but too "■ suitable to the king's own inclinations, and to the humour that was then prevailing at