6—
The Palatinate

In 1617 attention began to be focused upon the Central European state of Bohemia, whose king was one of the Electors to the Holy Roman Empire and who was at that time the aged Hapsburg, Matthias, the Holy Roman Emperor himself. Matthias was childless. Wishing to perpetuate in the Hapsