FALKLANDS ABERDEEN UNIVERSITY PRESS. ^ r/'' LCUU> ( v//y , // '- / iircoun f _> /ret /i tne, jurrtrttif vy t atidycA as U/anfotu* (\z.rf/i' . *~ ' / in f/ie fieJifnicn ci /cvv/_ irumiell i>/ it nrt/i r ur. FALKLANDS BY THE AUTHOR OF "THE LIFE OF SIR KENELM DIGBV," "THE LIFE OF A PRIG," ETC. WITH ILLUSTRATIONS LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON NEW YORK AND BOMBAY 1897 All rights reserved PREFACE. THIS is "a book written with a purpose" to amuse its author. To the obvious rejoinder, " So far so good ; but why publish it ? " I would reply that the public reads a great deal of rubbish ; and that, so long as it chooses to buy and to read mine, it is welcome to do so. But there is a more im- portant object in publishing, for publishing is the only means of obtaining anything approaching an impartial criticism of literary labour. Not that reviews are always impartial, or that the sugges- tions of all reviewers are to be implicitly followed ; but the author who sends his book to a score or so of the best journals will obtain a collection of opinions, as a whole, better worth having than any he could acquire through other channels, and, in some cases, they would be cheap at the cost of the production of his book, even if not a copy of it were to be sold. Let me take this opportunity of thanking the critics for the very kind manner in which they have dealt with my own works. Some people are never satisfied ; and I often tell myself that I have been gently handled because, having, in a literary 20GC546 VI PREFACE. sense, neither name nor fame, I excite no jealousy. I fear also that, although I have written anony- mously, a good many reviewers are aware of a disability under which I labour, and have for that reason treated me more charitably than I deserve. I am not pretending that no faults have been found with my writings. Quite the contrary ! Never- theless, as a rule, the adverse criticisms have been very just, and I venture to hope that I have derived considerable benefit from them. While thanking my reviewers most heartily for the assistance thus afforded to me, I will say that, in my own opinion, my already published books, of the same type as the present, are open to one un- favourable criticism, which has not yet been passed upon them. I, therefore, will supply that want. My books are reviews. Having become interested in some character or subject, I and I am only an insignificant unit among many writers of the same school read everything bearing upon it that I can find ; then I take up my pen and I write a review of such portions of the books and manu- scripts thus read as are more or less to the point, giving my opinions with ample quotations, and ending by having the result printed and published in the form of a book. A book may be a very good thing ; so also may a review. It cannot, however, be good that a review should be a book, or that a book should be a review. If I am conscious of this fault, why, it may reasonably be asked, do I continue to sin against light ? Because it has become so engrained a PREFACE. Vli habit as to be incurable ; for my pen was much earlier, and has been much more, employed in reviewing books than in writing them. I will not go the length of inverting an often-quoted passage in one of Lord Beaconsfield's novels into " Who are the authors and the artists ? Those who have failed as critics ; " but I will go so far as to say that criticism is not the best of prepara- tions for authorship or art. Having thus reviewed my own work, I will now leave it to be reviewed by others ; but they cannot criticise it more severely than by calling it, as I have called it, a review. I have to thank Lord Falkland for his very great courtesy in allowing me to copy his portraits, and for his readiness to give me any help in his power. My gratitude is also due to Lord Arundell of Wardour for most kindly sending me a photo- graph of his portrait of the second Viscount Falkland, with permission to use it. I am in- debted to Professor Gardiner for some very valuable information, and to Mr. Walter Herries Pollock for revising my work. Other assistance afforded to me will be acknowledged in the course of the book. T. L. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. A SOLE HEIRESS . Views Henry Gary Elizabeth Tanfield Sole heiresses An odd child Trial of a witch- An illiterate mother and a literary daughter A polite letter-writer Gary goes to Holland Two prisoners A mother- in-law The Venerable Hooker Dr. Neale Birth of Lucius Whipping Financial matters Master of the Jewel House and Keeper of Marybone Park Elizabeth hates fine clothes and dressing. CHAPTER II. POVERTY, PROMOTION AND "POPERY" n A mortgage Viscount Falkland A wrecker Literary pursuits Lady Home Toothache Lord Deputy in Ireland Impecuniosity Policy in Ireland Improving Irish industries 1625 Lady Falkland goes to England Death of Lady Home Lady Denbigh Dr. Cozens Incli- nations to the Catholic Church Lord Ormonde Father Dunstan Everard Reception into the Church Lady Falkland Buckingham A prisoner at home. CHAPTER III. A WIFE EXPELLED FROM HOME AND HER HUSBAND FROM OFFICE I Anger of Cozens Falkland's agent cuts off supplies A faithful servant Falkland writes to the King about his wife's conversion Feminine mediation Lady Tanfield Lady Falkland's letter to the King The Privy Council orders Falkland to support his wife A wretched habita- tion Death of Lady Tanfield Lucius Gary The Byrnes Sedition Forced evidence Recall of Falkland Lucius challenges Sir F. Wil- loughby Lucius committed to the Fleet Falkland's letter to the King. X CONTENTS. CHAPTER IV. PAGE MARRIAGE FOR MONEY, OR FOR LOVE ? . . . -3 You shall marry for money. No, I will marry for love Value of a pound in the seventeenth and the nineteenth centuries Various estimates of Lucius His friend, Sir Henry Morison Ben Jonson's poem on the two friends Dr. Johnson on the "metaphysical poets" Morison's sister, Letice Verses about her Lucius marries her Anger of his father Lucius offers his property to his father Falkland imprisoned for debt Lucius goes to Holland Reconciliation of Falkland with his wife Death of Falkland. CHAPTER V. A LITERARY LIFE 45 Great Tew Lucius, Lord Falkland made a Gentleman of the Privy Chamber Sale of Burford Priory to pay his father's debts Winters with his mother in London His religious tendencies His wife's Discontent among Charles' subjects Was Falkland Liberal or Con- servative ? Hackney coaches and sedan chairs Falkland's literary powers and his poetry Entertaining at Great Tew Letice and her devotions for her servants. CHAPTER VI. THE FRIENDS OF FALKLAND 59 Clarendon George Sandys Thomas Carew Sir John Suckling ' ' A Session of the Poets " Sir John Digby Edmund Waller Sir Francis Wenman Walter Montague Sir Kenelm Digby Chillingworth Morley Earles Shelden Henry Hammond Hugh Cressy Hales. CHAPTER VII. " POETREY AND CONTROVERSIE " 71 Thorn. Triplet Selden Ben Jonson " Poetrey and Controversie with the Church of Rome' ' What was then thought of Shakespeare Masques Socinus and his writings Chillingworth's intrigues against Falkland's sisters and brothers Falkland's correspondence with Montague and his " Discourse of the Infallibilitie of the Church of Rome." CHAPTER VIII. STEALING ONE'S OWN 84 Poverty of Elizabeth, Lady Falkland ''Entangling businesses" Pil- grimage to Holywell Elizabeth takes away her two younger sons from Great Tew by stealth Their adventures Elizabeth summoned before the Council Afterwards before the Lord Chief Justice Reconciled to her eldest son Her death Her character. CONTENTS. XI CHAPTER IX. PAGE FROM PEACE TO WAR 95 Death of Ben Jonson Falkland's " Eglogue " on it Falkland joins Holland's Horse in the expedition against Scotland Waller and Cowley lament his doing so, in verse "A fair and safe retreat" Did Letice bore her husband ? Falkland becomes M. P. for Newport The Short Parliament Pym Lenthall The Long Par- liament Impeachment of Strafford Impeachment of Finch and Falkland's speech. CHAPTER X. THE LONG PARLIAMENT 108 Agitation against the bishops Falkland's speech against them Attitude of Lord Digby Division in the opposition to the bishops Falkland's and Pym's parties Bailie's letters Strafford's trial Execution of Strafford Bill against the bishops Temporary opposition of Falkland to his friend Hyde The Root-and-Branch Bill Falkland's opposition to it Charles sends for Hyde Charles starts for Scotland End of the Long Parliament. CHAPTER XI. A POLITICAL TRIO 120 Falkland and Hyde take Colepepper as an ally His character Supposed plot in Edinburgh Root-and-Branch Bill dropped New Bill against bishops Hampden taunts Falkland upon changing his opinions Rebellion in Ireland Falkland opposes the raising of an army by the King to quell it The Grand Remonstrance Great debate on it Oliver Cromwell and Falkland Scene in the House of Commons Falkland made Secretary of State by the King His acceptance of that office discussed. CHAPTER XII. FROM THE COMMONS TO THE COURT 133 Falkland and Mistress Moray Falkland, Hyde, Colepepper and Lord Digby Digby's character Impeachment of several M.P. 's The King's folly and duplicity Difficult and awkward position of Falk- land Plot to seize Falkland, Hyde and Colepepper Commons' suspicion of Hyde Falkland's letter to him The King at York Charles's treatment of Essex and Holland Embarrassments of Falk- land Lyttleton Nineteen Propositions Falkland joins the King at York. Xll CONTENTS. CHAPTER XIII. PAGE WITH THE ROYAL STANDARD 144 Death of Falkland's brother Fining M.P.'s Friction between Falkland and Hyde Declaration of the Forty-five Peers Their conduct con- sidered The Commons raise an army Selden and the Commission of Array The royal standard raised at Nottingham Efforts for peace by Falkland and Hyde Falkland sent by Charles as a legate to London Fails to make peace Arrival of Rupert His character Royal army at Shrewsbury Quarrels among the generals Falkland's unpleasantness with Rupert Battle of Edgehill Battle of Brentford. CHAPTER XIV. WITH THE COURT AT OXFORD 158 Falkland's apology for conduct of Charles Depression of Falkland Wintering at Oxford Charles's bet with Falkland Sortes Virgilianee Hyde made Chancellor of the Exchequer Squabble with Colepepper Scotch Commissioners at Oxford Charles vexed with Falkland Waller's Plot Death of Hampden Taking of Bristol Another quarrel with Colepepper. CHAPTER XV. BATTLE AND DEATH 171 Siege of Gloucester Falkland in the trenches Essex raises the siege and surprises the King's troops at Cirencester Rupert repulses the Parlia- mentary troops and occupies Newbury Falkland the night before the battle Receives the Sacrament from Dr. Twisse Jeremy Taylor Killing a witch A clean shirt Morning of the battle Falkland joins Byron's Horse Weapons and uniforms Cavalry Advance of Byron's Horse A gap in a hedge Death of Falkland Was it a moral suicide ? Recovery of his body Burial at Great Tew Letice Henry Gary sells his father's library The third Lord Falkland saves Judge Martin's life Epilogue. INDEX 191 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE Lucius GARY, 2ND VISCOUNT FALKLAND . . . Frontispiece HENRY, IST VISCOUNT FALKLAND 2 ELIZABETH, WIFE OF HENRY, IST VISCOUNT FALKLAND . 10 LETICE, WIFE OF Lucius, 2ND VISCOUNT FALKLAND . . 36 BURFORD PRIORY 47 ELIZABETH, WIFE OF HENRY, IST VISCOUNT FALKLAND . 94 LETICE, WIFE OF Lucius, 2ND VISCOUNT FALKLAND . . 161 PARISH CHURCH AT GREAT TEW 184 FALKLANDS. CHAPTER I. A SOLE HEIRESS. FEW books are so dull as are family histories ; but the history of several contemporary members of a family may sometimes be more entertaining, as well as more illustrative of the times in which they lived, than that of a single individual. I propose, therefore, to write out some of the results of my own reading and research concerning a family, belonging to the long past, which happens to have attracted my attention. Many have been the monographs written of Lucius Gary, second Viscount Falkland, and many the opinions expressed of his character, from Horace Walpole's* "well- meaning man, with a moderate understanding," to Matthew Arnold's f " martyr of sweetness and light, of lucidity of mind and largeness of temper ; " but although, in any notice of the Falklands of the seventeenth century, Lucius Gary must inevitably be accorded the foremost place, in the present volume it is intended to make him rather the hero of a story than the subject of a biography. Henry Cary,J the first of the Falklands whom I propose * Catalogue of Royal and Noble Authors of England, p. 80. t Mixed Essays, p. 236. J He was probably born about the year 1576, for in her memoirs of her mother, his daughter says that he died about the age of fifty-seven, in the year 1633. The Lady Falkland, Her Life: Dolman, 1861, p. 49. Henry I 2 FALKLANDS. to notice, " by the help of a good tutor, and extraordinary parts," "became a most accomplished gentleman." * He went to Exeter College, Oxford, at the age of sixteen. " It doth not appear he took any degree ; but, however, when he quitted the university, he left behind him a celebrated name." Shortly after leaving Oxford, he was presented to the king, and became " a compleat courtier." f Like other complete courtiers, he soon found himself in want of money. In this difficulty he sought for an heiress, whom he discovered in the person of a girl of fifteen, Elizabeth, only child of the Lord Chief Baron, Sir Lawrence Tanfield, of Burford Priory, Oxfordshire. J Although she had a good complexion, " she was nothing handsome," and " he had no acquaintance with her (she scarce ever having spoke to him)." But that was nothing to him ; for he appears to have been the most unemotional of men. So pure a matter of business was the marriage, that it was contracted with the under- standing that she was to remain for the following year at her father's home. A commonplace marriage does not insure a common- place bride. Sole heiresses are apt to have peculiarities. Elizabeth Tanfield was no exception in this regard. Gary was descended from Thomas Gary, a younger son of Sir Wm. Gary, who fell at the battle of Tewkesbury, 1471. The elder branch of the family is now represented by the Carys of Torr Abbey, Torquay. The family derives its name from Gary, or Kari, a manor in the parish of St. Giles-in- the-Heath, near Launceston. In the year 1198, Adam de Karry was Lord of Castle Karry, Somerset. Burke's Landed Gentry, vol. i., p. 310. * Biographia Britannica, Kippis' edition, vol. iii., p. 290. t Lloyd's State Worthies, vol. ii., p. 255. I Sir Lawrence Tanfield's house was an Elizabethan mansion built on the ruins of the Priory. " When the Priory, which had lasted at least since 1291, was dissolved, Edmund Harman, the king's barber, had the grant of it." W. H. H. in a letter to The Guardian, 5th February, 1896. The Lady Falkland, Her Life. From a MS. in the Imperial Archives at Lille. London: Dolman, 1861. "The writer," says the editor in the preface, " is clearly one of Lady Falkland's four daughters." 7 ffcni ti prrtmtt re in f/if //r.i ;><;>.>/ rue/ It. - cunt' . A SOLE HEIRESS. 3 " Having neither brother nor sister, nor other companion of her age," she "spent her whole time in reading;"* and, like many other sole heiresses, she developed a strong will of her own. But her early history was exceptional as to the manner in which she was treated by her mother,f who appears to have been a very hard-hearted woman, as we shall see later on. LadyTanfield, perhaps rightly, objected to her daughter's reading at night, and, with a view to putting a stop to it, she allowed her no candles in her bedroom. The sole heiress, however, outwitted her mother ; for she bribed the servants to provide her with candles to such an extent that, on her marriage, at fifteen, she found herself owing the servants .100 for candles alone, as well as 200 for other things which she had surreptitiously purchased from them. J And this little incident leads me to suggest that, however unimportant the character of a well-dowered bride may have seemed to a man of Henry Gary's disposition, he would have been wiser in observing the golden rule that, before marrying an heiress, it is well to ascertain whether she may not be likely to get rid of more money than she will bring. In writing of the state of England exactly a hundred years later than the birth of Elizabeth Tanfield, and dilat- ing upon the lamentable condition of feminine education then prevalent when " As to the Lady of the Manor and her daughters, their literary stores generally consisted of a prayer book and a receipt book " Lord Macaulay says that " At an earlier period they had studied the master- pieces of ancient genius." An instance of this was afforded by the future Lady Gary. She understood French, * The Lady Falkland, Her Life, 6. t Elizabeth, throughout her life, usually spoke to her mother on her knees, sometimes " for more than an hour together, though she was but an ill kneeler, and a worse riser." Ib., 21-2. t Ib., 6, 7. 4 FALKLANDS. Spanish, Italian, Hebrew and Latin. When very young, she translated some of Seneca's Epistles, and her chief pleasure was in reading the great folios in her father's library. Elizabeth Tanfield was what nurses call " an odd child." Sometimes her father took her with him into court ; and, on one of these occasions, a woman was brought before him on a charge of witchcraft. It was said that the accused woman had bewitched two or three people to death ; and, when the judge asked her what she had to say for herself, she fell on her knees " trembling and weeping," confessed that the accusations against her were true, and, begging her judge to have mercy on her, promised amendment if he would but spare her. * " Did you bewitch ... to death?" he then asked. " Yes," was her reply. " Did you not send your familiar in the shape of a black dog, a hare, or a cat ? and he, finding him asleep, licked his hand, or breathed on him, or stepped over him, and he presently came home sick, and languished away ? " " I did." And then the grave judge heard a whisper at his ear, and his little daughter she was only ten begged him to ask the woman whether she had not also bewitched to death a man named John Symondes ? The question was put and immediately answered in the affirmative. How had she done it ? asked the judge. Then " she told one of her former stories." According to the practice of modern reporters of trials, we ought here to put " (laughter)." Our old authority, however, has it " (all the company laughing)." The reason of the merriment was that Mr. John Symondes was the judge's brother-in-law, and was at that very moment standing near him in court. Why, then, demanded the judge, had she said she had bewitched him? * The Lady Falkland, p. 5. SAVING A LIFE. 5 " Alas ! sir, I knew him not," replied the poor prisoner. " I said so because you asked me." " Are you no witch, then ? " " No ; God knows. I know no more what belongs to it than the child new born." " Nor did you never see the devil ? " " No, God bless me ; never in all my life." On further examination she said she had been told that, if she did not confess, she would be tortured until she did ; but that if she admitted all the accusations, mercy would be shown to her. She was then acquitted ; and she owed her release, and probably her life, to the shrewdness of a little girl of ten ! But she had not saved the life of her husband ; and, as a biographer of Lady Falkland puts it,* " Gary took scarcely any notice of his young bride. She was not pretty, her manners were not attractive, and, as to her mental gifts, he did not take the least trouble to find out anything about them." During the year she remained at home after her marriage, her mother, who was a very ignorant woman for her position, judged of her daughter's literary powers by her own, which, as will be seen later, would disgrace a servant girl in these days ; and she employed a polite letter-writer f to " indite " suitable epistles from a newly-married wife to an absent husband. These productions she obliged her daughter to copy out and to send to her husband as her own. Gary had not returned to visit his young bride for more than a year, when he was sent to Holland. The war with Spain was raging at that time. While Philip was landing men in Ireland and there endeavouring to raise Catholic rebels against a Protestant queen, Elizabeth was sending * The Life of Elizabeth, Lady Falkland, by Lady Georgiana Fuller- ton, p. 14. t The Lady Falkland, p. 7. 6 FALKLANDS. troops to the Netherlands, to assist Protestant rebels against a Catholic king. Perhaps Gary, with his short purse, may have thought this a fine opportunity of gaining distinction with subsequent royal preferment and emolument ; for he seems to have accompanied one of these military expedi- tions to Holland. But it turned out a very bad specula- tion, as he had the ill-fortune to be taken prisoner by Don Luis de Velasco ; * and his funds, already low, were still further impoverished by his ransom. In one of his epigrams, f Ben Jonson notices Henry Gary and this incident : No foe that day Could conquer thee, but chance, who did betray. Love thy great loss, which a renown hath won, To live when Brceck not stand, nor Roor doth run : He's valiant'st that dares fight and not for pay ; That virtuous is, when the reward's away. It is most unlikely that Henry Gary agreed with Jonson in these unsordid sentiments. He was taken to Spain, " where he was kept a year," and more than two years passed between his departure from England and his return to it. On the death of his father, Sir Edward Gary of Alden- ham and Berchamsted in Hertfordshire, Henry Gary suc- ceeded to the appointment of Master of the Queen's Jewels ; but the exact date of his father's death is doubtful. During Henry Gary's absence on the Continent, his wife had left her father's home for that of her mother-in-law. Lady Gary had expressed a strong desire that her daughter-in- law should be entrusted to her keeping. She " must needs have her to her, and her friends not being able to satisfy the mother-in-law with any excuse, were fain to send her."J Now the " mother-in-law having her, and being one that loved much to be humoured, and finding her not * The Lady Falkland, p. 8. t No. LXVI. t The Lady Falkland, p. 7. A SEVERE MOTHER-IN-LAW. 7 to apply herself to it, used her very hardly, so far at least as to confine her to her chamber, which seeing she little cared for, but entertained herself with reading, the mother- in-law took away all her books, with commands to have no more brought her." * In these days it seems amazing that a mother-in-law should thus have kept her son's wife a close prisoner, and for no other offence than that she did not " apply herself" to humouring her whims. Yet so it was that while Sir Henry was a prisoner in Spain, his young wife was a prisoner in England. About this time, Elizabeth contrived to get some letters of her own writing despatched to her husband. f So different was their style from the stilted compositions which he had hitherto received from her, that, although he " liked " them " much," he made the mistake of supposing that these were borrowed from a " polite letter- writer," and that the former letters had been his wife's own. On his return he rescued his wife from captivity, and they lived together, although still, it would seem, at the house of her late jailer. " Becoming better ac- quainted with his wife, he esteemed her more," and he was " much displeased at the treatment she had undergone." { They cannot have begun their married life in each other's company until about four years after their wedding, or about a year after the death of Queen Elizabeth. Three more years passed before the birth of their first child, a daughter. Among Lady Gary's more serious readings was a " book, much esteemed, called Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity." The consequence of reading the " venerable Hooker " was that "she grew into much doubt of her religion." "This was more confirmed in her by a brother of her husband's [Adulphus] returning out of Italy with a good opinion of * The Lady Falkland, p. 8. t Ib., pp. 8, 9. t Ib., pp. 8, 9. 8 FALKLANDS. the Catholic religion. His wit, judgment and conversation she was much pleased withal." He persuaded her to read the Fathers, especially St. Augustine, "whom he affirmed to be of the religion of the Church of Rome." " Her distrust of her religion increased by reading them so far as that at two several times she refused to go to church for a long time together." Curiously enough, this would appear to have been about the time of the Gunpowder Plot. Her difficulties and scruples were allayed for the time by Dr. Neale, then Bishop of Durham, by whom "she was persuaded she might lawfully remain as she was," in spite of her belief " that to be in the Roman Church were infinitely better and securer." * After the birth of one or two more daughters, the Carys were gratified by that of a son in the year 1610. They had this boy christened Lucius, f We are informed that to her eleven children "she was so much a mother that she nursed them all herself," except " her eldest son (whom her father took from her to live with him from his birth)." She taught several of her children herself, and her daughter tells J the following little anecdote of her experiences as a disciplinarian. "One of her elder sons " this was probably Lawrence, as Lucius lived with his grandfather - - was " dreadfully apprehensive " of being whipped. On one occasion this little boy had done some- thing wrong, and " with an oath " his mother declared that she would punish him for it with a whipping. The use of strong language was habitual to both sexes early in the seventeenth century, and, as Lady Georgiana Fullerton puts it, it may in this case have amounted to no more than the French expression " Je vous jure que non." The child, however, took it very seriously, and, when his mother for- gave him his offence, he " begged of her to save her oath." " She, much pleased with him for his innocent care of her, * The Lady Falkland, p. 10. t Ib., p. n. J Ib., p. 12. In her Life of Lady Falkland, p. 24, F.N. HONOURS. 9 was more resolved not to do it, but he so feared her being forsworn that, with tears in his eyes and on his knees, he continued to beg that which he trembled at ; nor was there any other way to satisfy the child " but by whipping him. In the same year in which their eldest son was born, 1610, Henry Gary was made a Knight of the Bath,* on the occasion of Prince Henry's being made Prince of Wales. In 1617, he was made Comptroller of His Majesty's Household, and a Privy Councillor.f But, if he received many favours from the king, he also had to give up some- thing to him. In 1611, lands, which were probably a considerable part of his wife's jointure, were taken pos- session of by the Crown. Chamberlain in a letter J to Carelton informed him that the prince had just taken Berchamsted from Sir Henry Gary, as belonging to the Duchy of Cornwall ; and Lady Falkland's daughter says, apparently concerning the same transaction : " a consider- able part of her jointure (which upon her marriage had been sufficiently good) having been reassumed to the Crown, to which it had formerly belonged, etc., etc." This must have been a heavy blow to Sir Henry. By and by he obtained another appointment, || as " Keeper of Marybone Park," which would doubtless bring in an income of some sort. Evidently he was very short of ready money in 1618 ; for Chamberlain then wrote to Carelton IT that Sir Henry Gary had sold the Mastership of the Jewel House to Sir Henry Mildmay, a young man with no experience, for either 2000 or ^"3000. A few months later, the same writer sent a letter ** to the same correspondent, announcing that Sir Henry Gary was to be made Master of the Court of Wards. * Wood's Athence Oxonienses, vol. i., p. 585. t S. P. O. Dom. James /., vol. xciv., No. 77. \ Ib., vol. Ixvii., No. 67. The Lady Falkland, p. 15. || S. P. O. Dom. James /., vol. Ixxvii., No. 69. IF 76., vol. xcv., No. 5. ** Ib., vol. ciii., No. no. 10 FALKLANDS. During these years Lady Gary was probably a good deal in London and at Court. In some respects she must have found this irksome, for " dressing was all her life a torture to her; yet because" her husband "would have it so, she willingly supported it," " even to tediousness."* She knew little or nothing about fine clothes, and " all that ever she could do towards it, was to have those about her that could do it well, and to take order that it should be done, and then endure the trouble." She had a habit of walking about her chamber meditating ; and " her women were fain to walk round the room after her," " whilst she was seriously thinking on some other business, and pin on her things and braid her hair;-]- and while she writ or read, to curl her hair and dress her head." * The Lady Falkland, pp. 14, 15. t A glance at her portrait will show what a lengthy business it must have been to " braid her hair." ' 7 ' /rent a ^L>c /-//Y///'/r f^tUtA the //<>>.> <".>.) trn <>/ I neon/I/ II CHAPTER II. POVERTY, PROMOTION AND " POPERY." To please her husband, Elizabeth, Lady Gary, took a step which entailed very serious consequences upon her- self. During a severe attack of his chronic impecuniosity, with a view to giving him temporary relief, she mortgaged the greater part of the land which had been given to her as a jointure. At this her father was very irate, so much so that "he disinherited her upon it, putting before her her two eldest (and then only) sons, tying his estate on the eldest, and in case he failed, on the second." * As things turned out, this alteration in her father's will did her much more personal mischief than might have been anticipated ; and it placed her entirely at her husband's and her son's mercy. In the year 1620 Sir Henry Gary was raised to the peerage, with the Scottish title of Viscount Falkland. He was then living at Gary House, in London. Just at this time he was engaged in hot dispute over a right which he claimed to a share in all wrecks at Margate, Broadstairs and Ramsgate.f He wrote to Lord Zouch, Warden of the Cinque Ports, J protesting that it was his wish, as " servant to the glorious Peace-maker of Christendom," to recover his rights in a peaceable fashion. He based his claims to the wreckage on his lordship of the manor of Minster in * The Lady Falkland, p. 16. \ S. P. Dotn. James /., vol. cxxviii., No. 43. \ Ib., vol. cxv., No. 22. 12 FALKLANDS. Kent, a property which he had purchased in 1611.* He asserted that the terms of his purchase included royalties and wrecks at sea. If much of his time was occupied by his official duties, his various forms of reckless extravagance and his en- deavours to raise money, Lord Falkland found leisure for literary pursuits, though to what extent is doubtful, as we learn from Wood.f but this seems certain, that " He wrote several things, but not printed " a noble example to modern writers ! Wood further tells us that Falkland was " in much esteem by " the " king for his great abilities and experience in State affairs." James had so high an opinion of him as to appoint him Lord Deputy of Ireland in Sep- tember, 1622. Just before Lord and Lady Falkland started for Ireland, one of their daughters, a girl of only thirteen, J was married to the Earl of Home. This was an earlier marriage than even her mother's ; and, unlike her mother, she went to live with her husband, of which there is evidence in a letter written by Welsted, Falkland's agent, in the same year. This " noble young lady," wrote Welsted, " with her lord hath been much diseased with the toothache, my lord having an imposthume growed in his mouth, which came to ripeness and brake ; my lady drew out her tooth, and so both are cured and in good health." Falkland's want of ready money tormented him as much in Ireland as in England. He had scarcely reached Dublin before he sent a letter to the Council, begging for more cash. Welsted || wrote to him on ist December, 1622, that "small hope was expected in obtaining moneys * S. P. Dom. y antes I., vol. Ixv., No. 52. t Ath. Ox., vol. i., p. 586. H. Cary was supposed to be the real author of a History of Edward II., published under an assumed name. : The Lady Falkland, Appendix, p. 126. British Museum Add. MSS., 11,033, P- X 4- || /&., p. 16. THE REBELLIOUS IRISH. 13 from the Lord Treasurer," who " in an insolent manner and an angry countenance uttered this ensuing speech : ' That your lordship should pay your own debts, but not with the king's moneys, and he would willingly surrender up his white staff unto you, craving no recompense for his service, and accept of yours.' " Upon Lord Falkland's policy in Ireland it is not my intention to expatiate. Professor Gardiner says of him : " A man naturally kindly and desirous of fulfilling his duties, he was alike wanting in the clear-sightedness which detects the root of an evil, and in the firmness which is needed to eradicate it." * Another writer says : " He kept a strict hand over the Roman Catholics in that kingdom, which gave them occasion to send complaints to the Court of England against him." t " On the 2ist of January, 1623, there was issued out a proclamation against the Popish clergy, secular and regular, ordering them to depart the kingdom within forty days " J a pretty strong measure ! This seems to have been overlooked by Lloyd when, in writing of Falkland's policy, he says : " The Rebellious Irish will complain, only because kept in subjection, though with never so much lenity." Soon after his arrival in Dublin, Falkland placed his eldest son, Lucius, when about thirteen years of age, at Trinity College. In Queen Elizabeth's reign, Ireland had become a refuge for many of the ultra-reforming clergy who feared the English bishops ; and the theo- logical tone at Trinity College, when Lucius attended it, was Calvinistic with a tendency to Puritanism. || Lady Falkland took much trouble to improve the Irish * Hist. Eng., vol. viii., p. g. t Biographia Britannica, ed. Kippis, vol. Hi., p. 290. \ History of Ireland, by Professor Cox, p. 39. Lloyd's Memoirs, p. 331. || Rational Theology, by J. Tulloch, D.D., vol. i., p. 81. 14 FALKLANDS. industries. She sent to England,* or elsewhere, for skilled weavers, dyers, spinners, knitters, hatters, lace-makers and linen-makers, to teach the people how to work ; " and for this purpose she took of beggar children (with which that country swarms) more than eight score prentices." + So good was the broadcloth made at her works that her own husband wore it. Unfortunately, " her workhouse, with all that was in it much cloth and much materials was burnt ; her fulling-mills carried away, and much things spoiled with water." All these misfortunes Lady Falkland attributed to "the children's going to the Protestant church." "But," says her daughter, who was a Catholic, "others [held] that it rather was that she was better at contriving than executing, and that too many things were undertaken at the very first ; and that she was fain (having little choice) to employ either those that had little skill in the matters they dealt in, or less honesty ; and so she was extremely cozened, which she was most easily, though she were not a little suspicious in her nature." + But the cause above all others which led to her failure was " the ill order she took for paying money in this (as in all other occasions), having the worst memory in such things in the world ; and wholly trusting to it (or them she dealt with) and never keeping any account of what she did, she was most subject to pay " for " the same things often," etc. It is hardly to be wondered at that "about these works, after the beginning of them, her lord seemed often displeased with her ; " yet Lady Falkland was an ex- cellent woman. She was a good wife, a good mother, a good friend. But her zeal was not invariably " according to knowledge." || * The Lady Falkland, p. 19. t/&. J 76., p. 20. 76., p. 21. || " His wife he probably admired more than he loved. Her peculiarities and faults may often have been trying to him, and her THE PLAGUE. 15 The year 1625 was important in English history. It was remarkable for the death of James I., the accession of Charles I., and the marriage of the latter with the French Catholic princess, Henrietta Maria. The same year was very memorable also to Elizabeth, Lady Falk- land. Among its other events were the death of her father, and her own departure from Ireland. The reasons of her leaving Dublin are not very certain ; but her husband may have hoped that she would be able to induce the English Ministers to give him more money. Soon after she had started on her voyage across the Irish Channel, accompanied by four of her children the rest being left with her husband " a violent tempest at sea"* drove them back to Ireland. When we consider the comfort of ordinary passengers, to say nothing of the wives of Lord Deputies, in crossing from Dublin to Holyhead in these days, it seems curious to read of Lady Falkland that " the child at her breast (she sitting upon the hatches) had his breath struck out of his body by a wave and remained as dead for a quarter of an hour." At last they reached England in safety. When they arrived in London, they found the plague " very hot," there- fore, as soon as she had " kissed Her Majesty's hands," Lady Falkland hurried away to her mother's house in Oxfordshire with her children, including Lady Home, who, then just sixteen, was in a condition demanding great care. All went well till they came to a stream, through which the carriage had to be drawn. The roads were then so bad and the carriages so lumbering and shaky that to drive through a rivulet was a discomfort if not a danger ; the ladies, therefore, walked across a narrow footbridge, while their chariot was bumping over the bed of the stream. virtues also. The combination of great merits with troublesome little defects is often a peculiar source of irritation in domestic life." Lady Georgiana Fullerton's Life of Lady Falkland, p. 47. * The Lady Falkland, p. 24 scq. 1 6 FALKLANDS. Unfortunately they were accompanied by a faithful retainer of Lady Tanfield's, and nothing would satisfy this good man but that he should be allowed to carry Lady Home across the footbridge. In the middle of it his foot slipped and he fell into the water with his charge. Al- though she was apparently unhurt, the shock was too much for the poor girl, and a week later, after prematurely giving birth to a child, that lived only three hours, she died in her mother's arms. The death of her daughter had the effect of directing Lady Falkland's mind to the subject of purgatory ; and, on returning to London a little later, she sought the com- pany of her friend, Lady Denbigh, a sister of the all- powerful Buckingham. Lady Denbigh was, like Lady Falkland, unsettled in her religious opinions, with what Anglican clergymen now call " Romish leanings." Dr. Cozens had written a book of Protestant Hours, with the hope of persuading her that she could obtain everything she wanted in the Established Church. Lady Falkland made the acquaintance of this divine > and determined to make use of him. She had advanced to that stage of High-Churchism, common enough in the present day, in which the devotee believes, or, as we must say in speaking of her, believed Anglican clergymen "to be, as they pretended, truly priests (never yet having heard the contrary, that being a truth they most unwillingly hear of any) ; she was desirous at least to do as like Catholics in all, and to draw as near them as she could." * For this reason she made up her mind to go to confession, and she asked Dr. Cozens to hear her. He " excused himself at the present as not being used to take confessions, but," he said, " that he would take time to prepare for it by studying the casuists, being to go into the country (or going a-purpose)." f * The Lady Falkland, pp. 26-7. f Ib., p. 27. LADY DENBIGH. I? Meanwhile Lady Falkland became intimate at the London home of the great Irish peer, the Earl of Ormonde. Lord Ormonde was a zealous Catholic, and at his house she met several priests, as well as lay Catholics. There Lady Falkland took opportunities o*f inquiring about religion, and she soon became convinced that the Roman <( Catholic Church was the one true and only Church of Christ upon earth. When Lady Falkland discussed religious questions with priests at Lord Ormonde's, she was sometimes accompanied by Lady Denbigh ; and, when she announced her intention of becoming a Catholic, or to be " reconciled to the Church," as it was termed, Lady Denbigh declared her intention of taking the same step. If, said she, Lady Falkland would wait until she had heard " one more dispute, she would be reconciled together with her." '* This suggestion was repeated until Lady Falkland could wait no longer. Accordingly she made arrangements to be received into the Catholic Church at Lord Ormonde's by Father Dunstan Everard,-f a priest of the Order of St. Benedict. The morning after she had settled this she went to Lady Denbigh at the palace, told her that she was going, on such and such a day, to be received into the Church, and asked whether Lady Denbigh would like to accom- pany her. As usual, Lady Denbigh begged for just a little more time ; but Lady Falkland was firm to her purpose. * The Lady Falkland, p. 28. t " Illustrious for his ingenuity, piety and learning, loyalty to his king, love to his country and zeal for the orthodox faith for which he had suffered imprisonments and banishments, and disputing often with the most famous heretics," he " had converted many, amongst which was my Lady Faulkland, illustrious consort to Henry Gary, Viscount Faulkland and Viceroy of Ireland." He died (1650) "in attending His Majesty Charles II. in Jersey." " King Charles II. much honoured him with his favour, and had taken a wonderful liking to him." Chronological Notes of the English Congregation of the Order of St. Benedict, by Dom. Bennet Weldon, O.S.B., p. 188. 2 1 8 FALKLANDS. "Well," said Lady Denbigh, " I have you now in the court, and here I will keep you ; you shall lie in my chamber, and shall not go forth." * Calling a servant, she gave orders to have a bed prepared for Lady Falkland ; and so left the room. Lady Falkland " suspecting, as it was, truly, that the lady was gone to fetch one that should confirm her stay let not this opportunity slip, but rushed from the room and from the palace, and hurried to Lord Ormonde's." Father Dunstan Everard was not there ; but she found another Benedictine, Father Dunstan Pettinger ; and she besought him to receive her then and there, to which he consented. The reception of a convert in a private house was then a capital offence on the part of its owner.f Father Dunstan, therefore, reconciled Lady Falkland to the Church, not in Lord Ormonde's house, but in his stable. Leaving it a Catholic, she returned to the palace and to Lady Denbigh's suite of rooms. Lady Denbigh was at home. " Now," said Lady Falkland, " I shall be content to stay with you as long as you please ; for all is done." Lady Denbigh went to her brother, the Duke of Buckingham, and informed him of what had taken place. Buckingham went " instantly to the king, who showed him- self highly displeased." Lady Falkland was then sent for, and seeming "obdurate" was allowed to return to her house. She had not long reached it, when Mr. Secretary Coke was announced. He had come, he said, on an un- pleasant errand. By the king's commands Lady Falkland was to consider herself a prisoner, and was not to leave her house until she received permission to do so. * The Lady Falkland, p. 28 seq. t Dom. Weldon calls Father Dunstan Pettinger " a painful labourer and zealous preacher for a long time in the mission, wherein he died at London in Drury Lane, as it was supposed of the plague, in 1665 (at the age of seventy-nine)." Chron. Notes, p. 92. CHAPTER III. A WIFE EXPELLED FROM HOME AND HER HUSBAND FROM OFFICE. THE day after Lady Falkland's reconciliation, Dr. Cozens returned to London, prepared, and expecting to hear her confession. On learning that she had already been to confession to a Catholic priest, he was horror-stricken. He went at once to see her, " and, having heard from her of all that had been done," he "fell into so great and violent a trouble that, casting himself on the ground, he would not rise nor eat from morning till night, weeping even to roaring." * He implored her to return to the Established Church, pointing out the scandal which would else be given to others, who would say that this showed the result of the High Church teaching of men such as himself. Seeing, however, that " he noway prevailed with her (but only to sit fasting with him all day), he went his way, coming no more to her." Welsted, Falkland's agent, was exceedingly angry when he heard of Lady Falkland's conversion : without waiting for orders from her husband, he took it upon himself to stop her allowance ; and she became in such want that she had to send her children to her friends' houses to get their " dinners and suppers." As to Lord Falkland himself, he was enraged beyond measure, on receiving the news of his wife's change of * The Lady Falkland, p. 30 seq. 20 FALKLANDS. religion. He immediately sent orders that all her children should be taken from her. He also commanded his steward to take every servant away from her house, as well as all "beer, coal, wood, or whatsoever was movable, leaving her confined, alone, and in this necessity." One servant, quite a girl, named Bessie Poulter, refused to leave her; and Lady Falkland sent her to Lord Ormonde's for her meals, forbidding her to let any one there know of her own need of food. " Pieces of pie-crust, or bread and butter, or other such thing," which Bessie " did from the table privately take and put into a handkerchief" and carry home to her mistress, were all that Lady Falkland had to live upon for several days. Lord Falkland, sincerely or not, gave credit to reports that his wife " did put impediments in his affairs at Court, and did him ill offices to his friends there." In his wrath, he determined to do all in his power to injure her. By this time the king had allowed her to leave her house freely. On the 8th of December of the year wherein she had become a Catholic, Lord Falkland * wrote to the king on the subject of the " apostacy " of her whom he might say he had " long unhappily called wife." He thanked the king for his " God-like mercy " in delivering his eldest daughter from " that most leprous infection " of Popery surrounding his wife, by making her a maid-of-honour to the queen. As the queen was herself a papist, far more surrounded by priests than was his wife, this mercy, one would think, must have been a small one, from his own point of view. He had written to " my Lord of Canter- bury's grace," urging him to " duly punish all those who " had "been instruments in" his wife's "prevarication, for example to others." The very throne was not safe " whilst these locusts of Rome, whose doctrines are as full of horrid treasons as many of their lives of horrible impieties," were *S. P. O. Ireland, 8th Dec., 1626. AN ANGRY HUSBAND. 21 " permitted to pass at liberty." " For the apostate herself," he begs the king's orders that she should be committed to the custody of her own mother, "with commandment to her " " to receive her, and to keep her safe, and free from any communication by word or letter with any " Catholic. This letter does not seem to have been very effectual with Charles ; for, in the following April, Falkland wrote * to Lord Killultagh saying that an order had been given that his "wife's mother and her unhappy self" were "to cohabit together," adding : " I understand to my great vexation of mind that there is a pause obtained of the execution thereof, and liberty propounded for her to be free where she likes. I am confident it is but her great importunity, mixed with some feminine wily pretences, and assisted by feminine mediation, which hath procured the stop." The " feminine mediation " was that of the Duchess of Buckingham, who had written to Conway on behalf of Lady Falkland. The prospect of being sent to the keeping of her mother was anything but attractive to Lady Falkland, and the jailer was quite as unwilling to receive the prisoner as the prisoner to be sent to the jailer. Lady Tanfield had heard from her daughter of what had been ordered, and she wrote to her, in a letter f beginning " Bes," (Bess), "I will not exsept of you, and if by any exterordenary devis he [that is to say, Lord Falkland] cold compel you, you shall fynd the worst of it." " For my part," she adds, " you may lyve wher you pies." Lady Falkland wrote J to Secretary Conway explaining her mother's unwillingness to receive her, and begging to be confined, if confined she must be, in Essex, near her " sister Barrett." " I have nor meat, drink, nor clothes," * S. P. O. Ireland, 4th April, 1627. t S. P. Dom. Charles I., vol. Ixii., No. 62. : Ib. t vol. Iviii., No. 19. 22 FALKLANDS. she complained, " nor money to purchase them, and long have I been in this misery. I lie in a lodging where I have no means to pay for it." She also wrote a letter * to the king, and besought Conway to deliver it to him. Her mother, she says in this letter, " vows if ever I come to her, either willingly or by command," she " will never, neither in her life nor at her death, either give me anything or take any care of me. ... I am here in an estate so miserable, as to starve is one of my least fears." She says that she has heard of His Majesty's belief that she became a Catholic in hopes of thus obtaining preferment at Court from the Catholic queen ; but, apart from the wickedness of making " religion a ladder to climb by," she was not so mistaken as to sup- pose "promotion likely to come that way," in those times. Conway mentioned this letter to her husband, who wrote in his reply : " She being replete with serpentine subtlety, and that conjoined with Romish hypocrisy, what semblances can she not put on, and what oblique ways will she not walk in ? " f At this juncture kind friends intervened, with the usual result of making matters worse. The king was persuaded to refer Lady Falkland's case to a committee of the Privy Council, which sent an official letter J to Lord Falkland, ordering him to pay his wife's debts of 272, and either to make her an allowance of 500 a year, or else keep up an establishment for her, the details of which were specified. This proceeding simply exasperated Lord Falkland. But, womanlike, Lady Falkland, now that she had ob- tained the order, rather than still further madden her husband against her, refused to avail herself of it. Finally she relinquished herself to circumstances, and "retired to * S. P. Dom. Charles /., vol. Ixiii., No. 89. t S. P. O. Ireland, sth July, 1627. J Council Register, Charles I., vol. iii., p. 188. IN POVERTY. 23 a little old house that she took in a little town ten miles from London," * where she lived alone with her one servant, Bessie, who had now become a Catholic. The house was almost "ready to fall on their heads," their only furniture was " a flock bed on the bare ground (which was also borrowed of a poor lady in the town), and an old hamper which served her for a table, and a wooden stool." Here Lady Falkland passed her time in writing the lives of four saints in verse, and in translating the works of Cardinal Perron. She had been in this humble retirement for about a couple of years, when her mother died.f Her own position was little altered or improved by the death of Lady Tan- field, which affected much more the fortunes of her eldest son, Lucius, on whom Lady Tanfield's property, as I have already said, had been entailed. This had been done in consequence of Sir Lawrence's anger when Lady Falkland sacrificed the greater portion of her own jointure for her husband's relief. To her death she was poor, and often even in want of food ; yet she is said to have erected the very expensive and pretentious monument in Burford Church to the memory of her father, mother, and husband. The figures of her father and mother lie side by side, and those of her husband + and herself are at either end, kneeling. After the inscription describing her husband, it is stated that Lady Falkland " erected this monument of his virtues and her sorrowes." Very possibly she may only have paid for the portion of the monument relating to her husband. There * The Lady Falkland, p. 37. t Both Lady Tanfield and her husband were buried with remarkable haste. Sir Lawrence " departed this life about 2 of the clock in the morning upon Saturday the last of April," and he " was buried the ist of May at 12 of the clock in the night." His widow, Elizabeth, "died 22nd July, and was buried the same day." Register in Burford Church. See History of Burford, p. 62. \ Some authorities consider this figure to represent her son, Lucius. 24 FALKLANDS. is a good deal of verse, both in Latin and in English, upon the tomb.* It may be sufficient to quote the following, which is apparently Lady Falkland's : Here shadowe lie Whilst life is sadd, Still hopes to die, To him she hadd, In blisse is he Whom I lov'd best : Thrice happy shee With him to rest. So shall I be, With him I loved : And hee with mee, And both us blessed. Love made me Poet, And this I writt ; My harte did doe yt And not my witt. The heir to the property which should first have been hers, Lucius Gary, had been for some time in England. His name is entered in the register of St. John's College, Cam- bridge^ and in a letter to Dr. Beale, Master of St. John's, he calls himself " a St. John's man," I but the date in the register is 1621, which, as he was then only eleven years old, could only have been with a view to a future attendance, and it is doubtful whether he was ever in residence as an undergraduate at Cambridge. It is stated in the Biographia Britannica \\ that " at first he proved but a wild youth, but being sent to travel under * Lady Tanfield left money to be given periodically to widows. In 1707 there is this entry in the Burgesses' Book: "The Widdows had not any of the Lady Tanfield's money by reson the top of the steeple was blown down and fell upon the Isle and damnified the Tomb." t Baker's Hist, of St. John's Coll., vol. i., p. 263. \ Life of Dr. J. Harwich, Appendix, pp. 551, 552. Rational Theology, Tulloch, vol. i., pp. 82, 83. || Kippis' ed., vol. iii., p. 291. WILD OATS. 25 the care of a discreet tutor, he soon shook off all levity and extravagance, and became a wise, sober and prudent person." The gossiping and delightful, but not invariably accurate, Aubrey says of him : * " My lord in his youth was very wild, and also mischievous, as being apt to stabbe and doe bloudy mischiefs." Lloyd also moralises f upon the " wildness " of his youth, saying : " He that hath a spirit to be unruly before the use of reason hath mettle to be active afterwards. Quicksilver if fixed is incomparable ; besides that the adventures, contrivances, secrets, confidence, trust, com- pliance with opportunity, and the other sallies of young gallants, prepare them for more serious undertakings as they did this noble lord." Lucius Gary's own son, Henry, \ said a much better thing concerning the follies of youth, than Lloyd's pom- pous panegyric of his father's early imprudences. When remonstrated with for wishing to become a member of Parliament before he had " sowed his wild oats," he replied, " I may sow them in the House, where there are geese enough to pick them up." Lucius Gary was about nineteen when he came in for his grandmother's property. Just before this good fortune came in his way, very ill fortune befel his father. Lord Falkland was anxious to make plantations in a lawless district among the Wicklow mountains, in- habitated by the sept of the Byrnes ; and he announced that he had discovered a dangerous conspiracy, in which the Byrnes were concerned. He declared that the best method of treating such men was to seize their property and convert it into plantations ; and he had Phelim Byrne and his five sons arrested and lodged in Dublin Castle. || * Letters, vol. ii., part i., p. 347. t Memoirs, p. 332. + Ib., p. 333. Hist. Eng., Professor Gardiner, vol. viii., p. 20 seq. || S. P. O. Ireland, 27th Aug., 1628. 26 FALKLANDS. He wrote in triumph to King Charles, saying that the " future peace and tranquillity of" the kingdom would be greatly influenced by the suppression of this odious family. To his surprise, the king * replied that he had received a petition from the Byrnes complaining of his own proceedings against them a sixth son of Phelim's was then in London and that he had appointed a committee of the Irish Privy Council to investigate the matter. Among the names on this committee were those of four of Falkland's greatest enemies. The committee decided that the evidence upon which the Byrnes had been indicted was chiefly that of condemned felons, who had saved their lives by swearing to untruths which they knew would be agreeable to the authorities. One witness had been racked ; another had been laid, naked, upon a heated gridiron. Two witnesses deposed before the committee that they had been told they would be hanged unless they accused Phelim Byrne. In consequence of this inquiry, the Byrnes were set at liberty, and Lord Falkland was recalled .f It is very improbable that Falkland had been cognisant of the illicit methods unhappily common enough in those days adopted for the ruin of the Byrnes. That family bore a very bad name with the government ; and the Irish Council I wrote to the king saying that the information which Falkland had received of them " moved your Deputy being a stranger to have a wary aspect upon those people for the common peace," and that they * S. P. O. Ireland, yd Oct., 1628. f Falkland must have had much to bear in Ireland. " Some beginning to counterfeit his hand, he used to incorporate the year of his age in a knot flourished beneath his name, concealing the day of his birth to himself. Thus by comparing the date of the month with his own birthday (unknown to such Forgers) he not only discovered many false writings that were pass'd, but also deterred dishonest Cheaters from attempting the like for the future." Lloyd's Memoirs, p. 331. | S. P. O. Ireland, 28th April, 1629. A CHALLENGE. 2? believed his only wish and object to have been " the reducement " of Phelim Byrne's district " to the con- formity of other civil parts." But granting that the Byrnes may have been as bad as, or even worse than, they were represented, so far as the cause of their indictment was concerned, the con- spiracy was not on the part of the Byrnes, but against the Byrnes. The best that can be said of Falkland re- specting them is that he was very injudicious in the credence he gave to their accusers and in his selection of agents to bring about their prosecution. Falkland had made many enemies while Lord Deputy, and his constant appeals for money, as well as his refusal to assist his wife, had greatly worried the authorities in England. When, therefore, he had obtained the command of a company for his son, Lucius, some person in power, who disliked him, contrived to get that company taken away from Lucius and given to Sir Francis Willoughby. Lucius immediately sent a Captain Rainsford * to call upon Willoughby with the following courteous and good- humoured challenge : f " I doe confess you a brave gentleman and for myne owne sake I would not but have my adversary be soe, but I knowe no reason why, therefore, you should have my breechez, which yf any brave man should have, I should be fayne shortly to begg in trowses. I dowght not but you will give me satisfaction with your sword, of which yf you will send me the length, with tyme and place, you shal be sure according to see appointment too meete." Whether the duel was actually fought I have been unable to ascertain ; + but I am inclined to think not, as, in a letter to Edward, Lord Conway, Weld wrote that * S. P. Dom. Charles I., vol. clxi. , No. 48. t The White King, by W. H. Davenport Adams, vol. i., p. 237. J Falkland " fought a duel before he was nineteen." The Debates on the Grand Remonstrance, by John Forster, p. 175. 28 FALKLANDS. it was the challenge which " seemed to make too bold with the king ; " and that on this account both Lucius and Rainsford, his second, were committed to the Fleet prison, and ordered to be proceeded against in the Star Chamber.* Lord Falkland wrote to the king about his son's imprisonment in the following terms : " Most humbly shewing, that I had a sonne ; until I lost him, in your Highness displeasure, where I cannot seek him, because I have not will to find him there. Men say, there is a wild young man now prisoner in the Fleet, for measuring his actions by his own private fence. But now that for the same your Majesties hand hath appeared in the punishment, he bows and humbles himself before, and to it : whether he be mine, or not, I can discern by no light, but that of your royal clemency ; for only in your forgiveness can I own him for mine. Forgiveness is the glory of the supremest powers, and this the operation, that when it is extended in the greatest measure, it converts the greatest offenders into the greatest lovers, and so makes purchase of the heart, an especial privilege peculiar and due to Sovereign Princes. If now your Majesty will vouch- safe, out of your own benignity, to become a second nature, and restore that unto me which the first gave me, and vanity deprived me of, I shall keep my reckoning of the full number of my sons with comfort, and render the tribute of my most humble thankfulness, else my weak old memory must forget one." f After being detained in the Fleet for ten days, Lucius was liberated ; the king assigned him the arrears of his pay, and gave him a special acknowledgment that he had not lost his command through any fault of his own. * S. P. Dom. Charles I., vol. clxi., No. 48. t Cabala, ed. 1663, fol., p. 238. Biog. Brit., vol. cxi., p. 291. S. P. Dom. Charles I., vol. clviii., Nos. 62 and 63. There are minute variations be- tween these and that published by Cabala which I have copied. In Weld's letter to Conway, already noticed, he says that Falkland's petition " passes for a curious piece." ONE GOOD TURN DESERVES ANOTHER. 29 Having done his son a good turn, Falkland thought it only fair that his son should do a good turn to him. His own affairs were in a hopeless state. While at Dublin he had got deeper and deeper into debt, and he was practically a ruined man. Lucius had come into a large fortune. He was not going to ask him for that ; indeed, if Lucius paid his debts, he would only have enough left for himself. What Falkland had determined upon was that Lucius should marry a certain rich heiress, and then there would be enough to pay his debts and to keep both father and son, and heiress as well perhaps, in luxury. Lord Falk- land is not the only father in history, private or public, who has made such a plan for his son ; and the results of such plans have been in most cases very similar. CHAPTER IV. MARRIAGE FOR MONEY, OR FOR LOVE ? IF Henry, Lord Falkland, had married for money, Lucius was to marry for love. The father intended his son to marry a daughter of the Lord Treasurer, Richard Weston, Earl of Portland ; * the son had altogether other views respecting his own marriage. But before dealing with the love affairs of Lucius Gary, it may be well to say something of the man. If Aubrey and Wood and Lloyd are right in saying that Lucius was "wild" in his youth, a strong reaction must have set in immediately after his imprisonment. Such reactions, if uncommon at so early an age, sometimes occur, especially when a youth falls deeply in love with a girl both pretty and pious. Indeed, the studiousness of Lucius Gary at the age of twenty was of a kind very likely to have been due to the influence of a pretty woman of serious tastes. Another cause of a change in his character may have been his sudden accession to a large property. Clarendon f says that his income was "above 2000 a year," which would be equal to much more then than now. But how much ? That is a very difficult question. As to relative values, everything would depend upon what was to be purchased. Bread was probably very little cheaper than it is at present. Beef and mutton, on the other hand, * Lives of the Friends of Lord Chancellor Clarendon, by Lady Theresa Lewis, vol. i., p. 8. t Life of Clarendon, vol. i., p. 43. RELATIVE VALUES. 31 cost only twopence, or at most threepence, a pound. Agri- cultural labourers received but about sixpence a day ; but then they generally had a right to keep a cow or a sheep, and perhaps a goose, on the neighbouring common, and they may have been allowed to do a little land-grabbing from the nearest moor or fen. The lord of the manor, again, may have been able to buy a horse for what we should call an " old song ; " but if he wanted to buy a silk dress for his wife he would have had to pay more than we do.* I have heard that a high authority, the late Mr. Bruce, con- sidered the sovereign sterling to have been worth about four and a half times as much in the first half of the seven- teenth century as it is now. It is said that no man ever owed more to his biographer than Lucius Gary to his friend Lord Clarendon. " There never was a stronger instance," says Horace Walpole,f " of what the magic of words and the art of an historian can effect than in his character of this lord." Yet even Claren- don writes thus of the personal appearance of Lucius Gary : " His presence . . . was in no degree attractive or promising. His stature was low, and smaller than most men ; his motion not graceful ; and his aspect so far from inviting that it had somewhat of simplicity ; and his voice the worst of the three, and so untuned, that instead of reconciling, it offended the ear, so that nobody can have expected music from that tongue, and sure no man was less beholden to nature for its recommendation into the world : but then no man sooner or more disappointed this general and customary prejudice." J Aubrey's description of him is shorter : " He was a * I am indebted for these details to the great kindness of Professor Gardiner. t A Catalogue of the Royal and Noble Authors of England, by Horace Walpole, 1806, vol. v., p. 80. I The Life of Edward, Earl of Clarendon, written by himself, ed. 1827, vol. i., p. 43. 32 FALKLANDS. little man, and of no great strength of body ; he had blackish haire something shaggy, and I think his eies black." * To his character we will again summon Clarendon as a witness. However "wild" he may have been in boyhood, as Lloyd and Wood pronounced him, Clarendon assures us that "he was superior to all those passions and affec- tions which attend vulgar minds, and was guilty of no other ambition than of knowledge, and to be reputed a lover of all good men." f " He had a courage of the most clear and keen temper, and so far from fear that he seemed not without some appetite of danger." J Yet " he was of a most incomparable gentleness, application and even sub- mission to good and worthy and entire men." " In his conversation he was the most cheerful and pleasant that can be imagined . . . and of great gaiety in his humour, with a flowing delightfulness of language ; he had so chaste a tongue and ear that there was never known a pro- fane or loose word to fall from him, nor in truth in his company." His " rigidness was only exercised towards himself: towards his friends' infirmities no man was more indulgent." I! He was a man of "prodigious parts of learning and knowledge," IT "of inimitable sweetness and delight," ** of a " flowing and obliging humanity and good- ness to mankind," and of a "primitive simplicity and integ- rity of life." He had " the least pedantry and affectation that ever man, who knew so much, was possessed with, of what quality soever, "ff These are only brief quotations from long paragraphs * Letters Written by Eminent Persons and Lives of Eminent Men, by John Aubrey, vol. ii., part i., p. 351. t History of the Rebellion, bk. vii., p. 352. \ Ib., p. 357. Ib., p. 358. || Life of Clarendon, vol. i., p. 50. II History, bk. vii., p. 350. ** It is difficult to understand Matthew Arnold's reasons for changing " sweetness and delight " to " sweetness and light." Mixed Essays, p. 236. ft Life of Clarendon, vol. i., p. 49. MARRIAGE FOR MONEY, OR FOR LOVE? 33 dilating upon the virtues of Lucius Gary ; and, after read- ing them, who shall say that the Lives of the Saints are exaggerated or incredible ? Dr. Barlow wrote that Lucius Gary was " a person of great wit, conspicuous for his natural perfections." * Hugh Cressy, in his Epist. Apologetical (1674), calls him "the greatest ornament to our nation that the last age pro- duced ; " \ and Thomas Triplet, in his dedicatory epistle "before Falkland's Book of Infallibility, printed in 1651," says that " he was the envy of this age, and will be the wonder of the next." \ Wood says : " As for his parts, which speak him better than- any Elogy, they were incomparable." A contemporary writer, in an Elegy upon his wife, calls him The best of writing and of fighting men. || Of modern opinions of Lucius Gary I will not offer many. The pith of Horace Walpole's and Matthew Arnold's I gave at starting. Professor Gardiner says : " Falkland's mind in its beautiful strength as well as in its weakness was essentially feminine." IT The charming and refined Edward Bulwer, Lord Lytton,** wrote that " honour and genius elect Falkland as their own;" while the practical and excellent John Forsterff wrote of his "fastidious tastes" and his " impulsiveness of temper; " and in these endeavours to make more clear the characteristics of Lucius Gary both Lytton and Forster may almost besaid to have thrown a side-light upon their own. * Barlow's Remains, 1673, p. 324. I quote from Wood's Ath. Ox., vol. i., p. 588. t Ath. Ox., vol. i., p. 587. J Ib. Ib. || " To the memory of the most religious and virtuous Lady, the Lady Letice, Vi-Countesse Falkland." IT Dictionary of National Biography, vol. ix., " Lucius Gary." ** Miscellaneous Prose Works, vol. i., p. 371. ft Debates on the Grand Remonstrance, p. 173. 3 34 FALKLANDS. Lucius Gary was essentially a man of friendships ; even of violent friendships. Misanthropes have maintained that excessive friendship is a sign of a weak character, a question into which I do not feel called upon to inquire here. One of Lucius's greatest and earliest and earliest lost friends was Sir Henry Morison. Of the virtues of these two friends, and of the strength of their friendship, I will let Ben Jonson speak, in a few extracts from his " Pindaric Ode to the Immortal Memory and Friendship of that Noble Pair," written apparently after Sir Henry's death : III. THE STROPHE, OR TURN.* It is not growing like a tree In bulk, doth make men better be; Or standing long an oak, three hundred year, To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sear : A lily of a day, r Is fairer far, in May, Although it fall and die that night ; It was the plant and flower of light. In small proportions we just beauties see; And in short measures, life may perfect be. # * * * * * IV. THE STROPHE, OR TURN. And shine as you exalted are ; Two names of friendship, but one star : Of hearts the union, and those not by chance Made, or indenture, or leased out t' advance The profits for a time. No pleasures vain did chime, Of rhymes, or riots, at your feasts, Orgies of drink, or feign'd protests : But simple love of greatness and of good : That knits brave minds and manners, more than blood. * " A Pindaric Ode to the Immortal Memory and Friendship of that Noble Pair, Sir Lucius Cary and Sir H. Morison." Ben Jonson's Works, ed. Barry Cornwall, pp. 715, 716. " Underwoods." THE METAPHYSICAL POETS. 35 THE ANTI-STROPHE, OR COUNTER-TURN. This made you first to know the why You liked, then after, to apply That liking ; and approach so one the t' other, Till either grew a portion of the other ; Each styled by his end, The copy of his friend. You liv'd to be the great sir-names, And titles, by which all made claims Unto the Virtue : nothing perfect done But as a GARY or a MORISON. THE EPODE, OR STAND. And such a force the fair example had, As they that saw The good, and durst not practise it, were glad That such a law Was left yet to mankind ; Where they might read and find Friendship, indeed, was written not in words; And with the heart, not pen, Of two so early men Whose lines her rolls were, and records : Who, ere the first down bloomed on the chin, Had sow'd these fruits and got the harvest in. I may take this opportunity of observing that it will be my lot in this work, as it has already been in several others dealing with the same period, to quote a good deal of very indifferent verse. "About the beginning of the seven- teenth century," says Dr. Johnson,* " appeared a race of writers, that may be termed the metaphysical poets." They " were men of learning, and to show their learning was their whole endeavour, but, unluckily resolving to show it in rhyme, instead of writing poetry they only wrote verses, and very often such verses as stood the trial of the finger better than of the ear ; for the modulation was *" Life of Cowley " in Chambers' Works of the English Poets, vol. vii., p. 12. 30 FALKLANDS. so imperfect that they were only found to be verses by counting the syllables." This style, says Johnson, was " recommended by the example of Donne," to whom, as will be seen, Falkland wrote a poem, " a man of very extensive and various knowledge ; and by Jonson, whose manner resembled that of Donne more in the ruggedness of his lines than in the cast of his sentiments." Of their six " immediate successors, of whom any remembrance can be said to remain," mentioned by Dr. Johnson, three were friends of Lucius Gary's, and a fourth wrote a poem to him. Sir Henry Morison was a son of Sir Richard Morison, of Tooley Park, Leicester ; and Sir Henry had a sister. If Sir Henry was eulogised in verse, so also was his sister, Letice, by a versifier, however, who does not appear to have been remarkable either for poetical power or partiality to papists.* Show me your Legends, you, in whose bright year More Saints and Martyrs then black days appear, Martyrs and Saints, whose consecrated names Stand shining there, as in their second flames, 'Mongst all your Tecla's, Bridget's, Friswid's, all Your fiction-Saints, or which we true Saints call, You will not find one he, or she more fit To be extoll'd, or canonis'd in wit, Than this departed Lady, who embalms All poetry, and turns all verse to Psalms. So excellent had been the training of "this elect lady," says her biographer, that " she came not from her Nurse's arms without some knowledge of the principles of Christian religion. While she was very young, her obedience to her Parents (which she extended also to her Aunt, who had some charge over her, in her Father's house) was very exact, and as she began, so she continued in this gratious, and * " To the memory of the most religious and virtuous Lady, the Lady Letice, Vi-Countesse Falkland." (///< <>/ Client.) //-' / t.->c^ 'I'/u 17 srtritt/ v ii/t.i.ii-/i , in //if 'I'Mi-J.iitin { Langbaine (& Gildon), 1699, p. 77. Works of Jonson, Gifford, p. 19. BEN JONSON. 73 and many other details of his interesting career, are familiar to most readers. It must be admitted that everybody did not hold exactly Falkland's opinion of Jonson ; or possibly Falk- land may have spoken the truth, but not the whole truth, when expressing that opinion. Langbaine,* while declaring him to have been " a jovial and pleasant companion," said he was " blunt and haughty to his antagonists and criticks." His contemporary, Drummond of Hawthorn- den, f whom Gifford for this accuses him of being " a cankered hypocrite," J says that Jonson " was a great lover and praiser of himself, and a contemner and scorner of others, given rather to lose a friend than a jest, jealous of every word and action of those about him, especially / after drink, which was one of the elements he lived in." Drummond also says that when he deserted the Catholic Church to join the Anglican Establishment, " he drank out the full cup of wine at his first communion, in token of his true reconciliation." Aubrey offended Gifford even more than Drummond by his description of Ben Jonson, and Gifford calls Aubrey "this maggoty- pated man," who " thought little, believed much, and confused everything." Certainly Aubrey || is not altogether complimentary in his notice of Jonson. He says " he would many times exceed in drinke ; canarie was his beloved liquor ; then he would tumble home to bed, and when he had thoroughly perspired, then to studie." He " had one eie lower than t'other and bigger, like Clun, the player. Perhaps he begott Clun." Even of his writing, Aubrey says : " Twas an ingeniose remarque of my Lady Hoskins that B. J. never writes of love, or if he does, does it not naturally." * Dramatick Poets, p. 77. t Folio 1711, pp. 224-6. J Vol. i., p. 126. 76., p. 20. || Letters, vol. ii., part ii., p. 412 seq. 74 FALKLANDS. By way of contrast, let us return once more to the eulogies by Falkland : So great his art, that much which he did write, Gave the wise wonder, and the crowd delight. Each sort as well as sex admir'd his wit, The hees and shees, the boxes and the pit ; And who lesse lik't within, did rather chuse To taxe their judgements than suspect his muse. How no spectator his chaste stage could call The cause of any crime of his ; but all With thoughts and evils purg'd and amended rise, From th' ethicke lectures of his comedies, Where the spectators act, and the sham'd age Blusheth to meet her follies on the stage : Where each man finds some light he never sought, And leaves behind some vanitie he brought ; Whose politicks no lesse the minds direct, Then these the manners; nor with less effect. When his majesticke tragedies relate All the disorders of a tottering State, All the distempers which on kingdomes fall When ease, and wealth, and vice are generall , And yet the minds against all feare assure, And telling the disease, prescribe the cure.* The question presents itself what did all these " men of parts," who met at Great Tew, talk about ? To some extent we may imagine from this statement of Aubrey's : f " The studies in fashion in those days (in England) were Poetrey, and Controversie with the Church of Rome." And first with respect to " Poetrey." It might be expected that, less than twenty years after the death of Shakespeare, the poetical horizon would have been still resplendent with the lustre of the sun so lately set ; but there is abundant evidence to prove that the bards then living were much more dazzled by the brilliancy of their own productions. * Fuller Miscellanies, vol. iii., p. 49 seq. t Letters, vol. ii., part i., p. 348. "DAMN ALL SHAKESPEARE." 75 And be it remembered that men of their generation had scarcely an excuse to Damn all Shakespeare, like th' affected fool At court, who hates whate'er he read at school.* Falkland's friend, Ben Jonson, it is true, called Shakespeare f "Sweet Swan of Avon," and " My gentle Shakespeere." He also wrote : While I confess thy writing to be such, As neither man, nor muse, can praise too much. And again : " He was not for an age but for all time." Yet when some one observed that Shakespeare often had said that he " never blotted out a line in his life," I Ben Jonson remarked that he wished " he had blotted out a thousand." Jonson's contemporary, Fuller, || says of Shakespeare: " His learning was very little. . . . Many were the wit- combats between him and Ben Jonson," and he says that Jonson was " far higher in learning ; " but, comparing the two men to a big ship and a little ship, he adds that Shake- speare " could turn with all tides, tack about and take advantage of all winds by the quickness of his wit and invention." Malone says that " Ben Jonson was ready enough on all occasions to depreciate and ridicule Shakespeare," IT and that he himself always thought with indignation of the tastelessness of the scholars of the second quarter of the seventeenth century, in preferring Ben Jonson to Shake- speare.** Gifford quotes a story of Gildon's, ff that Hales, who * Pope's Satires, " Epistle to Augustus." t " Underwoods," No. 12. J Aubrey's Letters, vol. ii., part ii., p. 539. After all, many profound admirers of Shakespeare might admit almost as much. || Worthies of England, vol. iii., pp. 284-5. ^ Vol. xv., p. 557. ** Vol. ii., p. 618. ft Works ofjonson, p. cclix. ; Gildon, p. 17. 76 FALKLANDS. was a great admirer of Shakespeare, got up "a disqui- sition " upon me question whether " the poets of antiquity " were superior to Shakespeare, before a jury composed of Falkland, Suckling, "and all the persons of quality that had wit and learning," and that the decision was unani- mously in favour of Shakespeare. The dramas of Beaumont and Fletcher were those most commonly acted before the Court of Charles I.,* and when Shakespeare's plays were performed before Charles II. they had been previously adapted to the taste of his Court by Sir John Suckling's friend, Sir William Davenant, f who had " marred and mangled with an unsparing hand." I In Falkland's time masques were more popular than plays. During the winter which Falkland spent in London with his mother, he probably witnessed a magni- ficent masque " set before their Majesties by the gentlemen of the Inns of Court," which was estimated to cost between ^4000 and ^5ooo. In dismissing the subject of the " Poetrey " of the great part of Falkland's time, it may be said that it is chiefly remarkable for what a certain writer has termed its " op- pressive wit and subtilty." We will now turn our attention to the other topic then fashionable " Controversie with the Church of Rome." On the latter point, Falkland's tastes were quite in the fashion. His inclinations in a Catholic direction had apparently been directed by "the conversation of his mother and the company he met at her house, having before believed but little." II These inclinations were * The White King, vol. ii., p. 72. t His father kept the Crown Tavern at Oxford. He succeeded Jonson as poet laureate in 1637. Ath. Ox., vol. ii., pp. 411-412. J The White King, vol. ii., p. 97. Strafford Letters, Garrard to Wentworth, 6th Dec., 1632, and 27th Feb., 1633. || The Lady Falkland, p. 56. SOCINIANISM. 77 checked by his " meeting a book by Socinus ; " and then, once more, he " believed but little." Aubrey says * that Falkland " was so far at last from setting on the Romish Church, that he setled and rested in the Polish (I meane Socinianisme). He was the first Socinian in England ; and Dr. Cressey . . . told me, at Sam Cow- per's (1669), that he himself was the first that brought Socinus's bookes ; shortly after, my Lord comeing to him, and casting his eis on them, would needs presently borrow them to peruse ; and was so extremely taken and satisfied with them, that from that time was his conversion." Now Wood states f the exact contrary. " While he lived, and especially after his Death, he was esteemed by many a Socinian . . . but one [Cressy, in his Epist. Apolo- getical, says a footnote] that knew him very well, doth (though a zealous Papist) clear him from being guilty of any such matter." As to this " matter," Professor Gardiner may well be heard. J " The term Socinianism is at present applied to a certain doctrine on the second person of the Trinity. In Falkland's time, as appears from Cheynell's Rise, Growth and Danger of Socinianism (1643), it was rather a habit of applying reason to questions of revelation which led up to that special doctrine as its most startling result." No man influenced Falkland's religious opinions more than Chillingworth. He was eight years older than Falkland, and was a Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford. After becoming a Catholic, || and afterwards returning to * Letters, vol. ii., part i., p. 348. t Ath. Ox., vol. i., p. 587. J Die. Nat. Bio., vol. ix., " Falkland." " Mr. William Chillingworth . . . was his intimate and beloved favourite, and was most commonly with my Lord " (Falkland). Aubrey's Letters, vol. ii., part i., p. 349. || Fuller says (Worthies of England, vol. in., p. 24) that he " in some sort was conciled to the Church of Rome;" and Miss Cary (The Lady- Falkland, p. 64) writes " if ever he were a sound Catholic." 78 FALKLANDS. the Anglican Church,* he wrote " a Book against the Papists ... for his Service he was rewarded with the Chancellorship of the Church of Salisbury ... in the Month of July, 1638, and about the same time with the Mastership of Wygstan's Hospital." Just before he deserted the Catholic Church, Dr. Juxon, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, -f- wrote to Laud, saying that Chillingworth was " ambitious to be Laud's convert," and that in Juxon's own opinion " all his motives " were " not spiritual, protest he never so much." It is with his relations to the Falkland family that we have to do ; and first it is necessary to say that the Dowager Lady Falkland's four daughters, who were living with her, determined, without their mother's knowledge, to become Catholics. J Lord Newburgh, " who was always very kind to them and careful of them, as being a true friend to their father's memory," hearing of their intention, went to the king and induced him to command Secretary Coke to issue an order to Lady Falkland to send her daughters to their brother's house and charge. On receiving this mandate Lady Falkland went at once to the king, and begged to keep her children. Charles then sent to Falkland, who humbly prayed to be excused from the odious office of jailer to his own sisters. The result was a delay in the affair, and meanwhile, through a fear that they might be removed and carefully kept out of reach of any priest, the four girls were received into the Church a good deal sooner than they would have been otherwise. About this time Mr. Chillingworth was a constant visitor at Lady Falkland's house. Elizabeth, Lady Falk- * Ath. Ox., vol. ii., p. 42. Wood says that he returned to the Anglican Church, " as some say," not finding " that respect which he expected," in the Catholic Church. t S. P. Dom. Charles I., vol. ccxiv., No. 49 (igth March, 1632). t The Lady Falkland, p. 61 seq. CHILLINGWORTH. 79 land, was one of those excellent women who regard the friend that reproves them as, of all friends, the best and the most faithful. Chillingworth was exceedingly faithful to her in this respect, so much so that he had "gained from her the esteem of a saint, for his so free reproving her."* Thus writes Lady Falkland's daughter, who adds that, later on, when he was again a professed Protestant, " after bragging of his own great charity, he did affirm he had dissembled himself a Catholic one half-year for their sakes,"f that is to say, for the sake of the four Miss Carys. He talked confidentially to the four girls, and expressed his opinion that his young friends had unquestionably been received into the Church " too hastily." J They would make better Catholics if " they were to go back, that by a more thorough inquiry they might make a more immovable resolution ; " and he showed them a letter from Archbishop Laud, "containing a paper of motives for further con- sideration of religion." It is more than probable that Chillingworth was keeping Laud informed of all that was going on in the Falkland family ; or that at the least he was doing so through the medium of Lord Newburgh; for Laud wrote to the king, || saying that he had learned from New- burgh that " Mrs. Ann and Mrs. Elizabeth Carye, two * The Lady Falkland, p. 63. t Aubrey says (Letters, vol. ii., part i., p. 285) "Sir Wm. Davenant (poet laureate) told me that notwithstanding this doctor's [Chillingworth's] great reason, he was guiltie of the detestable crime of treachery. " { The Lady Falkland, p. 65. Ib., p. 67. || S. P. Dom. Charles I., vol. cclxxii., No. 29. (2oth July, 1634.) It will be observed that the date of this letter was two years and two months later than that of Juxon to Laud, saying that Chillingworth was anxious to be Laud's convert ; so there can be little doubt that he had left the Catholic Church some time before he tried to use his influence with the Miss Carys, pretending to be still a Catholic. Moreover, Wood (A th. Ox., vol. ii., p. 42) says he became an Anglican again in 1631. 80 FALKLANDS. daughters of the late Lord Falkland," recently " reconciled to the Church of Rome, not without the practice of the ladye, their mother," * " meet with some things there which they cannot digest, and are willing to be taken off again by any fair way. . . . But the greatest thing I fear, is that the mother will still be practising, and do all she can to hinder. These are therefore humbly to pray your majesty to give me leave to call the old lady into the High Com- mission if I find cause so to do. And farther, as I was so, so am I still, an earnest suitor, that she might be com- manded from Court, where, if she live, she is as like to breed inconvenience to yourself as any other. I write without passion in this, but with the knowledge which I have of her mischievous practising." Lady Falkland " had no suspicion " f of Chillingworth, until a Protestant friend, Lord Craven, warned her " that he was no Catholic," and even then she did not believe it. Not long afterwards, however, she was thoroughly con- vinced. Chillingworth was then her guest, and one night she overheard him telling one of her daughters that the Catholic religion was "founded on lies and maintained on them." I Soon after his consequent expulsion from Lady Falk- land's house, Chillingworth went to pay a visit to his friend, her son, at Great Tew, whither her two youngest sons had gone from their school. There, to his mother's intense annoyance, Falkland appointed Chillingworth tutor to his young brothers. The pedagogue began their course of studies by laying down " for a first principle that there was not any certainty in matters of religion." || * After referring to the order sent through Secretary Coke that the girls should be sent to their brother, Laud says : " The lady trifled out all these commands, pretended her daughters' sickness, till now they are sick indeed, yet not without hope of recovery. " t The Lady Falkland, p. 70. \ Ib., p. 76. Ib., p. 80. || Ib., p. 81. CONFIDENT OF NOTHING." 8 1 That this was Chillingworth's opinion is confirmed by Clarendon,* who says Chillingworth " contracted such irresolution and habit of doubting, that by degrees he grew confident of nothing, and a sceptic, at least, in the great mysteries of religion." This is strenuously denied by other writers ; f but Father Knott, the Jesuit, takes Clarendon's view, or even a stronger one, saying that Chillingworth, finding " the profession of the Catholic religion not suiting to his desires and designs," " fell upon Socinianism, that is no religion at all." J The author of The Lady Falkland, who was clearly one of those daughters of Lady Falkland who were constantly with Chillingworth, affirms that he said " it was true he believed there was one God AND three persons, as there were 3, 100, 1000, 10,000 persons (men or angels), but that he never said he believed one God IN three persons ;" and that he bid " Protestants (at the table before all) to take Transubstantiation or deny the Trinity, he having as good and the same arguments against one as they against the other." Falkland's religious sympathies with Chillingworth are undoubted ; yet among the Sidney Papers\\ there is a state- ment in a letter, which imports that Chillingworth and Falkland had a controversy upon Socinianism, the former defending and the latter attacking it, and that Falkland confuted his antagonist. If this be true, it was probably a mere friendly argument, with a view to elucidating the subject, rather than a real warfare of words. When Chillingworth " undertook the defence of Mr. * Life of Clarendon, vol. i., pp. 62-3. fSee Biog. Brit., Kippis' edition, vol. iii., footnotes to pp. 508-517. \A Direction to N. N., Being an Admonition to Mr. Chillingworth to attend to his own Arguments, by Fr. E. Knott, S.J. Pp. Qi-2. \\Sidney Papers, vol. ii., p. 669 ; Biog. Brit., vol. iii., p. 517. 6 82 FALKLANDS. Potter's book against the Jesuits," * says Bishop Barlow, f " he was almost continually at Tew with my Lord " (Falk- land), where the "benefit he had by my Lord's company, and rational discourse, was very great ; " and in his library were books of which Chillingworth had never heard " till my Lord shewed him the books and the passages in them, which were significant and pertinent to the purpose. So that it is certain, most of those ancient authorities which Mr. Chillingworth makes use of, he owes, first to my Lord of Falkland's learning, . . . and next to his civility and kindness." If Falkland helped Chillingworth in what, as we have seen, Aubrey calls " controversie with the Church of Rome," it is pretty certain that Chillingworth assisted Falkland in the same occupation. In 1635 Falkland's friend, Walter Montague, in a letter to his father, announced his con- version, whereupon Falkland wrote a reply. In Professor Gardiner's opinion, J " the peer owed more to the scholar than he gave." Falkland's mother joined in his controversy with Mon- tague. " She writ something against his answer, taking notice in the beginning of it of the fulfilling of his prophecy who said he came ' not to bring peace, but the sword ' (Matt, x.) ; the son being here against his father " (Montague's letter, as I have said, had been addressed to his father, the Earl of Manchester), " and the mother against the son, where his faith was in question, which paper was the best thing she ever writ." Falkland himself admitted its ability. || My own copy of Falkland's Discourse of the Infallibilitie of the Church of Rome (1646) consists of only 17 pages, 'Potter's book was in reply to Charity Mistaken, by Father E. Knott, S.J., mentioned above. t Genuine Remains, p. 329 ; Biog. Brit., Kippis, vol. iii., p. 296. J Hist. Eng., vol. viii., p. 260. The Lady Falkland, p. 114. || Ib. FALKLAND'S DISCOURSE. 83 which are followed by an essay of 186 pages from another hand, entitled, " A view of some Exceptions which have been made by a Romanist to Lord Falkland's Dis- course," etc. Of Falkland's Discourse Dr. Tulloch says : " While professedly arguing against the infallibility of the Church of Rome, his argument is equally valid against the Prelatic sacerdotalism which had more or less oppressed England since ; " and again, " His plea against infalli- bility is really a plea in favour of freedom of religious opinion." * In short, as Chillingworth professed to have as strong, and very similar, arguments against the doctrine of the Trinity as against the doctrine of Transubstantiation ; so Falkland, in attacking the infallibility of the Catholic Church, virtually attacked the claim of authority in any Church and in all Churches. * Rational Theology, vol. i., pp. 167-9. 8 4 CHAPTER VIII. STEALING ONE'S OWN. Two years after the death of her husband, the Dowager Lady Falkland, partly owing to her endeavours to make a comfortable home for her children, partly to her inju- dicious generosities, and partly to " those entangling businesses in which she had dealt, and always been a loser," " was brought to the last extremity." * She had concealed her poverty as much as possible from her children. Having sold her bed, she locked the door of her room so that they should not observe that it was missing. But, at last, her financial condition could no longer be hidden, and she was driven to the extremity of writing to ask her eldest son to give her pecuniary as- sistance and to take his sisters to Great Tew. This he hastened to do, and, in spite of his mother's religion, his good wife, Letice, was " ever rather furthering than hindering " him in helping her. It was exceedingly distressing to Lady Falkland to reflect that her daughters would be again thrown into con- tact with Chillingworth ; but this could not be avoided. Being now alone, she lived in a very simple and economical manner, always going " a-foot," and even discarding widow's raiment and " wearing anything that was cheapest and would last longest." f Best of all, " she from this time gave over clean all those entangling businesses in which she dealt." She got into temporary trouble, however, * The Lady Falkland, p. 85. t Ib., p. 86. HOLYWELL. 85 through another "business," which, if not entangling, was dangerous. On 2ist February, 1637, Archbishop Laud, in the Account of his Province to the King, wrote : " There is a great resort of Recusants to Holy- Well ; * and " " this summer the Lady Falkland and her company came as Pilgrims thither ; f who were the more observed, because they travelled on Foot,and Dissembled neither their Quality, nor their Errand. And this Boldness of theirs is of very ill construction among your Majesty's People. My humble Suit to your Majesty is, that whereas I complained of this in open Council in your Majesty's presence, you would now be graciously pleased, that the Order then resolved on for her Confinement may be put in execution." In the margin was written in the king's hand : " C. R. Itt is done." If Lady Falkland was put into "confinement," she was soon out of it again. Her period of economy had the effect of making her somewhat better off, and then she became anxious to get her daughters back again. One of them, Magdalena, soon returned, Lady Falkland's very intimate friend, the Duchess of Bucking- ham, " being pleased to undertake to provide for that daughter of hers."J The girl brought news of her little brothers. One of these boys was named Patrick, and the other, afterwards when he became a monk, was re-named Placid. They had an " extraordinary desire ... to see themselves Catholics," and for this reason they refused to go to the Established Church, " though they should be never so much whipped for it," and they endeavoured to observe days of fasting and abstinence even when this entailed on them the " extremity of hunger, they not being let to eat most fasting meats as unwholesome for children." Falkland and Letice were very strict disciplinarians. * Wharton's History of the Troubles of Arch. Laud, p. 545. t Her former pilgrimage to the same place has been mentioned already. \ The Lady Falkland, p. 87. Ib. 86 FALKLANDS. They had two sons of their own named Lucius and Henry, and of the latter, Lloyd says * that he had " a strict educa- tion (for no man was ever harder bred)." Falkland's young brothers, therefore, would be certain to be kept in order, and Mr. Chillingworth, as their tutor, would be instructed on no account to spare the rod. The Dowager Lady Falkland was very anxious to get the boys away from the influence of Chillingworth, and she wrote to her eldest son, urging him to send them to some school abroad. When he demurred, she assured him that unless he would send them to her, she would take them from him. From her own point of view, Lady Falkland had good cause to fear not only Chillingworth's but also her eldest son's influence over her two younger sons ; for one of her daughters f writes that he " was wont to say " the Church taught things "contrary to reason (of which he counted the Trinity chiefly so)." Although she had not the money to pay the cost of bringing her boys in comfort to London, Lady Falkland was determined to get them there by some means. J For this purpose she hired a couple of horses and a couple of men, one of whom was known by everybody at Great Tew, while the other, who was her own servant, was known to no one at that time in the house. One day Lady Falkland's servant presented himself at Great Tew and asked for the elder Miss Cary to whom he gave a letter, addressed in an unknown feminine hand. When the girl took the missive from the servant, " Mr. Chillingworth (who always pried very narrowly) was just behind her . . . and looked over her shoulder when she opened it." If he had stood where he was a little longer, he would have observed that the letter was from the recipient's mother, directing her daughters to deliver their little brothers into the hands of the bearer of the letter and * State Worthies, vol. ii., p. 259. t The Lady Falkland, p. 93. } Ib., p. 95. Ib., p. 97. ESCAPE OF THE BOYS. 8? those of a man who would be somewhere near him. The very elaborate plot, as she proposed it, could only have succeeded " if everybody in the house would stand still in the place she supposed them till all was done." This was quite in keeping with the usual plans and designs of the Dowager Lady Falkland, which her daughters well knew, so they exercised their own ingenuity. If I dwell too long and too minutely upon the details of this comparatively unimportant adventure, my apology must be that the minor details of the past are rarer than the major, and that they often help to illustrate the life of the period in which they have occurred. Letice, Lady Falkland, was to go up to London on business of her own in three days, and was to take her sisters-in-law with her. Thinking that the morning " of their departure (when some bustle in the house would better hide it) " would be the best time for the escape of their brothers, the Miss Carys, the night before they were to start, asked for a holiday for the boys, for the next day, in order " that it might be the longer before they were missed." They then showed "a desire to be called very early, which one of their little brothers (by agreement) undertook to do at three o'clock, that the boys might have occasion to do that avowedly which, considering the wakefulness of Mr. Chillingworth * (which was well known to them), within whose chamber they lay, could not possibly be done by stealth." f " Rising at three with as much noise as they could," the boys went to call their sisters. As soon as she was dressed, one of the girls took them downstairs and saw them " safe out of all the courts of the house, without being descried by any." * Chillingworth's " only unhappiness proceeded from his sleeping too little and thinking too much ; which sometimes threw him into violent fevers." Life of Clarendon, vol. i., p. 59. t The Lady Falkland, p. 98. 88 FALKLANDS. The boys, who were then somewhere about ten or eleven years old,* ran " all alone that mile (it being not yet light) to meet men that were entirely strangers to them," and not with an appearance " apt to encourage the children to have any confidence in them." Before they reached their deliverers, they had to pass through the village. No one was about at that hour ; but the dogs, hearing the patter of the boys' feet in the still- ness of the night, or rather the early morning, began to bark,f and a window or two were thrown open by disturbed sleepers. This made the little fugitives " fain to hide them- selves behind bushes " " till all was quiet again." Having found the men, they were placed on the horses, and they reached Oxford without further adventure. When they passed through that town, fearing lest that dreadful mob of volunteer mounted police known as the hue-and-cry should arrive in pursuit from Great Tew, the men made the lads dismount. One man led one horse through the streets. The hats and the cloaks were taken off the boys to make them appear to be natives of the place, and they were told to keep the horses just in sight, but to stroll along by themselves as if they had nothing to do with them. The other servant followed at some distance in their rear, mounted on the other horse. The traffic in those times would be so slight that strange faces would attract attention, even in a town like Oxford. About noon they reached Abingdon. There they met, by appointment, a man with a boat and a pair of oarsmen, who were to take them by water all the way to London. Unluckily, both the rowers were very drunk, too much so to start on their voyage ; therefore the boys were hidden by the owner of the boat. After supper, the owner, the two servants, and the tipsy boatmen, quarrelled, and, in the confusion, people outside learned * The Lady Falkland, p. 126. t Ib. t p. 99. ABINGDON. 89 that the children were on a secret journey. Hearing of this, the constable came to take them ; but, as he happened to be " an old acquaintance and gossip " of the proprietor of the boat, he was satisfied when told that their mother had sent for them. It was probable, however, that he would be less easy to pacify the next morning, especi- ally as "one that resorted much to" Falkland's house lived near Abingdon ; so, for this reason, although the rowers were still but half sober, it was determined to start with the boys " at ten o'clock at dark night, with water- men not only not able to row, but ready every minute to overturn the boat with reeling and nodding." By good luck, however, the boys eventually arrived in London. At Great Tew, as the boys had been given a holiday, little was thought about them till dinner time,* which would most likely be about twelve, or even eleven o'clock. When they did not then appear, Falkland " sent instantly all about after them, but, soon judging that was to no purpose," he made sure that they had been carried off by emissaries from his mother ; and he despatched a messen- ger on horseback to his wife, " there being more hope she might recover them in London." As soon as she received her husband's letter, in London, Letice "acquainted my Lord Newburgh ; he, the Council table (whereof himself was one)." While Letice, Lady Falkland, was putting the autho- rities on the scent of the two lads, Elizabeth, Lady Falk- land, was endeavouring to put them off it. Overjoyed at the safe arrival of her boys, after many adventures, mis- haps and discomforts, " she was fain to put them in some private places in London, often removing them ; and for to be able to pay for their diet and lodging, as also, through the enlarging of her family (her daughters being come to her too), she and her household were constrained, * The Lady Falkland, p. 100. 90 FALKLANDS. for the time she stayed in town, to keep more Fridays in a week than one." On receiving Lord Newburgh's information, the Council was not idle. It summoned Lady Falkland to appear before it, and while she was present, it despatched officials to search for the boys in her own house, where, of course, they were not to be found. The mother * freely acknowledged that she had sent for her children, which she claimed to have a perfect right to do ; and she stated that she had warned her son of her intention. The boys, she said, had come willingly, walking a mile by themselves to meet her servants. She objected to their being under the tutorship of Mr. Chillingworth, and as to " why, she would give my Lord of Canter- bury a further account when he should please to demand it" My Lord of Canterbury, having used Chillingworth as a spy upon her daughters, did not press her on this point. "It is against the law to send boys to foreign seminaries," said one of the Lords of the Council. " I shall be obliged if you will prove that mine have been sent to any such place," was her reply. She was, indeed, rather anxious that they should suppose the lads to have already gone to the Continent ; so she added : " To send them abroad is not against the law." " Yes, it is ! " said one of the Council. And he showed her some orders to officers of various ports, commanding them to let none pass without a license. " As I am not an officer, those do not concern me," she answered. " If the officers have allowed my sons to pass without licenses, question and blame them, not me." " Do you wish to teach us the law ? " asked a judge. * The Lady Falkland, p. 101, seq. BEFORE THE COUNCIL. 91 "Being a judge's daughter, I am not wholly ignorant of it," was her rejoinder. " Tell us the name of the man who took your children across the sea," said a lord. " I know it not," replied Lady Falkland, with perfect truth ; as no one had yet done so. " You are not likely to have trusted your boys to the charge of a man you did not know," said the lord pettishly. She was then informed that they " referred her to my Lord Chief Justice Bramston" by their warrant ; and, in case she gave him no satisfaction, she was, by the same warrant, committed to the Tower. This was serious. Having presented herself, in some trepidation, to " my Lord Chief Justice Bramston," she was received very courteously. He asked her a few questions, very similar to those put to her by the Council, and presently wished her good-morning. " She desired to know how she was to be conveyed to the Tower, to which she stood committed, if he were not satisfied." For the present, said the Lord Chief Justice, she might return to her home, and he offered to order his own carnage to take her there. Soon afterwards, he sent for her daughters ; but when they came he was busy, and he told his secretary to inform them that they need not wait ; but that, if he wanted them, he would send his carriage for them. For- tunately, " they never heard more from him." Meanwhile their brothers* " were all the while in London (being about three weeks)," Lady Falkland "neither having money to send them over, nor being able to find any that would carry them." Eventually, through the kindness of the Benedictines and the charity of the Jesuits, the boys were taken to France and placed in the school of a Benedictine convent at Paris. Both boys became Catholics as they had * The Lady Falkland, p. 101 seq. 92 FALKLANDS. intended, and altogether six of her children professed her own religion. As I shall have little, if any, occasion to mention them again, I will say here that Placid became a Benedictine monk, under that name his baptismal name I know not ; that Patrick also took the habit, but threw it " off within the year, not being able to bear the kind of diet which the rules enjoined," * after which he became a rolling stone, and eventually wrote Trivial Poems and Triolets, which were republished in 1819 by Sir Walter Scott. It has been represented that Patrick became a Protestant ; but, so far as I can make out, he gave up " religion," i.e., the monastic life, and not the Catholic religion. Three of Lady Falkland's daughters, including Anne, who had been Maid of Honour to Queen Henrietta Maria, became Benedictine nuns at the convent at Cambray ; and in 1652 Anne was selected to lead a colony of nuns from Cambray to Paris, where she was kindly received by her late queen and mistress, j- Hearing that his mother was once more in extreme poverty, Falkland determined to settle something upon her, and intimated that he should like to meet her and talk the matter over, although " they were yet at much difference about the stealing away her little sons, which had also been much increased on both sides by letters," as disputes of all sorts are ever apt to be. On this the Dowager Lady Falkland went to Great Tew " without other ceremony than sending to him for his coach." Fortunately " he took this so well that upon her coming they were soon good friends." The Dowager, however, partially concealed her extreme impecuniosity from Falkland, for, knowing but too well " the torture and slavery of debt," she was "apprehensive of occasioning it to her son, whose estate she saw to be * Clarendon State Papers, vol. ii., p. 538. t The Lady Falkland, p. 187. DEATH OF ELIZABETH, LADY FALKLAND. 93 not well able to bear more than it was already charged withal." * Having helped her with money, he accompanied her to a more comfortable house. There he left her with an easy conscience, but ill-health then befel her. " Catching one cold upon another " had the effect of converting a cough which she had had for more than twenty years into confirmed consumption. Hearing of his mother's condition, Falkland " came to town (with his wife)." f He was " advertised " by others of the necessities which his mother had hidden from him, her reticence on the subject having been "out of the much sense she had of his decreasing estate and great charge," and he determined to relieve them. For this purpose, he " took order with his mother-in-law, intreating her to see all provided for" his own mother "that she should need, which she did, being most kindly careful of her." J Letice was also very good to her. But the end was approaching. Elizabeth, Lady Falkland, died in October, 1639, and was buried, by Her Majesty's permission, in the Queen's own chapel. Popular at Court, beloved by the Queen, alternately persecuted, petted and punished by the King, Elizabeth, Lady Falkland, was a curious mixture of virtues and failings, and her life, in its fortunes and misfortunes, presented as many contrasts as her character. Short, fat, plain, || and ill-dressed, she was one of those unconven- tional beings whose unconventionalities are privileged. IF She was exceedingly clever, deeply read, fluent and delightful in conversation, and brilliant in repartee. Yet she was absent to a degree which was as embarrassing to her friends as it was disastrous to her interests, and she was eccentric almost to the verge of occasional aberration. She was gentle, humble and unselfish ; she was genuinely * The Lady Falkland, p. no. f/6.,p. in. J/6., p. m. Ib., p. 86. || Ib., p. 7. H Ib., p. 115. 94 FALKLANDS. devout and exceptionally charitable ; but she was some- times irritating in her amiability and provoking in her piety. She was one of those women who do the right thing in the wrong way. With her unbounded generosity she combined unbridled impulsiveness and lamentable want of judgment. With a magnificent memory, she was extremely forgetful. And her honesty itself was almost a vice ; for she was too free in expressing her own opinion, too ready to tell anything that was asked of her, and too confiding in the honesty of others. One thing, however, is certain, that, in the words of her daughter, she had "a most hearty goodwill to God and His service ; " * and to use words of much higher origin, she seems to have loved her God with all her heart and her neighbour as herself. * The Lady Falkland, p. 116. ELIZABETH, WIFE OF HENRY, IST VISCOUNT FALKLAND. From the Tanfield Monument, Burford. [Taunt & Co., Oxford, Photo. 95 CHAPTER IX. FROM PEACE TO WAR. Two years before the death of Falkland's mother, occurred that of his old friend, Ben Jonson. Falkland gave vent to his feelings in verse. His " Eglogue on the Death of Ben Johnson* between Melybseus and Hylas" is too long to be quoted here in extenso, and a portion of it has already been given. In these verses, he not only raises his own lament, but calls on everybody else to lament also. So Johnson dead, no pen should plead excuse : For elegies, howle all who cannot sing, For tombes, bring turfe who cannot marble bring. Let all their forces mix, joyne verse to rime, To save his fame from that invader, Time ; Whose power, though his alone may well restraine, Yet to so wisht an end no care is vaine ; And Time, like what our brookes act in our sight, Oft sinkes the weightie and upholds the light ; Besides, to this, thy paines I strive to move, Less to expresse thy glory than thy love, t Falkland tells us in this elegy how various English monarchs valued Ben Jonson : * Although always now spelt without an h, Jonson's name contained it sometimes, formerly. f Miscellanies of the Fuller Library, vol. iii., p. 49. " An Eglogue on the Death of Ben Johnson between Melybaeus and Hylas." From " Jonsonus Virbius." See letter to Dr. Duppa in Private Memoirs of Sir Kenelm Digby, p. liii. 96 FALKLANDS. How great Eliza,* the retreate of those Who weak and injured, her protection chose, Her subjects' joy, the strength of her allies, The fear and wonder of her enemies, With her judicious favours did infuse Courage and strength into his younger muse ; How learned James, whose praise no end shall finde, Declared great Johnson worthiest to receive The garland which the Muses' hands did weave, And though his bounty did sustain his dayes, Gave a more welcome pension in his praise ; How mighty Charles, amidst that weighty care In which three kingdomes as their blessings share, Whom as it tends with ever watchfull eyes ; That neither power may force nor art surprise, So bounded by no shore, grasps all the maine, And farre as Neptune claimes, extends his reigne ; Found still some time to heare and to admire The happy sounds of his harmonious lire, And oft hath left his bright exalted throne, And to his Muse's feet combined his own : As did his queen, whose person so disclosed, A brighter nimph than any part imposed, When she did joine by an harmonious choise, Her graceful motions to his powerfull voice. With all this praise of "mighty Charles," and his grasp of the "maine," Falkland's name appeared the same year in the Hertfordshire list of defaulters for ship-money. f It is possible, Professor Gardiner suggests, J that as it does not also appear in the arrears for Oxfordshire, his Hertford- shire ship-money may have been left unpaid through an oversight ; yet his speech against ship-money proves that he had no inclination towards its payment. It was in the same year that Falkland's acquaintance and perhaps * Queen Elizabeth. t S. P. Dom. Charles I., vol. ccclxxv., No. 106. J Die. Nat. Biog., vol. ix., " Falkland." Rushworth, iv., p. 86. HOLLAND'S HORSE. 97 friend, John Hampden, having refused to pay ship-money, had judgment given against him, after a long trial. In the face of his resolve to spend the life of a student, in the retirement of Great Tew, surrounded by " men of parts," and to devote himself to theology and literature, Falkland was becoming more and more of a politician, and every day a stronger adherent to what would now be called the Liberal party. He was none the less a sound Royalist. His quarrel was neither with king nor with monarchy, but with the King's advisers, and with the outrageous prerogatives claimed by them on behalf of the monarchy. His loyalty was proved a few months before his mother's death, when the King's army advanced against the Scots, by his taking a part in that expedition under Lord Holland, General of the Horse.* Falkland's warlike enterprise was the signal, or at least the opportunity, for an outburst of remonstrance from the poets. Edmund Waller thus sang of his friend's departure for battle : Brave Holland leads, and with him Falkland goes, Who hears this told, and does not straight suppose We send the graces and the Muses forth To civilise and to instruct the North ! Not that these ornaments make swords less sharp ; Apollo bears as well his bow as harp. Ah, noble friend ! with what impatience all That know thy worth, and know how prodigal Of thy great soul thou art (longing to twist Bays with that ivy which so early kissed Thy youthful temples), with what horror we Think on the blind events of war and thee ! To fate exposing that all-knowing breast Among the throng, as cheaply as the rest ; Where oaks and brambles (if the copse be burned) Confounded lie, to the same ashes turned. t * Lodge's Portraits, vol. iv., p. 133. t The Poems of Edmund Waller, edited by G. Thorn Drury,pp. 75 and 76. 7 98 FALKLANDS. The remainder of the poem relates rather to the war in which he was engaging, than to Falkland himself. The young poet Cowley, who had written his " Love's Riddle " when a boy at school, and dedicated it to Sir Kenelm Digby, now, at the age of twenty-one, wrote a poem in honour of Lord Falkland's going to the wars : Great is thy charge, O North ! be wise and just, England commits her Falkland to thy trust ; Return him safe ; Learning would rather choose Her Bodley or her Vatican to lose : All things that are but writ or printed there, In his unbounded breast engraven are. There all the sciences together meet, And every art does all her kindred greet, Yet jostle not, nor quarrel ; but as well Agree as in some common principle.* A few lines further on, Cowley describes the forced introduction of the learned and sedentary Falkland into public life : And this great prince of knowledge is by Fate Thrust into th' noise and business of a state. All virtues, and some customs of the court, Other men's labour, are at least his sport ; Whilst we, who can no action undertake, Whom idleness itself might learned make ; Who hear of nothing, and as yet scarce know, Whether the Scots in England be or no ; Pace dully on, oft tire, and often stay, Yet see his nimble Pegasus fly away. 'Tis Nature's fault, who did them partial grow, And her estate of wit on one bestow ; Whilst we, like younger brothers, get at best But a small stock, and must work out the rest, How could he answer't, should the state think fit To question a monopoly t of wit ? * Cowley's Poems. The Works of the English Poets from Chaucer to Cowper, by Alex. Chalmers, vol. vii., p. 68. f Monopolies of various manufactures were at that time causing great dissatisfaction. A VOLUNTEER. 99 Such is the man whom we require, the same We lent the North ; untouch'd, as is his fame, He is too good for war, and ought to be As far from danger, as from fear he's free. Those men alone (and those are useful too) Whose valour is the only art they know Were for sad wars and bloody battles born ; Let them the state defend, and he adorn. In these verses, says Dr. Johnson,* " there are, as there must be in all Cowley's compositions, some striking thoughts, but they are not well wrought," a criticism with which I think most of my readers will agree. As was to be expected, Letice was even more distressed at her husband's departure for the war than were the poets ; but her biographer considered that she benefited from it in soul. " Her proficiency and progress " in religious perfection " I shal account from the time, when her prosperity began to abate ; when her dear Lord, and most beloved Husband, that he might be like Zebulon (a student helping the Lord against the mighty Judg. v. 14), went from his Book and Pen, to his Sword and Spear."f Falkland joined Holland's horse only in the capacity of a volunteer ; for Lord St. Albans wrote to Windebank from Berwick : " My brother of Essex arrived here upon Good Friday night, accompanied by volantiers, but not many of quality besides Lord Falkland and Lord Garrat. We have yet met with no enemies but what are constant to this place, snow, hail and violent northern winds, which keep back the main part of our victuals and munition. " J Indeed, so far as Falkland's hand-to-hand fighting with enemies was concerned, Waller, Cowley and Letice need not have been uneasy. This is what happened on the * Cowley's Poems, p. 24. t The Holy Life and Death, etc., pp. 150-1. J S. P. Dow. Charles I., vol. ccccxvii., No. 92, i4th April 100 FALKLANDS. only occasion on which the Earl of Holland and his horse confronted the foe. It was on a hot and dusty 3rd of June. Holland's 3000 infantry were weary and footsore, his 1000 horse pretty fresh.* News had arrived that a large force of the Scots had been established at Kelso, within the ten-mile limit on which the king had proclaimed they were not to encroach, a proclamation which they had agreed to respect.f Charles ordered Holland to attack their entrenchments with his cavalry and drive them out. " The Earl of Holland drew his sword, as other commanders did, with intention and order to charge ; but the nearer they went, the more the Scottish troops increased." J As an eye-witness wrote : " On each side appeared wings of foot and horse." Holland sent a trumpeter to ask them what they were doing there. They replied by asking him a similar question, and by recommending him to go " bock again." This kindly advice of the enemy Holland " found to be most expedient ; " || and " the event was a fair and safe re- treat, without loss of a man," IT or " a blow given." ** In less than a fortnight, the Treaty of Berwick was signed and hostilities were at an end. To tell the truth the gravest danger to which the cavalry joined by Lord Falkland were exposed was from their own men. " A trooper of the Earl of Holland's, with ill order- ing his pistol, shot his next neighbour in the brains, being a young gent of quality of Lincolnshire, who died upon the place." " Our soldiers are so disorderly that they shoot bullets through our own tents. The King's tent was shot through once and Sir John Borough's twice. The Earl of *S. P. Dom. Charles I., vol. ccccxxiii., No. 21 ; Coke to Windebank. t Ib., No. 49. I Ib., No. 49 ; Weckherlin to Conway. Ib., No. 29 ; Edward Norgate. || Ib., No. 49. IT 76., No. 29. **/&., No. 21. FROM WAR TO POLITICS. IO1 Westmoreland's brother being in bed, had his bed-tent and curtains shot through thrice." * If Falkland returned to the delightful repose of Great Tew, with Letice and the " wits " from Oxford as his com- panions, it was not to be for long. His five quiet years of rural student life, or perhaps of that particular form of luxurious indolence now known as " cultured leisure," the serenity of which was only broken by " repartying," as Aubrey called it, were at an end. The spirit of unrest was upon him, and having left the library for the battlefield, he was now about to leave the battlefield for the House of Commons. The question naturally presents itself, why should Falkland have relinquished the literary life, so suited to his tastes, for warfare with either word or sword? Can it be that, while Elizabeth, wife of the first Lord Falk- land, irritated him with her injudicious excellence, Letice, the wife of the second Lord, bored him with hers ? I ask this question, but I do not feel in a position to give it a definite answer. A woman of whom a versifier could write : Show me one Lady like to this ; who stil Was so precise, t may have wearied a husband of exceptionally broad opinions, until he was glad to avail himself of any opportunity to escape from a home oppressed by her somewhat prudish petticoat-government. Possibly, again, he may have ob- served that his friends, the " wits," were becoming a little shy of the hostess's austerity, at Great Tew. " Her strict- ness," says her biographer, "was exemplary in keeping the fasts of the Church, and such days as were appointed for solemn humiliation : young and old, noble and mean, free and bond, in her family, must observe them duly ; the * S. P. Dom. Charles I., vol. ccccxxiii., No. 16 ; Edward Norgate. t " To the memory of the most religious and virtuous Lady, the Lady Letice, Vi-Countesse Falkland." IO2 FALKLANDS. Ninivites were her patern, both for outward and inward humiliation." * How can this sort of thing have suited such men as Suckling and Carew, or Ben Jonson ? A few months after Falkland's return from Scotland, it was determined to summon a Parliament in England, after an interval of eleven years of arbitrary government, for the sole purpose of voting supplies.f The elections were held in the following March, and Lord Falkland was returned as member of Parliament for Newport, in the Isle of Wight. The change, from the fresh air and gardens of Great Tew, to London, cannot have been altogether pleasant when we reflect that about that time it was written "all the Houses about Piccadilly" are " found to be great nuisances, & much foul the Springs of Water which pass by those Houses to Whitehall & to the City."} Falkland's first experience of parliamentary life was a very remarkable one. The Short Parliament, as it is called, sat for only three weeks ; and Professor Gardiner says, " as far as actual results were concerned it accomplished nothing at all. For all that, its work was as memorable as that of any Parliament in our history." The most noteworthy speech made during its session was that of Pym. John Pym, the son of a Somersetshire squire, || had been a gentleman commoner at what is now Pembroke College, Oxford, and afterwards he studied law. His parliamentary career had begun in the reign of James I., who considered him " a man of an ill-tempered spirit ; " but he f was " a person of good language, voluble tongue, * Holy Life and Death, etc., p. 165. t The king had appealed to the citizens to lend him 100,000 at 8 per cent, in vain. 6\ P. Dom. Charles /., vol. cccl., No. 88. I Strafford Letters and Despatches, p. 150. Hist. Eng., vol. ix., p. 117. || Ath. Ox., vol. ii., p. 36. IT Ib. PYM. 103 and considerable knowledge of the common law." * He had had the audacity to oppose the omnipotent royal favourite, Buckingham, and shortly before the meeting of the Short Parliament he was known to have been in active correspondence with the Scotch Covenanters. Immediately before the elections he " rode about the country to promote elections of the puritanical brethren to serve in Parliament." f In a speech of two hours' length Pym opened the campaign against the oppression of the people. He was respectful to the Crown, but severe upon the conduct of its ministers, and he enumerated and described the acts of the government, which he maintained to have been illegal. Falkland was greatly impressed by this speech. In spite of the demands of the King, it became evident that the Parliament would not vote money for the support of a war against the Scots, and, at a meeting of the Privy Council convened at the unusual hour of six o'clock in the morning, a dissolution was decided upon. The impression left upon Falkland's mind by this short parliamentary experience was " such a reverence for Parliaments that he thought it really impossible they could ever produce mischief or inconvenience to the king- dom, or that the kingdom could be tolerably happy in the intermission of them. And from the unhappy and un- reasonable dissolution of that Convention, he harboured, it may be, some jealousy and prejudice to the Court, towards which he was not before immoderately inclined." J * Lord Lytton wrote (Miscell., vol. i., p. 320) : " Pym was, in fact, not only the most popular man at that time in England, but, perhaps, as a practical statesman, the ablest and most effective. . . . He was free from the formal affectations of the Puritans in his manners as in his dress. He was proverbially gallant to women ; and tempers so disposed are generally hearty and genial in their intercourse with men. He was careless in money matters, and it is perhaps to his honour that he died in embarrassed circum- stances." f Ath. Ox., vol. ii., p. 36. } Clarendon's Hist., vol. i., p. 247. 104 FALKLANDS. Having raised ^300,000, chiefly by a voluntary loan, the King sent an army to Scotland. In August the Scots invaded England, defeated Lord Conway at Newburn, and advanced into Yorkshire. The King summoned a Council of peers at York, and, in the hall of the Deanery, in September, he announced the issue of writs for a Parlia- ment to meet on the 3rd of November.* The Speaker of the new House of Commons was Lent- hall, to whom Falkland had sold his property of Burford Priory. Whatever may have been his faults, he was pro- bably the first Speaker of the House of Commons who recognised that the duties of that office were to keep in order the members, not to influence their decisions. f On the nth of November Pym rose from his seat in the House of Commons and moved that the doors should be locked, and he immediately called upon an Irish member J to bear witness to the treasonable intentions of Strafford ; and, after a somewhat rambling debate, a committee was named to prepare a " charge against the Earl of Strafford." The accusation was very rapidly and rather incon- clusively drawn up. It was probably on this occasion that Falkland for the first time addressed the House of Commons. He " was very well known to be far from having any kindness for " Strafford. Strafford had oc- cupied the post from which Falkland's father had been ousted, and Falkland cherished a "memory of some unkindness, not without a mixture of injustice, from him towards his father." Besides this, Strafford was the very personification of the policy which Falkland had entered Parliament to oppose. Yet when it was moved " That the Earl of Strafford be forthwith impeached of * Gardiner's Hist. Eng., vol. ix., p. 207. t/6., p. 220. J Sir John Clotworthy, one of the Ulster settlers. He it was who teased Archbishop Laud, on the scaffold, with questions about his soul. Clarendon's Hist. Reb., bk. iii., p. 174. IMPEACHMENT OF STRAFFORD. IO5 High Treason," a resolution that met with " unusual appro- bation and consent from the whole House," * Falkland " modestly desired the House to consider ' whether it would not suit better with the gravity of their proceedings, first to digest many of those particulars which had been mentioned by a Committee, before they sent up to accuse him? declaring himself to be abundantly satisfied that there was enough to charge him.' ' This suggestion was resisted by Pym, who went to the Bar of the House of Lords, just after Strafford had entered it, at about three o'clock in the afternoon, and, as a mes- senger from the Commons, he impeached him " of High Treason, and several other heinous crimes and misde- meanours." Falkland is often quoted as an instance of a man who began his political life as an ardent Radical, and ended it as a Royalist and, in some sort, a Conservative ; but, in this respect, what was he in comparison with Strafford ? In his youth Strafford's " intimate friends and associates thought it wisdom to shun his conversation, so forward he was in taxing the motions of the King and State. . . . Not without a malignant humour and a repugnant spirit," he " always withstood the King's profit." f And this was the man who afterwards strained the royal prerogative to breaking point. Lord Falkland's second occasion of addressing the House was on a subject which became the foundation of the impeachment of another high officer of the Crown. On 7th December, it was moved that the impost of ship- money was illegal. Small in stature, weak in voice, and unimpressive in appearance, Falkland, by his speech on this question, suddenly placed himself among the most prominent parliamentary speakers of that period. His * Clarendon's Hist. Reb., bk. iii., p. 174. t Stratford Characterised, Tract, 1641 ; Harleian Miscell., vol. iv., p. 47. 106 FALKLANDS. vehemence, fire and indignation made up for what was wanting in his presence and his utterance. He began by saying : " Mr. Speaker, I rejoice very much to see this day ; and the want hath not lain in my affections, but in my lungs." * He believed his cause to be a strong one. " No undigested meat can lie heavier upon the stomach than this unsaid would have lain on my conscience," said he. The judges, who had been appointed to ensure the security of the nation's goods, had forgotten that they were "judges, and neither philosophers nor politicians," and, " in an extra-judicial manner," they had given it as their opinion that the King had a right to impose " the tax of ship- money," on the plea of " mighty and imminent dangers in the most serene, quiet, and halcyon days that could possibly be imagined ; a few contemptible pirates being our most formidable enemies." "All men else saw" the law, except the judges. These unjust judges "had allowed to the King the sole power in necessity, and the sole judgment of necessity, and by that enabled him to take " from his people " zvhat he would, when he would, and how he would." Yet, in doing this, they had most of all injured the cause of the king. " A most excellent prince had been most infinitely abused." He felt it his duty to direct his attack more especially against one person, who had " been a most admirable solicitor," but made " a most abominable judge." This man had given back, " with his breath," that which " our ancestors had purchased for us " with " so large an expense of their time, their ease, their treasure and their blood." Indeed, he seemed to have striven "to make our grievances immortal, and our slavery irreparable, lest any part of our posterity might want occasion to curse him." To announce that this was Finch, the Lord Keeper, would "be to tell them no news." * Nalson's Collections, vol. i., p. 654 seq. IMPEACHMENT OF FINCH. IO? Falkland was supported by Hyde, and orders were given to draw up a charge against Finch. Before the day on which the matter was to be settled, Finch requested to be heard in the House of Commons, and on 2ist Dec. he appeared there, where he was received with due honour ; * but his defence did nothing in his favour, and after speeches by Pym and Hyde, the vote for his impeachment was carried almost, if not quite, unanimously. The same night Finch fled to the Hague. In the middle of January, f Goodwin, Falkland and others carried the articles of impeachment against Finch to the Lords. When they had been read, Falkland said the Lord Keeper's whole " life appears a perpetual warfare (by mines and by battery, by battle and by stratagem) against our fundamental laws, which (by his own confession) several conquests had left untouched against the excellent constitution of this kingdom . . . and this with such un- fortunate success, that, as he always intended to make our ruin a ground of his advancement, so his advancement the means of our further ruin." I Finch's treason was " as well against the King as against the Kingdom ; for whatever is against the whole is un- doubtedly against the head." The Lord Keeper, however, had fled, and, said Falkland, " I will spend no words . . . in accusing the ghost of a departed person, whom his crimes accuse more than I do, and his absence accuseth no less than his crimes." On the 2Oth of January, Lyttleton was appointed Lord Keeper in the place of Finch. * Hist. Eng., Gardiner, vol. ix., p. 246. t 1641. J Nalson's Collections, vol. i., pp. 725-6. io8 CHAPTER X. THE LONG PARLIAMENT. FALKLAND'S severity towards Finch and Strafford was, as Clarendon says, " contrary to his natural gentleness and temper;" but "he was so rigid an observer of established laws and rules that he could not endure the least breach or deviation from them, and thought no mischief so intolerable as the presumption of Ministers of State to break positive rules for reasons of State." This may be said to have been the foundation of Falkland's policy at this juncture. Strong as was the antagonism towards Strafford and Finch, the public dislike of the bishops was even greater. In November, 1640, Falkland's friend, Lord Digby, said in a speech : " Doth not every Parliament-man's heart rise to see the prelates thus usurp to themselves the grand pre- eminence of Parliament ? " * On the nth of December, a violent petition for Church reform and the abolition of Episcopacy, signed by 15,000 Londoners, was presented in the House of Commons. A week later, on the motion of Pym, a messenger was sent to the House of Lords to impeach Archbishop Laud of high treason. On the 8th of February (1641), there was a debate in the House of Commons on the question whether the Londoners' petition, demanding the abolition of Episcopacy, should be referred to a committee. The third speaker, on this occasion, was Falkland. * Harleian Miscellanies, vol. iv., p. 442. FALKLAND AND LAUD. 109 Falkland, if some of his friends were bishops, was not an admirer of their order, and " he had unhappily con- tracted some prejudice to" that most aggressive bishop of the day, Archbishop Laud ; although he revered Laud's "learning."* When he rose to speak in the debate, he accused the bishops of having " brought in superstition and scandal under the titles of reverence and decency." " While masses have been a security," he exclaimed, " a conventicle hath been a crime ; and, which is yet more, the conforming to ceremonies hath been more exacted than the conforming to Christianity." The bishops appeared to make it their business " not to keep men from sinning, but to confirm them. ... It seemed their work was to try how much of a Papist might be brought in without Popery, and to destroy as much as they could of the Gospel without bringing themselves into danger of being destroyed by the law. . . . Some have laboured to bring in an English, though not a Roman, Popery ; I mean not only the outside and dress of it, but equally absolute, a blind dependence of the people upon the clergy, and have opposed the Papacy beyond the seas that they might settle one beyond the water." He was thinking of Lambeth Palace. These bishops had " found a way to reconcile the opinions of Rome to the preferments of England." He admitted "that bishops may be good men;" but, he added, " let us give good men good rules." Again, he professed himself unwilling to see an ancient office, such as that of a bishop, " abolished upon a few days' debate." Before rooting " up this ancient tree, as dead as it " appeared, he wished to try " topping off the branches." And, in any severity towards the bishops, he would " distinguish between those who have been carried away by the stream, and those who have been the stream that carried them." f * Clarendon's Hist., book vii., p, 356. t Friends of Clarendon, vol. i., p. 53 seq. IIO FALKLANDS. Much in the same strain as Falkland, Digby desired to clip the wings of the bishops, without joining in their extinction ; and, at this time, the policy of the two men was almost identical. With all his virulence towards the clergy, Pym said, or is reported to have said, " that he thought it was not the intention of the House to abolish either Episcopacy or the Book of Common Prayer, but to reform both wherein offence was given to the people." * This is an important statement, which should be borne in mind when we have to consider Falkland's line of action and so-called change of policy a little later. Pym, Hampden, St. John and Holies were on one side in the dispute, Falkland, Digby, Hyde, Colepepper, Selden, Hopton and Waller on the other. Professor Gardiner says : " Slight as the difference might be between those who took opposite sides on that day, their parting gave the colour to the English political life which has dis- tinguished it ever since, and which has distinguished every free government which has followed in the steps of our forefathers. It was the first day on which two parties stood opposed to one another in the House of Commons, not merely on some incidental question, but on a great principle of action which constituted a permanent bond between those who took one side or the other." f The real source of disagreement between Falkland's party and Pym's party so far as there was any con- sisted in the favour felt by the latter towards the Puritans, and the fear of them felt by the former. Both sides feared the bishops ; but Falkland's feared the Puritans even more than the bishops. A description of these debates was given by an eminent * A yust Vindication, Bagshaw (1660), 518, i, 2. t Hist. Eng., vol. ix., p. 281. " POOR CANTERBURIE." 1 1 1 Puritan.* " The week before last," he wrote, " there was a great commotion in the Lower House when the petition of London came to be considered. My Lord Digbie and Viscount Falkland, with a prepared companie about them, laboured, by premeditat speeches, and hott disputts, to have that petition cast out of the House without a hearing, as craving the root out of Episcopacie against so manie established lawes. The other partie was as prepared ; yet they contested together, from eight a'cloack till six at night." The hours of sitting in the House, it will be perceived, were very different then from what they are now. In another letter he describes the difference between Falkland's and Pym's parties.f " How this matter will goe, the Lord knowes : all [are] for the erecting of a kind of Presbyteries, and for bringing down the Bishops in all things, spirituall and temporall, so low as can be done with any subsistence ; bot their utter abolition, which is the onlie aime of the most godlie, is the knott of the question ; we must have it cutted by the axe of prayer : God, we trust, will doe it." Again of a later speech of Falkland's, Bailie writes: " The Viscount Falkland as yow may read . . . did de- claime most acutelie, as we could have wished, against the corruption of Bishops ; bot [his] conclusion was the keeping of a limited Episcopacie." How strong the anti- episcopal feeling was at the time may be inferred from his adding : " As for poor Canterburie he is so contemptible that all cast him by out of their thoughts." J Even with their friends, bishops were at that time out of favour, as must be apparent to readers of Laud's Diary ; and Falkland said " that those who hated the Bishops, * Letters and Journals of Robert Bailie, Principal of the University of Glasgow, 28th February, 1641. t Ib., p. 303. J Ib., p. 307. Debates on the Grand Remonstrance, Forster, p. 282. 112 FALKLANDS. hated them worse than the devil, and they who loved them, loved them not so well as their dinners." * For a time, however, the agitation against the bishops was eclipsed by the excitement aroused by the trial of Strafford. There was great irritation in the House of Commons when it became known that the House of Lords had consented to Strafford's request for a little time in which to prepare his defence. Falkland rose to rebuke this ill- feeling against the Upper House. " The Lords," said he, " have done no more than they conceive to be necessary in justice." It would be only to assist the cause of Strafford " to jar with the Upper House, or to retard their own proceedings." f " I went to London," says John Evelyn, " to heare and see the famous tryall of the Earl of Strafford, who on 22nd March before had been summon'd before both Houses of Parliament, and now appear'd in Westminster Hall, which was prepar'd with scaffolds for the Lords and Commons, who together with the King, Queene, Prince, and flower of the Noblesse, were spectators and auditors of the greatest malice and the greatest inno- cency that ever met before so illustrious an assembly." J On that, the opening day, the proceedings were merely formal ; but the trial dragged on until the loth of April, when it was adjourned without any appointment for its renewal, owing to the quarrels between the Lords and the Commons. Charles and Strafford were delighted, and probably thought that the whole prosecution would thus fall through. " The King laughed, and the Earl of * This was said later, when the Root-and- Branch Bill was in Com- mittee, and even those who opposed the Bill were not sufficiently earnest in the matter to be in their places in the House at dinner-time. t D'Ewes's Diary, Harl. MSS., clxii., p. 229; Gardiner's Hist., vol. ix., p. 292. } Evelyn's Diary, p. 24, ed. " Chandos Classics." EXECUTION OF STRAFFORD. 113 Strafford was so well pleased therewith that he would not hide his joy." * Vain indeed were their joy and their laughter. The Commons returned to their own House in an irritable temper, and the younger Vane immediately committed the act for which he has been so much blamed by posterity. He publicly presented a copy of certain very private notes which he had found in his father's study. This evidence told strongly against Strafford, and a Bill of Attainder was brought in against him. The debate on this Bill extended over several days. Falkland sided with Pym in favouring the Bill, while Lord Digby, who had been with Falkland in the debate upon Episcopacy, now strongly opposed the Bill which Falkland was supporting. According to certain evidence,f when it came to the question of the actual execution of Strafford, Falkland appears to have relented, and to have again placed himself beside Lord Digby ; but this is doubtful. Falkland was humane and merciful ; but he was not the man to spare one whom he considered guilty of death, to please the king. The Strafford tragedy was soon over. Evelyn thus describes it: " I2th May. I beheld on Tower Hill the fatal stroke which severed the wisest head in England from the shoulders of the Earl of Strafford ; whose crime coming under the cognizance of no human law, a new one was made, not to be a precedent, but his destruction ; to such exorbitancy were things arrived. "J Such was not the opinion of Falkland. Meanwhile, the question of Episcopacy had not lain * D'Ewes's Diary, Harl. MSS., clxiii., fol. 27. f " And now began the first breach among themselves, for the Lord Falkland, the Lord Digby and divers other able men were for the sparing of his life and gratifying the King, and not putting him on a thing so displeas- ing him." ReliquicE Baxtcriance, p. 19. J Evelyn's Diary, p. 24. 8 1 14 FALKLANDS. dormant. A short Bill was brought in " to take away the Bishops' Votes in Parliament ; and to leave them out in all Commissions of the Peace, or that had relation to any Temporal Affairs." * " When the Bill was put to the question, Mr. Hyde (who was from the beginning known to be an Enemy to it) said : ' It was changing the whole Frame and Constitution of the Kingdom, and of the Parliament itself; ' and he ended his speech by protesting that, if the Bishops were turned out of the House of Lords, ' there was Nobody who could pretend to represent the Clergy, and yet they must be bound by their determinations.' " f Beside Hyde, sat Falkland. If either of the pair came into the House alone, a thing which rarely happened, " everybody left the place for him that was absent." No two members of the House of Commons were so insepar- able or so much of the same mind. Yet now, Hyde had scarcely sat down when Falkland " suddainly stood up, and declar'd himself ' to be of another Opinion ; and that, as he thought, the thing itself to be absolutely necessary for the Benefit of the Church, which was in so great Danger ; So he had never heard, that the Constitution of the King- dom would be Violated by the Passing that Act ; and that He had heard many of the Clergy protest That they could not acknowledge that they were represented by the Bishops.' " As to the bishops themselves, they sat and had votes in the House of Lords, and if they did not like the Bill when it should be sent to the Upper House, they could, if they pleased, " reject it. And so with some Facetiousness " Falkland " concluded ' For the Passing the Act.' " " The House was so marvellously Delighted to see the Two inseparable Friends Divided in so important a point," continues Clarendon, " that they could not contain from a kind of Rejoycing ; and the more, because they saw Mr. * Clarendon's Hist., book iii., p. 234. t Ib., p. 235. THE ROOT-AND-BRANCH BILL. 11$ Hyde was much surprised with the Contradiction ; as in truth he was, having never discovered the least inclination in the other towards such a Compliance." It is difficult to understand Clarendon's surprise, in the face of Falkland's invectives against the bishops in his speech of the previous month. Yet how was it that " My dear Sweetheart " had not communicated his opinions, on such an important subject, to his best friend, before rising to gainsay him in the presence of their mutual enemies ? The latter " entertain'd an imagination and Hope that they might work the Lord Falkland to a farther Concurrence with them." * Falkland, however, declared some time after- wards that he had been assured by Hampden, " that if the Bill might pass, there would be nothing more attempted to the Prejudice of the Church : which he thought, as the World then went, would be no ill composition." f There can be little doubt that, friends as they were> Falkland and Hyde were never of one mind respecting the bishops, the latter regarding them as serviceable officials, and the former as, at best, a necessary evil. Falkland was probably of opinion that the world would have been better without bishops ; but there they were, and they were a very ancient institution. With all their faults, again, bishops, like other institutions, might be reformed. Their total suppression was not imperative. One of Falkland's political principles, as he himself expressed it, was that " where it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change." J The grand result of the petition of the 1 5,000 Londoners was the introduction of the so-called Root-and-Branch Bill for the extirpation of Episcopacy. On this point I venture to think that Falkland has been unjustly blamed for "de- serting his party." It is true that during the very eventful year of 1641, his opinions underwent certain modifications. But it was a year of shiftings and veerings and turnings, * Clarendon's Hist., book iii., p. 236. t/i. J Tulloch's Rational Theology, vol. i., p. 168. 1 16 FALKLANDS. both in circumstances and in men. If Falkland changed, so also, and much more, did Pym and likewise Hampden. We have just seen how Hampden had once assured Falk- land that, if the bishops were deprived of their seats in the Lords, and the power of holding secular offices, nothing further would be attempted against the interests of the Established Church. Pym, in the Short Parliament, had spoken of the King and of his office in terms of high respect; and Bagshaw bears witness * that at one time he contem- plated a reform only, and not the abolition of Episcopacy. Falkland's first ideal, on entering political life, appears to have been a Constitutional Monarchy, "a. Monarchy without a Strafford, and a Church without a Laud. "I By the middle of May, 1641, these objects had been attained. The King was in the power of the Parliament, and not the Parliament in the power of the King ; Strafford was be- headed, Laud was a prisoner in the Tower. Here, having got as much as he wanted, Falkland stopped. Pym went on. If Falkland afterwards took a step or two backwards in the direction of autocracy, Pym never paused in his onward march until he had reached revolution. As to the relative positions of Falkland and Hampden, Lady Theresa Lewis rightly describes them in saying : " Hampden flowed on with the stream which had swept away so much impurity, Lord Falkland withdrew from the force of the current, and in a few months they found them- selves standing on opposite banks, henceforth to view the same scene from different points."^ Just before the end of May the Root-and-Branch party were in a minority in the House of Commons ; || but when, on the 27th, the Lords, while they decided to ex- clude clergymen from nearly all secular functions, deter- * Gardiner's Hist. Eng., vol. ix., p. 281, and ib., footnote, t Lytton's Miscell. Prose Works, vol. i., p. 373. J Friends of Clarendon, vol. i., p. 72. 1641. || Gardiner's Hist. Eng., vol. ix., p. 679. CHARLES SENDS FOR HYDE. 117 mined to allow the bishops to retain their seats in Parlia- ment, the Commons were infuriated, with the result that they listened much more tolerantly, if not more readily, than they would otherwise have done to a Bill introduced by Sir Edward Dering, " For the utter abolishing and taking away of all Archbishops, Bishops, their Chancellors and Commissaries, Deans and Chapters, Archdeacons, Prebendaries, Chapters and Canons, and all other under officers." * This was the celebrated " Root-and-Branch Bill." There was a fierce debate. Falkland spoke, and he " compared the Root-and-Branch Bill, for its thorough- going violence, to a total massacre of men, women and children." f The second reading was carried by a majority of twenty- seven ; but the further progress of the Bill was slow and chequered. In June it went into Committee, Hyde being appointed chairman. In the same month, or somewhere about that time, J Charles sent for Hyde, to the great astonishment of that lawyer and statesman. The King complimented him on his loyalty to the Established Church, and this was the beginning of intimate relations between the future Lord Clarendon and Charles I., which were to have results of the highest importance, not only to Hyde, but also to Falkland. In June Charles determined upon an expedition to Scotland, chiefly in hopes of obtaining support against the Parliamentary party in the South of England. At the end of July he announced his intention of starting thither on the pth of August. Both Houses agreed in an endeavour to prevent his departure, and, in the House of Commons, it was on a motion of Falkland's that he was requested to defer it. * Friends of Clarendon, vol. i., pp. 66-7. t Gardiner's Hist. Eng., vol. ix., p. 382. J Ib., p. 387. D'Ewes's Diary, Harl. MSS., clxiv., fol. 26. Il8 FALKLANDS. Falkland's motion was carried on Saturday, the /th. The King had arranged to start on the Monday following. On receiving the petition of the Parliament, the only con- cession he made was to put off his journey till Tuesday. On the morning of that day he appeared in Parliament and passed some Bills. Then he started for the North in a bad temper, leaving his Parliament in a worse. Four days Rafter Charles had left London, the Parlia- ment, which was exceedingly suspicious of the King's intentions and movements, appointed a Committee of Defence, as it was called ; and Falkland was placed on it. This so-called " Defence " was practically against any arbitrary attack upon the privileges of the subject by the King, who, it was feared, might raise an army in the North. In short, the forming of the Committee was the first pre- paration for the civil war which was so soon to follow, and the Committee might be called the nucleus of an army which Falkland was to oppose later on. At the end of August it was quite clear that there was no longer any danger from the King's Northern expedi- tion ; and, on 8th September, "both Houses Adjourn'd themselves till the middle of the October following ; by which time they presumed the King would be return'd from Scotland ; having sat from the time they were first convened, which was about nine months (longer than ever Parliaments had before continued together in one Session)."* During those nine months the Commons had "con- tinued together " in more ways than one. Never since they rose have the members co-operated for certain ends, without regard to party, friendship, or enmity, in the same manner. Falkland and Hyde, Pym and Hampden, what- ever their differences on some points, worked steadily together for the overthrow of the Star Chamber and the Court of High Commission, and to bring about the aban- * Clarendon's Hist. Eng., book iii., p. 282. THE RECESS. 119 donment by the King of the custom of raising taxes without consent of the Parliament. It is a curious historical and political fact that, just when members of Parliament seemed most of one mind, the strife of party was about to break forth with the fiercest fury. The comparatively peaceful session which ended in August, 1641, was, as it were, the calm before the crash of Parliamentary thunder which was to follow, and since then has, at intervals, followed again and again. Much mischief is often made during a recess ; and it may be that on this occasion the fires of discord were enkindled. What Falkland did in it we know not. Possibly he may have gone down to Great Tew and filled it, as of old, with " men of parts ; " but it would be almost safe to say we do know that he would not go down to the Isle of Wight to address his constituents, which seems to be the only form of holiday-making recognised in these days for members of Parliament. I2O CHAPTER XI. A POLITICAL TRIO. WITH the single exception already noticed, Falkland and Hyde worked together in politics, so long as they were both alive ; and, in the course of the year 1641, they took a third politician into their close confidence. This was Sir John Colepepper, who had the credit of having been a warrior in foreign parts. Unlike the courtly civilian and lawyer, Hyde, and still more unlike the refined and cultivated Falkland, " he was of a rough nature;"* and "he might very well be thought a man of no good breeding ; having never sacrificed to the muses, or conversed in any polite company." f " Sure no man less appeared a courtier," and he was remarkable for " ungrace- fulness in his mien and motion." | " He had been engaged in many quarrels and duels ; wherein he still behaved himself very signally." Under this rough and bellicose exterior, Colepepper was " a man of sharpness and parts, and volubility of language ; " and, although he was " proud and ambitious, and very much disposed to improve his fortune, which he knew well how to do," he would never stoop " to any corrupt ways." He also had this advantage one sometimes possessed by the rough and the rude that " he was believed to speak with all plainness and sincerity." Neither Hyde nor Falkland had "had the least ac- quaintance with" Colepepper "before the Parliament ;" || * Life of Clarendon, vol. i., p. 106. f Ib-t P- IO 7- J Ib., p. 106. Ib., p. 107. || Ib., p. 104. COLEPEPPER. 121 and even when they discovered that his policy was the same as their own, although they made him their political ally and confidant, "they rarely conferred" with him, except " in the agitation of business ; their natures being nothing like." This trio, Falkland, Hyde and Colepepper, played a very important part in the politics and history of 1641-3. In studying that period, one is occasionally tempted to add Digby and call it a quartette ; but this cannot be done quite satisfactorily. On the meeting of Parliament there was great excite- ment at the news of a plot, or a rumoured plot, to seize two Scottish peers in Edinburgh, and it increased the distrust of the King. When the subject was mentioned in the House of Commons, Falkland expressed his in- credulity and suggested that Scotch affairs should be left to the Scotch Parliament* The House was not pleased with Falkland for thus speaking lightly of what it considered a most serious subject. It was pretended that other lords, and perhaps the Parliament itself, might be in danger. Measures were taken for protection, and 100 men of the Westminster Trained Bands were ordered to be on guard, night and day, in Palace Yard. The Root-and-Branch Bill was dropped soon after the opening of Parliament, and within a month a Bill was in- troduced in its stead, depriving " Bishops of their Votes in Parliament, and disabling all in Holy Orders from the exercise of all temporal Jurisdiction and Authority." On this occasion, to the chagrin of Pym and his party, Falkland joined with Hyde in opposing this new attack upon the bishops. Hampden taunted him upon having changed his opinions. Falkland retorted " that he had formerly been persuaded by that worthy gentleman to believe many things which he had since found to be untrue ; that, therefore, he had changed his opinion in many par- * D'Ewes's Diary, Harl., MSS., clxiv., fol. 2416. 122 FALKLANDS. ticulars, as well as to things and persons." * His expression of a change in opinion as to persons was evidently in- tended to apply to Hampden himself. Hyde opposed the Bill on the ground that it interfered with the constitution of the House of Lords : f Falkland refused to countenance it because he believed its rejection by the Peers to be inevitable. Even now, when together resisting an attack upon Episcopacy, they were not quite of one mind about their reasons for doing so. On the 3Oth of October, Pym revealed what he looked upon as a second plot of the King's. What had been dreaded was about to happen. Charles, he said, was secretly raising an army for his own support. Two days later news arrived that there was a rebellion in Ireland. The King obtained a promise from the Scottish Parliament to send troops to help to put it down. To this Falkland raised objections on the ground that the Scotch army might become dangerously powerful in its influence upon England.]: In Pym's eyes, again, the chief danger of the Irish Rebellion was that an army must be raised to crush it ; and that, if such an army were to have as its officers parti- sans of the King, he would be able to make use of it eventually to bring physical force to bear upon the Parlia- ment. Pym moved that the King should be urged to re- move the evil counsellors then surrounding him, and to " take such as might be approved by Parliament ; " and that, unless he would agree to this, the Houses of Parliament should not consider themselves bound to give him any assistance in Ireland. It might appear that Pym and Falkland were exactly agreed on this matter ; but although Pym's proposal un- derwent several modifications and alterations, it irritated Falkland, Hyde and a like-minded minority, which began * Friends of Clarendon, vol. i., p. 70. t Gardiner's Hist. Eng., vol. x., p. 37. J Ib., p. 55. THE GRAND REMONSTRANCE. 123 to assume the form of a small but distinctly Royalist party in the House of Commons. The position of that minority was this. They mistrusted and feared the proceedings of the King's advisers, they even feared and mistrusted those of the King himself ; but they were loyal to the principle of monarchy, whereas Pym and his party were not. Perceiving this, and fearing that the Commons could no longer be trusted to present one cohesive front against all autocratic action on the part of the King, Pym and his followers fell back upon the support of the people. On the 8th of November was read in the House of Commons that important document, the Grand Remon- strance, which contained a long list of iniquities, or pre- tended iniquities, which had been perpetrated by the evil counsellors of the King since the beginning of his reign, and another list of the good works of the existing Parlia- ment ; it complained that the bishops were endeavouring to frustrate all the Parliament's efforts of reform, and it begged that a synod " of the most grave, pious, learned and judicious divines of this island, assisted with some from foreign parts professing the same religion with" them, should " consider of all things necessary for the peace and good government of the Church." It was intended that the debate upon the Remon- strance should take place on the 2Oth of November, and its friends expected that debate to be merely formal. Its opponents, however, asked for further delay. The hour, they pleaded, was late. It was only midday ; but at that period the House met early in the morning. Oliver Cromwell, who, says Clarendon, "at that time was little taken notice of,"* said to Falkland : " Why would you have the debate put off? " " There will not be time enough," replied Falkland ; " for sure it will take some debate." Cromwell replied that it would be a very short one. *Hist. Reb. t bk. iv., p. 311. 124 FALKLANDS. The next morning the debate was " entered upon about Nine of the Clock," and " it continued all that day." * Falkland complained that the Remonstrance dealt too severely with the bishops and the Arminians.f Hyde admitted the statements of facts in the Remonstrance, but was not prepared to join in all its inferences. Colepepper said that such a Remonstrance ought not to have been drawn up without the concurrence of the Lords, and that to issue it among the populace would be " dangerous to the public peace." The light of the short November day faded. J Candles were brought in, an unusual proceeding at that time ; and, as there appears to have been no special provision for artificial light in the House of Commons, the debate was probably conducted in semi-darkness. At twelve o'clock at night it still continued. "Very many withdrew them- selves out of pure faintness and disability to attend the conclusion." At last there was a division. The Remonstrance " was carried in the Affirmative, by Nine Voices, and no more." || It was then moved that the Remonstrance should be printed.^! Hyde at once protested, on the ground that to do so in the manner proposed, namely, to send it out as an appeal to the people, without first sending it to the Lords for their concurrence, would be illegal. Hyde had scarcely spoken when " Jeffery Palmer (a Man of great reputation, and much esteem'd in the House) stood up, and made the same motion for himself," and not for himself only, but for "all the rest." ** At these words most of the angry minority rose to their feet. "All, all," they cried. * Hist. Reb., bk. iv. , p. 312. t Gardiner's Hist. Eng., vol. x., p. 75. J Ib. Clarendon's Hist., book iv., p. 312. || Ib. But the majority was eleven, according to the Journals of the House of Commons, vol. ii., p. 322. IT Ib., p. 312. ** Ib. A DISTURBANCE IN THE COMMONS. 125 Hats were waved in the air, and drawn swords flashed in the dim light of the flickering candles. " I thought," wrote one who was present, " we had all sat in the valley of the shadow of death," and he expected every moment that, " like Joan's and Abner's young men," they would catch " at each other's locks," and sheathe their " swords in each other's bowels." * Happily, Hampden kept his head. With the greatest calmness he quietly inquired how Palmer could possibly know what was passing in other men's minds, or venture to take upon himself to speak in the name of the whole House without having first consulted it. The distraction caused by this practical question was the means of avert- ing an imminent catastrophe such as never had, nor since then has, occurred in the House of Commons. f " The House by degrees being quieted, They all con- sented, about Two of the Clock in the Morning, to ad- journ till Two of the Clock the next Afternoon."! As the members were leaving the House, Falkland found himself beside Oliver Cromwell. " Well, Cromwell," said Falkland, " Has there been any Debate ? " " Another time," replied Cromwell, " I will take your word." Then he "whispered him in the Ear, with some asseveration : 'If that Remonstrance had been rejected, I would have sold all I had in the morning, and left England, never to see it again ; and I know many other honest men who had made the same resolution.' " Two days after the Grand Remonstrance had been voted, the King returned from Scotland. || His reception was loyal enough ; but its pleasure was counteracted by the prescnta- * Sir Ph. Warwick's Memoirs, p. 222. t I am not forgetting the disgraceful scrimmage which took place in that assembly within recent memory. I Clarendon's Hist., book iv., p. 312. Ib. || 25th Nov., 1641. Friends of Clarendon, vol. i., p. 86. 126 FALKLANDS. tion of the Remonstrance on the ist of December, at Hamp- ton Court.* Charles was beginning to realise the necessity of counsellors who would be likely to save him from the dangers which were obviously impending. More than a month earlier, Nicholas had advised him to consider the capabilities of Falkland as an adviser. On the 2Qth of October he had ended a letter : " I may not forbeare to let yo r Ma tie know, that the Lo : ffalkland, S r Jo Strangewishe, Mr. Waller, Mr. Ed. Hide, and Mr. Holbourne, and diverse others, stood as Champions in maynten'ce of yo r Prerogative and shewed for it unaunswer- able reason and undenyable p e sedents, whereof yo r Ma tie shall doe well to take some notice (as yo r Ma tie shall thinke best) for their encouragm't." f At about the same time that Charles received the Re- monstrance, a reply to it, written by Hyde, and previously seen by no one except Falkland, "from whom," as Hyde said, "nothing ever was concealed," was placed in his hands. J Charles became aware of the necessity of having a party, or, if not a party, at least a few individuals, to represent his interests in the House of Commons ; and, to this end, much as he disliked doing so, he felt driven to the expedient of making one or two " parliament men," as they were then called, his officers and counsellors. For this purpose he " resolved to call the Lord Falkland, and S r John Cole- pepper ... to his Council ; and to make the former Secretary of State . . . and the latter Chancellor of the Exchequer. . . . They were Both of great Authority in the *25th Nov., 1641. Friends of Clarendon, vol. i., p. 86. t Evelyn's Correspondence, vol. ii. J Friends of Clarendon, vol. i., pp. 85-6. Hyde was offered office at this period ; but refused it with the under- standing that he was to act in concert with Falkland and Colepepper, and to advise the king unofficially. THE KING SENDS FOR FALKLAND. I2/ House ; neither of them of any relation to the Court." *f " And therefore what they said made the more Impression ; and They were frequent Speakers. The Lord Falkland was wonderfully beloved by all who knew him, as a man of Excellent Parts, of a Wit so Sharp, and a Nature so Sincere, that nothing could be more Lovely." The King, says Clarendon, "was more easily persuaded to bestow those Preferments . . . than the Lord Falkland was to accept that which was designed to him. No man could be more surprised than He was, when the first Inti- mation was made to him of the King's purpose." J The offer of royal patronage was not to his taste ; for he had no " Veneration for the Court, but only such Loyalty to the King as the Law required from him. And he had naturally a Wonderful Reverence for Parliaments . . . and it was only his Observation of the Disingenuity, and want of Integrity in this Parliament, which lessened that Reverence to it, and had disposed him to cross, and oppose Their designs." A very short time previously, Falkland had feared, and endeavoured to guard against, the evil use of power by the King, and he made use of the Parliament as a means. Now he yet more feared the evil use of power by the Parliament, and there seemed to be a possibility of using the King as a means to guard against it. Both authorities, each of which ought to have been doing good, were doing evil : to choose between them, therefore, was a choice of evils ; to try to reconcile them and to lead both to do good was the best object at which a politician could then aim ; and the offer now made to Falkland by the King might possibly enable him to reach it. * Clarendon's Hist., book iv., p. 340. t From this it would appear that Falkland must have resigned his appointment of " Gent of his Majesty's Privy Chamber," which he had received, says Wood, "about the time of his Father's Death." Ath. Ox., vol. i., p. 580. } Clarendon's Hist., book iv., p. 340. 128 FALKLANDS. On the other hand, the question may have presented itself whether an attempt to be friends with the King as well as the Parliament might not render him an enemy to both ? and whether his effort to influence each at the same time might not have the result of his losing all influence with either ? No wonder that he hesitated ! Another difficulty which lay in the way of his taking office was that he was " totally unacquainted with business." He feared, too, that his late opposition to Pym's party in the House would now be interpreted into a deliberate attempt to " render himself gracious to the Court." * He dreaded yet more lest the King should expect from him a servile " Submission and Resignation of himself and his own reason to his Commands." Even the thought of the respect with which, in his interviews with the King, he would be expected to receive orders, of which possibly he might personally disapprove, terrified him ; for " he was so severe an Adorer of Truth, that he could as easily have given himself leave to Steal as to Dissemble ; " and he con- sidered allowing another person to imagine that he would do anything which he had in his heart resolved not to do, " a more mischievous kind of Lying, than a positive aver- ring what could be most easily contradicted." " It was a most difficult task to Mr. Hyde," who had more influence over him than anybody else, " to persuade him to submit to this purpose of the King's chearfully." The argument which eventually prevailed was " the great Benefit that probably would redound to the King and the Kingdom, by his accepting such a Trust in such a general Defection." The Commons had perpetually implored the King to put away his evil counsellors and to take in their place men approved by themselves. Was Falkland to refuse to act as one of such, on the very first occasion of the King's exhibiting an inclination to accede to their wishes on this point? * Clarendon's Hist., book iv., p. 341. LYTTON, WALPOLE AND FORSTER ON FALKLAND. 1 29 Nevertheless, his acceptance of the office was " to the no small displeasure of the Governing Party, which could not dissemble their indignation ; " and " they took all op- portunities to express their dislike." Falkland has been much blamed for taking office under Charles by later writers also. I will first let others argue the case. Forster * calls him " far more of an apostate than StrafTord, for his heart was really with the Parliament from the first, which Stratford's never was, and never to the end did he sincerely embrace" the Royalist cause. And he says : " His convictions never ceased to be with the opinions which the Parliament represented, though his personal habits, his elegant pursuits, his fastidious tastes, his thorough-going sense of friendship, and even his shyness of manner and impatient impulsiveness of temper, made him an easy prey to the persuasive arts that seduced him to the service of the King." f Walpole is no less severe upon him. " When he aban- doned Hampden and that party because he mistrusted the extent of their designs, did it justify," he asks, "his going over to the King ? With what I will not say, con- science but with what reason could he, who had been so sensible of grievances, lend his hand to restore the authority from whence those grievances flowed ? . . . Could not Lord Falkland have done more service to the State by remaining with them and checking their attempts and moderating their Councils, than by offering his sword and his abilities to the King ? " J No better reply could be made to Forster's attack on Falkland than that of Edward Bulwer, Lord Lytton. " Falkland no doubt, from the first to the last, was a lover of liberty ; but of liberty as her image would present itself to the mind of a scholar and to the heart * Debates on the Grand Remonstrance. t P. 173. I Royal Authors (1806), vol. v., pp. 81-2. Miscellaneous Prose Works, vol. i., p. 372. 9 1 30 FALKLANDS. of a gentleman. It was no proof of apostasy from the cause of liberty that he thought a time had come when liberty was safer on the whole with King Charles than with ' King Pym.'" Moreover, if Falkland never " sincerely embraced " the Royalist cause, why should Forster blame him ? He had always professed loyalty to the King ; but he had objected to the abuses of the King's powers and privileges ; and on the same principle, when the Parlia- ment abused its powers and privileges, he again objected. If there was any apostasy at all, it was on the part of the Parliament from the principles of the British Consti- tution. As to Walpole's objections, did Falkland abandon Hampden, or Hampden Falkland ? I have already given Falkland's evidence that Hampden had at least abandoned an important position which he had promised Falkland to maintain. Then Falkland had professed that the grievances, of which he " had been so sensible," had " flowed " not from the King, but from the bad counsellors of the King ; so surely his own acceptance of office, as a counsellor of the King, was not to " restore the authority from whence those grievances flowed," but to do exactly the contrary. And it is difficult to see the force of Wai- pole's argument that Falkland " could have done more service to the State by ... moderating " the counsels of the Commons than by moderating the counsels of the King. When a politician, while firmly keeping his ground, finds that the men who used to stand beside him have wandered away from it, while some of his former opponents have moved in his own direction and are now near him, if not surrounding and supporting him, it is not he that is the apostate, the renegade, or the changeling.* * " fickle changelings and poor discontents That gape and rub the elbow at the news Of hurly-burly innovation." Shakespeare. TO "STIR OR MOVE HTS HAT." 131 But to stand absolutely immovable in the tempest of political life is impossible. So long as a public man resists the forces which constantly strive to drive him headlong in this direction or in that, he cannot fairly be blamed if he now and then slightly alters his attitude, according to the vicissitudes of the times and the variations of circumstances. It would be easy to give some modern examples of politicians who have acted much in this manner, under somewhat similar conditions ; but I refrain from so doing lest I should render my writing polemical. I always as- sume my reader's ability to be great, as I know mine to be small ; therefore I merely put down some of the results of my researches, leaving it to my readers to illustrate them from the rich fountains of their own memories and imagina- tions, and to draw their own wise inferences. I will end this chapter by giving a little story, charac- teristic of Falkland, in his parliamentary life, mentioned by Clarendon.* "Falkland," says he, "was of a most incom- parable gentleness, application and even submission to good, and worthy, and entire Men ; " but he " was adversus malos injucundus, and was so ill a dissembler of his dislike, and disinclination to ill Men, that it was not possible for such not -to discern it." On one occasion a certain "most popular " member of the House had done a service to it, and it was moved that " the Speaker might, in the name of the whole House, give him thanks ; and then, that every Member might, as a testimony of his particular acknowledgment, stir or move his hat towards him." This was "not order'd ; " yet "very many did " it. Falkland thought " little of the service, less of the person, and least of all of him for having stooped " to accept such a " re- compence," therefore, "instead of moving his hat," he " stretched both his Armes out, and clasped his hands * Hist., book vii., p. 358. 132 FALKLANDS. together upon the Crown of his hat, and held it close down to his head, that all Men might see, how odious " it was to him to see " that flattery " paid to a member of the House of Commons. 133 CHAPTER XII. FROM THE COMMONS TO THE COURT. COLDLY as Falkland accepted the honour offered to him by the king, his new office obliged him to enter Court life for a second time. In connection with this an unpleasant story must be noticed, even if it be not credited. The entertaining, but scandal-loving and scandal- mongering Aubrey * tells us that he had " been well informed, by those that best knew him [Falkland], and knew intrigues behind the curtains (as they say)," that there existed a certain " M ris - Moray, a handsome lady at Court, who was his mistresse, and whom he loved above all creatures." It would, of course, be as difficult as it would be dis- agreeable to believe this accusation against a man of such a tremendous reputation for integrity and virtue as Lucius Cary, Viscount Falkland, the husband of a beautiful and pious wife ; but, painful as it may be to mention this story, a notice of Falkland would be incomplete without it. Nor are Aubrey's the only pages in which reference is made to it ; for it appears also in Clarendon's, although he merely refers to it in order to refute it. He states that " those who did not know him " spoke of " a violent passion he had for a noble lady ; . . . but they who knew either the lord or the lady, knew well that neither of them was capable of an ill imagination. She was of the most un- spotted, unblemished virtue, and never married ; of an ex- * Letters, vol. ii., part i., p. 350. 134 FALKLANDS. traordinary talent of mind, but of no alluring beauty. . . . Lord Falkland had an extraordinary esteem of her, and exceedingly loved her conversation ... for she was in her understanding and discretion, and wit, and modesty, above most women." And Clarendon presently implies that Falkland must have been beyond suspicion of infidelity, because " he was so kind withal to his wife, whom he knew to be an excellent person." Clarendon's defence had better be accepted as final, and it may be invidious to observe that the knowledge of his wife's being " an excellent person " does not invariably keep a husband in the path of perfection ; that clever women, even when they possess " no alluring beauty," sometimes make men fall in love with them ; or that it is a very dangerous thing for a married man to drift into an un- anticipated flirtation with an attractive woman, whose con- versation he " exceedingly loves," over the subject of virtue. If Letice was satisfied, why should not we be ? As the poet sang of her : She Had only of Her self a jealousie.t Let the subject drop ! Possibly Letice may have made the same remark about it to Falkland. She would not be the first, or the last, wife to make it to her husband, after a disagreeable conversation about a similar subject. Falkland himself wrote very severely of Those who make wit their curse, who spend their brain, Their time, and art in looser verse, and gain Damnation and a mistres, till they see How constant that is, how inconstant she. J Let us sincerely hope that Falkland did not " gain damnation and a mistres ! " * Life of Clarendon, vol. i., p. 202. t "An Elegie, Written to Some Ladies of these Times." \ Miscell. of the Fuller Worthies Lib., " To George Sandys," vol. iii., p. 83. BLUNT AND SHARP TO THE KING. 135 Falkland's personal relations to Charles I. are a matter of interest. A minister who had persistently found fault with the King's favourite counsellors and the policy which he liked best was not likely to be a favourite with a very autocratic monarch ; on the other hand, so literary and cultivated a courtier as Falkland would share many tastes in common with a king who prided himself upon his cultivation and his appreciation of literature. Whatever may have been Charles's treatment of Falk- land, Falkland was never very effusive or affectionate towards Charles. Clarendon tells us that, although " very compliant" to the weaknesses of other men, with the King Falkland " did not practise that condescension, but contradicted him with more bluntness and by sharp sentences ; and in some particulars (as of the Church) to which the King was in conscience most devoted : and of this His Majesty often complained ; and cared less to confer with him in private, and was less persuaded by him than his affairs, and the other's great parts and wisdom would have required, though he had no better opinion of any man's sincerity and fidelity towards him." * So far as the Court was concerned, there was a great change in the month following that in which Falkland accepted office. The Queen left England ; and, although she took a considerable part in English affairs by means of letters, she did not return to this country for some time. The three political partners, Falkland, Hyde and Cole- pepper, had a "great familiarity and friendship with" Lord Digby, who " was much trusted by the king." f But although Falkland had "a free conversation" with Digby, and felt much " kindness " towards him, he " lived with more Frankness towards" Hyde and Colepepper than to- wards Digby. It might seem that Digby would have been more of a man to his taste than the other two. He " was * Life of Clarendon, vol. i., p. 105. t Clarendon's Hist., book iv., p. 343. 136 FALKLANDS. a Man of very Extraordinary Parts by Nature and Art, and had surely as good and excellent an Education as any Man of that Age in any Country : a Graceful and Beauti- ful Person ; of great becomingness in his Discourse (save that sometimes he seem'd a little affected), and of so Universal a Knowledge, that he never wanted a Subject for a Discourse." * Like Falkland, he had formerly "con- tracted a prejudice and ill-will to the Court ; " and, in the early days of the Long Parliament, like Falkland, again, he had joined Pym and Hampden's party, " with a Passion and an Animosity equal to theirs." But when, like Falkland, Digby had grown " weary of their violent Councils," and had perceived that they were rushing into a policy in which he could not follow them, he did what Falkland did not do : " he made private and secret offers of service to the King." Digby had a wide knowledge of " the greatest affairs, but" he was "the unfittest Man alive to conduct them, having an Ambition and Vanity Superior to all his other Parts, and a Confidence in himself which sometimes in- toxicated him." Falkland, Hyde and Colepepper were all aware of his feelings ; but Falkland " looked upon his Infirmities with more Seventy than the other Two did." Falkland was sworn a Privy Councillor on Sunday, 2nd January, 1642. Immediately afterwards, the Government which he had joined was to be brought into trouble through the advice of his friend, Lord Digby. It was discovered that at a secret conference the Parlia- mentary leaders had determined to impeach the Queen for conspiring against the public liberties and holding intelli- gence with the Irish rebels.f Digby recommended the King to impeach the would-be impeachers, and on 2nd January, Herbert, the Attorney General, charged with * Clarendon's Hist., book iv., p. 343. t Gardiner's Hist. Eng., vol. x., p. 128. IMPEACHMENT OF THE FIVE MEMBERS. 137 treason Lord Kimbolton in the Lords, and Pym, Hampden, Holies, Hazlerigg and Stroade in the Commons. It is a matter of history that Charles, who had already the Commons as enemies, made enemies of the Lords also by endeavouring to arrest the five members in his own name, instead of trusting the matter to them. He was very fond of putting responsibility upon his ministers ; but he only acted upon their advice when he felt inclined. In his impeachment of Kimbolton and the five members, he was adopting measures to which Falkland and Colepepper " were absolute strangers, and which they perfectly de- tested." * Perhaps they ought at once to have resigned office ; but if Falkland erred in not doing so, his motives are above suspicion. On the Monday the House of Commons deputed Falk- land, Colepepper and two others to wait on the King and inform him that his action amounted to a breach of privi- lege ; and on Tuesday, " Lord Faulkland reported "f what the King had said. Charles had asked them whether the " House did expect an answer." They replied that they were not commissioned to say anything on that point. Then he told them, as private persons, that he would send one to the House in the morning. What followed is but too well known.J That "Afternoon his Majesty came in Person to the House of Commons, and having Seated himself in the Speaker's Chair he " demanded that the five impeached members should be delivered up to him, found that they had left the House before he entered it, and had to retire discomfited, having perpetrated one of the greatest of his many acts of indiscretion and folly. It will have been observed that the evening before he had allowed Falkland to leave his presence under the impression that he was going to send a formal answer to the House, and gave him no hint whatever of any in- * Gardiner's Hist. Eng., vol. x., p. 128. fNalson's Collections, vol. ii., p. 816. \Ib,, p. 820. 138 FALKLANDS. tention to appear there in person, although Falkland was one of his Privy Councillors. Lord Digby, says Clarendon,* "was the only person who gave the Counsel" that the King should himself go to the House. "There was not any one Action," says Nalson, "of which the Faction made greater advantage, then his Majesties coming to the House in Person to demand the five Members ; the Faction blew the whole Nation into a blaze, with their Out-cries upon it," etc. f Such an act greatly compromised the position of Falk- land on the very threshold of his new office. He had accepted one of the most important posts, as a servant of the King, in order to counteract Charles's former foolish actions, and to substitute wise counsel for the foolish advice of his late counsellors. On a Sunday he became a Privy Councillor ; on the following Tuesday the King made him- self a laughing-stock for an action so foolish as to put all his previous foolish actions into the shade, and so ill-advised as to hurry the country to the brink of civil war. The unfortunate fact that the King's adviser in the matter was a personal friend of Falkland's may, or may not, have been commonly known : if it was not, Falkland himself may have been suspected of being the counsellor. In either case his position was odious. Within eight days the King had practically fled to Hampton Court, and Pym was again in the House of Commons with an army at his back. Definite preparations for civil war were now being made on both sides. Meanwhile a semblance of peace was kept up, and the King and his Parliament were supposed to be governing the country in concert on constitutional principles. J Charles commanded Falkland, Colepepper and Hyde " to meet constantly together, and consult upon his affairs, and con- duct them the best way they could in Parliament, and to * Hist., book iv., p. 358. t Collections, vol. ii., p. 820. J Life of Clarendon, vol. i., pp. 101-2. PLOT TO ARREST THE TRIO. 139 give him constant advice what he was to do, without which, he declared again very solemnly, he would make no step in the Parliament." It was all very well for Charles to tell them to conduct his affairs in Parliament for the best, when an enormous majority in that Parliament " took all opportunities to express their dislike of Them, and to Oppose anything they Proposed to Them." * Because Hyde " had larger accommodation in the house where he lived in Westminster than either of the others had, the meetings at night were for the most part with him." f Of the three, Hyde was the most hated by the Commons.} " They imputed to him the disposing of Lord Falkland to serve the Court, and the Court to receive his service." In thus serving the Court, Falkland was unhappy from the first, as well he might be, seeing that the climax of disasters began just as he took office. He " had a presaging spirit that the king would fall into great misfortune ; and he often said to his friend," Hyde, " that he chose to serve the king because honesty obliged him to it ; but that he foresaw his own ruin by doing it." Early in March, Colepepper was privately informed that there was a plot to seize himself, Falkland and Hyde when all three were in the House together. The arrange- ment was that some one should move an inquiry as to the persons who were guilty of advising the King in his late evil deeds, and some one else was to rise, at once, and name these;, three, who were to be there and then arrested and sent to the Tower. After the receipt of this intelligence, the trio took good care never to be all in the House together at the same time. || The Commons were especially suspicious of Hyde. * Clarendon's Hist., book iv., p. 340. t Life of Clarendon, vol. i., p. 102. J Ib., p. 103. $ Ib., p. 104. || Friends of Clarendon, vol. i., p. 105. 140 FALKLANDS. Towards the end of March he went down to his country house. His absence was immediately noticed and danger seemed to be brewing. Falkland wrote * to warn him, in a letter beginning as usual " Dear Sweetheart." After in- forming him of the remarks that had been made at his non-attendance, he wrote : "I told them that you had, this good while, great inclinations to the stone,f so that if you sat above an hour or two at a time, it put you to much pain, which had made you attend the House so seldom, and yet allowed you to be at a committee some- times, which sits but a little time, and which had carried you now for a turn into the country, to try how air and riding would mend you." But it was " moved (which was ordered accordingly) that the House should order you to attend to-morrow morning. I thought fit to let you know it, that you may rise at three of the clock to-morrow, and be here time enough if you please. You know I never take upon me to counsel, nor will add any more than that I am, " Sweetheart, y r most affe* humble servant, " Falkland." In March, the King went to York. On the 23rd he summoned certain peers to attend him there, as he wished to keep Easter with great state. On hearing this, the House of Lords determined to prevent it, and commanded all its members to remain in London and attend to their parliamentary duties. Early in April, many of the Royalist peers ceased going to the House of Lords. There were troubles and difficulties and threatenings on every side ; and the position of Falkland and the Ministers of the Crown grew more embarrassing day by day, while their influence in the House of Commons was rapidly diminishing. * Clarendon State Papers, vol. ii., p. 141. t Clarendon lived till more than thirty years later. AN ODIOUS OFFICE. 141 If Falkland found his master's enemies difficult to deal with, he did not find his master himself easy to serve. Charles determined to deprive the Earls of Essex and Holland of their office of Chamberlain and Groom of the State for siding somewhat with the Parliament. Falkland and Hyde * advised that they should be left in office, with the hope of preventing them from taking an open part against the King ; but the latter's wrath with Essex and the Queen's indignation against Holland rendered all advice useless. Charles ordered Lord Keeper Lyttleton to go to the two earls and demand the Staff from the one and the Key from the other. Lyttleton " had not the Courage to undertake it ; " and he persuaded Falkland to make his excuses to the King. Charles accepted them ; but he calmly shifted the disagreeable duty from the shoulders of Lyttleton to those of Falkland. This " harsh Office," says Clarendon, " might have been more Naturally and as Effectually perform'd by a Gentle- man Usher," j- and it was particularly odious to Falkland because "he had always receiv'd great Civilities" from both of the earls. J " However, he would make no excuse, being a very punctual and exact Person in the perform- ance of his Duty." Falkland went to the House, where he met both earls on the point of entering it, and gave them the royal message. They very civilly asked him to give them half an hour to confer together ; and shortly afterwards they sent to ask him to meet them in Sir Thomas Cotton's garden, " a place where the Members of both Houses used frequently to walk." There they delivered up the Staff and Key without saying much, and he " carried them to his Lodging." * Clarendon's Hist., book iv., pp. 475-6. -f- Ib., p. 477. I It will be remembered that Falkland had served under Holland in the expedition against the Scots. 142 FALKLANDS. It may as well be said here that, some time afterwards, the King " was very much unsatysfy'd with the Lord Keeper Littleton," * himself. His refusal to perform what " the King had enjoyn'd him with reference to the Earls of Essex and Holland (before mentioned) " had not been forgotten, and he had " courted that Party of both Houses." Charles now commanded Falkland to go to Lyttleton and " require the Seal from him ; in which the King was very positive." Apart from the unpleasantness of demand- ing the Seal from the Lord Keeper, there were very strong reasons for not offending him and for keeping him in office ; and, with very great difficulty, Falkland and Hyde induced the King to relent so far as to substitute an order to Lyttleton to bring the Great Seal to him at York and attend him there, for a command to yield it to a messenger ; and thus the matter was smoothed over and the loyalty of Lyttleton retained. In May, in addition to his English difficulties, Falkland was worried by a complaint from the French Ambassador,f who came to him and declared that the English Ambassa- dor at Vienna had promised to Austria the assistance of England against all her enemies, for the restitution of the Palatinate. The King was very angry, and Falkland was involved in a diplomatic squabble. But it was clear that bloodshed at home would soon leave no time for foreign wranglings. At the end of May there was a stream of loyal noble- men and gentlemen on their way to join the King at York. Hyde went first to Ditcheley, uncertain whether to go North, until Falkland heard that he was to be impeached for high treason, and entrusted his brother-in-law with a letter, urging him to hurry off to York with all possible speed. * Clarendon's Hist., book v., p. 568. t S. P. O. Dom. Charles I., ccccxc., No. 55 ; Nicholas to Roe, i8th May, 1642. THE NINETEEN PROPOSITIONS. 143 On the 2nd of June the famous Nineteen Propositions were sent by the Houses of Parliament to the King. " They claimed sovereignty for Parliament in every par- ticular." They "carried with them an abrogation of the existing constitution," and they included provisions which reduced the King to humble servitude to the Commons ; for no peer subsequently created was to be allowed to sit in the House of Lords, unless the Commons, as well as the Peers, consented to his doing so. It is most unfair to accuse Falkland of changing his politics, because he repu- diated the Nineteen Propositions with horror. The Propositions caused a regular panic among the cavaliers in London ; and the result was a general exodus of loyally inclined people from that city. Falkland re- mained until comparatively few were left ; but it soon became clear that he was in a position of imminent peril. Clarendon says * that less than a fifth of the Peers remained at Westminster, and that he did not believe " there was near a Moiety of the House of Com- mons who continued there." At last Falkland determined to leave London and join the King ; so, accompanied by Colepepper, he started for York. * History, book v., p. 647. 144 CHAPTER XIII. WITH THE ROYAL STANDARD. IT must have been with a sad heart that Falkland finally broke off all relations with the Parliament and started on an expedition concerning which he had the gloomiest fore- bodings. The mournfulness of that unhappy year was increased to him by the death of his brother, Lorenzo,* who was killed in the wars in Ireland, at the Battle of the Swords, t We occasionally hear in our own day of a proposition that members of Parliament should be paid. How much better it would be to follow the example which was set in the times of which I am writing, when, instead of paying M.P.'s anything, the Government fined them 100 for absence from London and deprived them of their seats. J This, however, was with the object of preventing them from joining the King, and many members were arrested on their way North, and committed to prison. Happily, Falkland and his companion reached York in safety. On his arrival he sought Hyde, and the first meet- ing of the two friends was marred by a little disagreement. || Falkland had expected the already prepared answer to the Nineteen Propositions to have been printed; Hyde had with- held it, and Falkland was both irritated and disappointed ; *S. P. Dom. Charles I., cccclxxxviii., No. 75. t Life of Lady Falkland, p. 185. I Clarendon's Hist., book v., p. 648. % Friends of Clarendon, vol. i., p. no. \\Ib., PP- no-in. THE FORTY-FIVE PEERS. 145 but, when Hyde explained the technical reasons for which he had kept back the reply,* Falkland's vexation was turned upon himself for his own inadvertence in its prepa- ration, and he was at once reconciled to his " Dear Sweet- heart." The MS. of the answer, slightly altered, was sent to the printers that night. The all-important question now became " was there to be war?" Would the Parliament fight? Would the King fight ? Falkland and his friends were all for peace. On the 1 3th of June, the King issued a declaration to those assembled at York, accompanied by an assurance that he did not intend to make use of them in a war against the Parliament, unless in self-defence. Forty-five Peers, in- cluding Falkland, replied by signing a promise to defend his person, crown and prerogatives. A couple of days later, Charles made an even stronger declaration of his determination not to fight and called upon his Council and all his nobility to bear witness to this protest on his part. On this, Falkland, the aforesaid forty-four Peers, and some others, signed a document, in which they said : " We . . . being here upon the place and Witnesses of his Majesty's frequent and earnest Declarations and Pro- fessions of his abhorring all designs of making War upon his Parliament, and not seeing any colour of Preparations or Counsels that might reasonably beget the belief of any such Designs, do profess before God, and testify to all the World, that we are fully perswaded that his Majesty hath no such intention." j- Falkland, nor Falkland alone, has been severely censured for signing this declaration. Even some of his admirers have considered his doing so a blot upon his reputation. It appears to me that there is a good deal to be said in his defence. I admit that, before the very eyes of Falk- * Life of Clarendon, vol. i., p. 130. t Clarendon's Hist., book v., p. 655. 10 146 FALKLANDS. land, an army was being collected and put into readiness ; but if, as a precaution against burglars, I provide myself with a revolver, or if, on going for a walk on a dark night, I take in my hand a thick stick, it is not with the slightest wish to shoot or to fight with any person or persons what- soever. But I may have heard it reported that burglars and tramps are in the neighbourhood, and should a burglar enter my house and demand the key of my plate-chest, or were a tramp to try to rob me of my watch, I should cer- tainly wish to be in a position to defend myself; and, if I did so, the tramp or the burglar would not be justified in calling me a sanctimonious humbug and a breaker of vows, if on the previous Sunday I had joined in the invocation of the Litany : " From battle, etc., good Lord, deliver us." Although Falkland and his allies professed "before God" that they believed the King had no intention of "making war upon his Parliament," they did not profess to believe that he had any intention to submit tamely if his Parliament were to make war upon him, a contingency which was at that time by no means improbable. The declaration of Falkland and his co-signatories amounted to no more than saying: "We believe, before God, that if the Parliament leaves the King alone, the King will leave the Parliament alone. If not well then, of course, not." So far as the actual position of affairs was affected by the Peers' declaration, it is admirably summed up by Pro- fessor Gardiner. " The immediate effect of the protestation of the Peers was absolutely nothing. No war was ever staved off by the declarations of both parties that they intend to stand on the defensive, if it were only because neither party is ever of one mind with the other upon the limits which separate the defensive from the offensive." * A week after f the signing of the protestation, forty- three lords and gentlemen at York voluntarily agreed " to assist His Majestic in defence of His Royall Person, the * Hist., vol. x., p. 205. t 22nd June, 1642. STAINED WITH THE CHARMS OF " RHETORICK." 147 two Houses of Parliament, the Protestant Religion, etc.," * by paying for the cost of a certain number of horses for three months, at the rate of half a crown a day each. At the foot of the agreement were the signatures with the number of horses guaranteed by each party to it, beginning with " The Prince, 200." There was considerable variety in the numerals. Several promised 100, but 60, 50 and 40 were more usual, and "Lord Faulkland's " name has the smallest number after it 20. For the reasons which I have given above, I humbly submit that Horace Walpole had no need to pretend charity and intend sarcasm, when he wrote : " Falkland's signing the declaration that he did not believe the King intended to make war on the Parliament, and at the same time subscribing to levy twenty horses for his Majesty's service, comes under a description, which, for the sake of the rest of his character, I am willing to call great infatua- tion." f The other side was professing peaceful intentions just as much as the King's, with certainly no greater sincerity. A tract, printed about the same time, begins : " Although the charms of rhetorick have stained your Majesty's de- clarations, answers, proclamations, speeches and messages with all the gall and opposition that possibly could be infused to exasperate us into the nature of bad subjects, yet we are resolved to depart from nothing that may oblige and court your Majesty to continue our gracious King." J Oh, yes ! The excellent Roundheads were quite as pro- fuse in their professions to " depart from nothing " that would ensure peace, as were the Cavaliers ; and they were at the same time arming themselves just as busily. * Copy of the document in Friends of Clarendon, vol. i., p. 119, foot- note. t Royal and Noble Authors, vol. v., p. 83. I Vox Populi, " Or the People's humble Discovery of their own Loyalty and his Majesty's Ungrounded Jealousy" (1642). Harleian Miscell., vol. vii., p. 453. 148 FALKLANDS. Early in July, the Commons resolved upon immediately raising an army of 10,000 men; and on the nth both Lords and Commons declared that the King had actually begun hostilities.* The next day Essex was appointed commander-in-chief of the Parliamentary army. Falkland's and Hyde's intention of endeavouring to keep Essex on the Royalist side had been frustrated by the wilfulness of the King. All those who assisted the King were now de- clared by the Parliament to be traitors ; so there was no longer any room for compromise. Twice before, when he went to the Netherlands soon after his marriage, and when he went to Scotland with Holland's horse, Falkland had sought for fighting and been unable to get it. Now that he wished for peace, he could not get it ; and, when he did not want fighting, fighting was to be forced in his way. In June, Charles had issued " commissions of array," f directing the trained bands to obey officers of his own appointment. His right had been questioned in Parlia- ment. In the debate upon the matter, Falkland's friend, Selden, who was considered by the King to be " well dis- posed to his Service," \ to the disgust of the Royalists, "declared himself very positively and with much sharpness against the Commission of Array, as a thing expressly without any Authority of Law." When the King heard of this, "he was much troubled." Falkland stood by his former ally and companion, and he asked the King's per- mission to write him " a friendly letter " of remonstrance, requesting an explanation of his conduct. Selden " answer'd this Letter very frankly " to Falkland. He gave his reasons for believing himself to be technically quite correct in his legal objections ; but, said he, the Par- liament was about to introduce an " Ordinance for the Militia ; " and " he did acknowledge that he had been * Gardiner's Hist. Eng., vol. x., p. 211. t Ib., p. 202. I Clarendon's Hist., book v., p. 667. Ib. ERECTION OF THE ROYAL STANDARD. 149 more inclin'd to make that discourse in the House against the Commission, that he might with the more freedom argue against the Ordinance. . . . And so, upon the day appointed for the Debate of their Ordinance ... he ap- plied all his Faculties to the convincing them of the illegality and monstrousness of it, by Arguments at least as clear and demonstrable." Unfortunately for Selden and the Royalists, " his confidence deceived him." The Commons now re- fused to be influenced by his reasoning. "He had satisfied them very well, when he Concurr'd with them in Judge- ment ; but his Reasons were weak, when they crossed their Resolutions." * On the 22nd of August f King Charles erected the royal standard at Nottingham, while hats were thrown into the air amidst loud cries of " God save King Charles and hang up the Roundheads." J Even then, Falkland and his allies, Hyde and Cole- pepper, sought for peace. They wished the King had remained at York, and they advised him to return thither ; but he would not listen to them. Then they proposed "that his Majesty would send a Message to the Parliament, with some overture to incline them to a Treaty." At this the King was mightily offended, and broke up the Council ; but, nothing daunted, " they renew'd the same advice with more earnestness " the following day, and at last he yielded. Colepepper and three others were the bearers of the message. As is well known, this peaceful overture was rejected. It " was indeed receiv'd with Insolence and Contempt." || Falkland and his two friends were still striving to avert a civil war ; for they believed the King's chances * Clarendon's Hist., book v., p. 667. t 1642. J Gardiner's Hist., vol. x., p. 220. Clarendon's Hist., book vi., p. 7. Clarendon does not mention him- self, Falkland or Colepepper ; but there can be little doubt whom he means by " They about the King " in this instance. || Ib. 1 50 FALKLANDS. of success in one to be " desperate," therefore another message was drawn up. On the one hand, the Parliament had declared those who assisted the King to be traitors ; on the other, the King had declared Essex and all who assisted him to be traitors ; Charles now promised that, if the Parliament would revoke its Declaration, he also would revoke his, and " take down Our Standard." * On this occasion he chose as his legate " the Lord Falkland, his Principal Secretary of State." Falkland went up to London, entered the House, delivered the royal message, and then retired.f In addition to this public duty, he had been ordered J to inform the Parlia- mentary leaders, in private, that Charles was prepared to agree to a reformation of the State religion and to any- thing else which they " could reasonably desire." All to no purpose ! After waiting two days in London he was entrusted with a very unsatisfactory reply to take back to his King. About this time the impetuous Prince Rupert arrived in England to give his assistance to his uncle, King Charles, in the case of any fighting. It might have been expected that Falkland would have had much in common with this Prince. One of his biographers calls Rupert " an artist, a philosopher and a statesman . . . the bravest among the brave ; honest among knaves, reproached as pure by profligates ; " and he declares that " his character forms the best type of the Cavaliers." Much of what he says of him might truthfully be applied to Falkland. Yet, as we shall see presently, the two men, instead of feeling drawn towards one another, were usually in antagonism. * Clarendon's Hist., book vi., p. 12. t Friends of Clarendon, vol. i., p. 125. I Die. of Nat. Biog., vol. ix., p. 250, and D'Ewes's Diary, Harl. MS., 164, fol. 3146. Eliot Warburton in his Memoirs of Prince Rupert and the Cavaliers, p. 13. A "SERVILE ROUT." 151 The Parliamentary army was at Northampton, and the Parliament itself was having everything its own way in London. On the last day of August it abolished stage- plays and, on the first day of September, bishops. Charles's army was presently upon the move ; but Essex had placed garrisons in the line of towns between Northampton and Worcester, in order to prevent him from marching upon London. The royal army marched from Nottingham to Shrews- bury, where it was well received by the inhabitants and the neighbouring gentry. Much as Falkland had dreaded the war, and small as were his hopes of the King's success, when at Y;crk and Nottingham, he ap- pears to have somewhat changed his mind and to have been a little more sanguine after the skirmish at Powick Bridge, on 27th September ; tor he predicted in a letter * that the rebellion would soon come to an end ; because the army of Essex was composed to a great extent of " tailors, embroiderers, or the like." Such was a common description ot the Parliamentary army, and a rhymster, in some verses on Falkland's own death, wrote of The dul, mechanick, rude, Hali beast, half man, Fox-tinker multitude. Say, O ye Coblers, Weavers, Tinkers, you Whose second trade is war and Preaching ; who New prentices oth' field (O servile rout I) Have there against your Prince your time serv'd out, etc. f Falkland does not seem to have realised the power of a well-led army of tailors. After remaining at Shrewsbury for nearly three weeks, the King advanced towards London ; " never less baggage attended a Royal Army, there being not one Tent, and very few Waggons belonging to the whole Train." J * Die. of Nat. Biog., vol. ix., p. 250. t " To the Memory of the most religious and virtuous Lady, the Lady Letice, Vi-Countesse Falkland." | Clarendon's Hist., book vi., p. 41. 152 FALKLANDS. Some days had the army been on the march, when there was " discover'd an unhappy jealousy and division between the principal Officers, which grew quickly into a perfect Faction between the Foot and the Horse." * Lord Lindsay was " General of the whole Army ; " but Prince Rupert, soon after his arrival in this country, was made General of the Horse. Rupert was excessively sensitive about his authority and his position in the army, and, possibly at his own suggestion, in his commission " there was a clause inserted . . . exempting him from receiving Orders from any Body but from the King him- self." Therefore the "General of the whole Army" had now only the infantry under his command. The King's army had been wandering about for some days in search of the enemy without result, when one night, after Charles had gone to bed, news was brought to him of its actual position. He at once called for Falkland and gave him some directions for Prince Rupert to be conveyed verbally. Falkland went to Rupert and delivered the orders. " His Highness took it very ill," says Clarendon, " and expostulated with the Lord Falkland for giving him Orders. He could not have directed his passion against any Man who would feel or regard it less." f " It is my office," said Falkland, " to signify what the King bids me ; which I shall always do. Your Royal Highness, in neglecting it, neglects the King." Charles was not a master who could be trusted to stand by his servants when they faithfully performed disagree- able duties ; and very shortly after Rupert had refused to obey an order from the King received through Falkland, instead of being in disgrace, Rupert was in the highest favour, and Charles followed his advice, " rejecting the opinion of the General." The first regular engagement between the Royal and the Parliamentary troops took place at Edgehill, and, on * Clarendon's Hist., book vi., pp. 42-3. t Ib., p. 43. EDGEHILL. 153 the morning before the battle, Charles wrote the following letter to Rupert,* which shows that he was acting on his suggestions : " The King to P ce Rupert. " Nephew " I have given order as you have desyred ; so I dont know but all the foot and cannon will bee at Egge- hill betymes this morning, where you will also find " Your loving oncle and " Faithful frend, Charles R. "4 o'clock this Sonday morning." f That night, Falkland, with his friends, Hyde and Cole- pepper, was quartered with the general (Lindsay), in the village of Culworth. + As soon as the order came for the army to assemble at Edgehill, Lindsay, Falkland and Colepepper hastened to the scene of action ; but a royal command was sent to Hyde to retire with the Prince of Wales and the Duke of York to the top of the hill and to remain there during the battle. It might have been better if Falkland also, as Secretary of State, had remained a mere looker-on ; but he was anxious to take part in the battle and was attached to Wilmot's horse. Although the Royalist army was so early in the field, it was nearly three o'clock in the afternoon when the action began. Wilmot's horse made a grand charge, but followed the retreating enemy " with Spurs and loose Reins " || too far, and thus became separated from the rest of their sup- * Memoirs of Prince Rupert. t "About twelve of the clock, Prince Rupert sent the King word that the Body of the Rebels' Army was within seven or eight Miles ... on the edge of Warwickshire ; and that it would be in his Majesty's power, if he thought fit, to Fight a Battle the next day." Clarendon's Hist., book iv. p. 44. I Friends of Clarendon, vol. i., pp. 129-30. 23rd Oct., 1642. || Clarendon's Hist., vol. vi., p. 48. 154 FALKLANDS. ports. In this exploit Falkland saw plenty of fighting, and Clarendon says : " In all such actions Lord Falkland forgot that he was Secretary of State, and desired to be where there would probably be most to do." At the end of the charge, Falkland observed that a body of the enemy's horse remained intact, and he asked Wilmot's permission to lead a charge against it. " My Lord," replied Wilmot, " we have got the day, and let us live to enjoy the fruit of it." * Wilmot may have disliked a suggestion from a civilian ; or he may have considered Falkland too impetuous ; but, as it turned out, it would have been better to break up this small body of cavalry, for it " did terrible execution " a little later, when Wilmot's horse had got out of touch with the main body of the King's forces. Indeed, it very nearly captured the King himself, with his two sons, and it slew a number of his men, including Lord Lindsay, the commander- m-chief. f Not being allowed to lead a charge against the unbroken foe, Falkland followed the rout ; and in this, says Claren- don, " he was like to have incurr'd great Peril, by interpos- ing to save those who had thrown away their Armes, and against whom, it may be, others were more fierce for their having thrown them away ; so that a Man might think, he came into the Field chiefly out of Curiosity to see the face of Danger, and Charity to prevent the shedding of Blood." J Edgehill was one of those battles which are at first claimed as victories by both the belligerents, and after- wards prove to have been won by neither. " Night, the Common Friend to weary'd and dismay'd Armies, parted " the Cavaliers and Roundheads. Charles " with his whole Forces himself spent the Night in the Field, by such a fire as could be made of the little wood and bushes which grew thereabouts." It was "a very cold Night," with "a * Friends of Clarendon, vol. i., p. 130. t/4., pp. 130-1. J Hist., book vii., p. 357. PETITION FROM THE PARLIAMENT. 155 terrible frost," and " there was no shelter of either Tree or Hedge." As to the King's poor soldiers, they were " with- out any refreshment of Victual," and those "who stragled into the Villages for relief, were knocked in the head by the Common People." * Reports came in that the " enemy was gone ; but when the Day appear'd, the contrary was discover'd ; for then they were seen standing in the same posture and place in which they Fought, from whence the Earl of Essex, wisely, never suffer'd them to stir all the Night." Wisely, too, " he caused all manner of Provisions, with which the Country supplied him plentifully, to be brought thither to " his men " for their refreshment." f Clarendon calculated the killed in the battle " by the Testimony of the Ministers, and others of the next Parish, who took care of the Burying of the Dead," to have been "above five thousand." There was to be no more killing, however, on the day following the engagement. The two armies " only look'd one upon another the whole day," and, in the evening, each retired, the King to his former quarters, and Essex to Warwick Castle. During the succeeding days, while Essex moved on to Worcester, the King marched to Banbury, Woodstock, Oxford and Reading. The news of his having arrived so far on his way towards London created great alarm in the Metropolis. The Parliament, " whilst the king was at Nottingham and Shrewsbury . . . gave orders magis- terially lor the war, but now it was come to their own doors, they took not that delight in it." J The Houses, therefore, sent a messenger to the King, requesting " a safe conduct from his Majesty for a Committee of Lords and Commons, to attend his Majesty with an humble Petition from his Parliament." Falkland wrote in reply to Lord Grey de Waike, Speaker of the House of Lords, " that * Clarendon's Hist., book vi., pp. 49-50. t Ib., p. 50. J Ib., p. 76- 8 Ib. t P- 7- 156 FALKLANDS. his Majesty hath now sent (which I have enclosed) a safe conduct" for those named by the Parliament, with the exception of " Sir John Evelin, of Wilts." This ex- ception caused a little delay, and the King advanced to Colebrook ; but five days later, the petitioners arrived and presented their address. Clarendon appears to have thought * that, if the King had now retired to Reading, peace might very possibly have been secured, and that Windsor Castle would most likely have been placed at his disposal by the Parliament, while he was in treaty with it Even to have remained inactive at Colebrook till he heard again from the Parlia- ment, as the King intended, might have admitted of a con- tinuance of the inclination and negotiations for peace ; but all was spoiled by the headstrong Prince Rupert, who was as anxious to promote the war as Falkland was to prevent it. Rupert had given a willing ear " to the Vulgar Intelli- gence every Man receiv'd from his Friends in London " as to the terror "his Name gave to the Enemy ,"f and the number of people in the city who were filled with loyalty to the King ; so, foolishly supposing " that if his Army drew near, no resistance would be made," he took it upon himself, " without any direction from the King," to advance " with the Horse and Dragoons to Hounslow," on the very morning after the representatives of the Parliament had returned to London ; and having perpetrated this most unjustifiable piece of imprudence, he had the impertinence to send " to the King to desire him that the Army might march after " him. As matters then stood Charles found this to be of " absolute necessity," as Essex was now at hand, and if the Royalist army had been divided, either part of it might have been surrounded, or at least cut off from the other. An immediate advance on Charles's part to join Rupert * Hist., book vi., pp. 73-4. t Ib, BATTLE OF BRENTFORD. 157 was therefore imperative, and the result was the assault and taking of Brentford, " after a very warm Service," a victory which " prov'd not all fortunate to his Majesty." For a messenger had actually been despatched by the Parliament to propose an armistice to the King. Naturally this emissary expected to find Charles ready to receive him and the overtures of which he was the bearer, with open arms and a pacific spirit. What he actually found was that the King was in the midst of an exceptionally sanguinary battle, apparently of his own seeking. Can we wonder at the man hastening back to London after seeing this without fulfilling his errand ? On the messenger's return thither, and recounting his experiences, Charles was loudly censured as a monster of " Treachery, Perfidy and Blood," * and, for the moment, all hope of peace appeared to be at an end. * Clarendon's Hist., book vi., p. 75. 158 CHAPTER XIV. WITH THE COURT AT OXFORD. THE King went to Hampton Court, and thence to Oatlands, where a royal declaration a declaration which almost amounted to an apology was drawn up by Falkland,* and sent to the Parliament. In reply to the accusations made against Charles for attacking Brentford while the negotiations for peace were in progress, it says : " The Earl of Essex being before possessed of all the other avenues to his army, by his forces at Windsor, Acton and Kingston, was a more strange introduction to peace than for his Majesty not to suffer himself to be cooped up on all sides, because a treaty had been mentioned, which was so really and so much desired by his Majesty, that this proceeding seems to him purposely by some intending to divert (which it could not do) that his inclination. That his Majesty had no intention to master the City by so advancing, besides his profession, which (how meanly soever they seem to value it) he conceives a sufficient argument . . . may appear by his not pursuing his victory at Brainford.f . . . His Majesty wonders that his soldiers should be charged with thirsting after blood, who took above five hundred prisoners in the very heat of the fight, his Majesty having since dismissed all the common soldiers. . . . And his Majesty intends to march to such a distance from his city of London as may take away all pretence of apprehension from his army." Then, it continued, the King would be * Friends of Clarendon, vol. i., pp. 135-8. t Brentford. WINTER QUARTERS AT OXFORD. 159 prepared either to receive suggestions of terms for a peace, " or to end the pressures and miseries which his subjects (to his great grief) suffer through this war by a present battle." Charles retired to Reading, and a little later * he took up his quarters for the winter at Oxford. Declarations and replies continued to pass between Falkland, on behalf of the King, and the Parliament ; but the unhappy attack upon Brentford had shattered public confidence, and nothing came of them. Of the condition of Falkland at this time, Clarendon gives so excellent a description that I am tempted to quote from it at considerable length. " From the Entrance into this unnatural War, his natural chearfulness and vivacity grew clouded, and a kind of sadness and dejection of Spirit stole upon him, which he had never been used to." f Then after stating that, at first, Falkland believed a great battle would before long decide the war one way or the other, and compel the defeated side to submit to any terms offered by the victor, Clarendon says that Falkland " resisted these indispositions " to depression ; but that " after the King's return from Brentford, and the furious resolutions of the two Houses not to admit any Treaty of Peace, those indispositions " gradually increased until he had acquired " a perfect habit of unchearfulness ; and He who had been exactly easy and affable to all men . . . and held any cloudiness and less pleasantness of the visage a kind of rudeness and incivility, became on a sudden less com- municable and very sad, pale, and extremely affected with the Spleen." A great change, again, took place at this time in his dress, which hitherto he had " always minded with more neatness, industry, and expence than is usual to so great a Soul." Now " he became not only incurious but too negligent " in his toilet. In his manner there was a Nov., 1642. t Clarendon's Hist., book vii., pp. 357-8. 160 FALKLANDS. still more marked alteration. He, who had always been so remarkable for his courteous suavity, became so quick, sharp, and severe, that "there wanted not some men (strangers to his nature and disposition) who believ'd him proud and imperious." When " there was any Overture, or hope of Peace, he would be more erect and vigorous, and exceedingly solicitous to press anything which he thought might promote it." Falkland had been famed for being a brilliant and entertaining companion. Now he would sit moodily " among his friends," and " after a deep silence, and frequent sighs," " with a shrill and sad accent, ingeminate the word Peace, Peace ; and would passionately profess, that the very agony of the War, and the view of the calamities and desolation, the Kingdom did and must endure, took his sleep from him, and would shortly break his heart." So anxious was he for an end of the war, that it was said he was an advocate for peace at any price, an assertion which Clarendon calls "a most unseasonable Calumny." * While some of the Royalists brought this unjust charge against him, the Roundheads were even more bitter against him than against the out-and-out supporters of the policy of King Charles. During one of the negotiations for peace, the Parlia- mentary General had orders, under certain conditions, " to declare Pardon to those that will withdraw from the King, except " Falkland and nine others.f Had he been captured, Falkland's head would not have been worth a month's purchase. One great obstacle in the way of Falkland's pacific endeavours was the promise extracted from the King by the Queen, that he would never make peace un- less by her interposition and mediation. She wished the kingdom to be indebted to her for that blessing if it ever came. \ * Clarendon's Hist., book vii., p. 359. t Whitelock's Memorials of the English Affairs, etc., p. 62. J Life of Clarendon, vol. i., p. 149 seq. LETICE, WIFE OF Lucius, 2ND VISCOUNT FALKLAND. WINTER AT OXFORD. l6l Although the Queen was abroad, it is probable, nay almost certain, that many of the ladies of the Court must have been at Oxford while Charles spent the winter there ; and we may piously believe that Falkland consoled himself, in his sadness and dejection, by discussing " virtue " with " M ris Moray," whom, as Aubrey tells us, " he loved above all creatures." Yet it may be more charitable to imagine that he spared a little time to traverse the few miles which lay between Oxford and his home at Great Tew, and that he had in his beautiful Letice's Week-day Temple been, Her consecrated closet ; and there seen This Lady on her knees, whilst with her eyes She climb'd the stars, and did invade the skies.* At least, let us hope that no ugly and exaggerated rumours reached her ears of her husband's affection for his friend, whom Clarendon described as " of no al- luring beauty," f and Aubrey as " a handsome lady." J I thus earnestly hope, because " when faults were evident," Letice " would reprove with a great deal of power." Falkland, at this time, appears to have stayed usually at Oxford, and his home duties had to give way to those of the Court and the Kingdom. On one occasion, whilst he was at Oxford, Charles had been speaking very favourably of Hyde to Falkland, when he suddenly remarked upon Hyde's peculiar style in writing, and said that " he should know anything written by him if it were brought to him by a stranger amongst a multitude of writings by other men." || Falkland, who was doubtless well aware that Hyde was fond of amusing himself by counterfeiting the literary and the oratorical * " To the Memory of, etc., the Lady Letice." t Life, vol. i., p. 202. \ Letters, vol. ii., part i., p. 350. The Holy Life and Death of the Lady Falkland, p. 182. || Life of Clarendon, vol. i., pp. ipi-2. II 1 62 FALKLANDS. styles of others, observed that, intimate as he was, and long had been, with Hyde, he often mistook his manuscript for that of others, as his style and line of "argument" fre- quently varied. " I will lay you an angel," replied Charles, " that, let the argument be what it may, you shall never bring me a sheet of paper of Hyde's writing without my discovering it to be his." Falkland accepted the bet. Shortly afterwards he, as usual, took the reports of the political speeches made in London to show the King. Charles looked through them and specially noticed one by Lord Pembroke, saying that he should not have thought that Pembroke could have made a speech at such length, "though," added he, "every word was so much his own that nobody else could make it." Now this happened to be a counterfeit composition of Hyde's. As there were other people in the room, Falkland only whispered " in the King's ear" a word or two implying that the work was Hyde's, " which," says Clarendon, " his Majesty in the instant apprehended, blushed, and put his hand into his pocket, and gave him the angel, saying he had never paid a wager more willingly, and was very merry upon it." There was another piece of by-play between Falkland and the King which was not quite so " merry." Charles was dispirited, as well he might be, and Falkland wished to distract and amuse him. I will give Wellwood's description* of what occurred. " The King being at Oxford during the Civil Wars, went one day to see the public library, where he was shewed among other books a Virgil nobly printed and exquisitely bound. The Lord Falkland, to divert the King, would * Memoirs of the Most Material Transactions in England for the Last Hundred Years Preceding the Revolution, by James Wellwood, M.D., pp. 90-2. SOXTES VIRGILIAN&. 163 have his Majesty make a tryal of his fortune by the Sortes Virgiliance, an usual thing of Augury some ages past, made by opening a Virgil. Whereupon, the King opening the Book, the Period which happened to come up was part of Dido's imprecation against ^Eneas. sEneid. Dry- den thus translates : Oppress'd with Numbers in th' unequal Field, His Men discourag'd, and himself expell'd, Let him for Succour sue from Place to Place, Torn from his Subjects, and his Son's Embrace, etc. JEneid, iv. It is said King Charles seem'd concerned at this acci- dent ; the Lord Falkland, who observed it, would likewise try his own fortune in the same manner, hoping he might fall upon some passage that could have no relation to his case, and thereby divert the King's thoughts from any impression the other might make upon him." But the first step into a quicksand is usually followed by another still deeper. " The place Lord Falkland stumbled upon was yet more suited to his destiny than the other had been to the King's ; being the following expressions of Evander, upon the untimely death of his son Pallas. ALneid, lib. xi. Non h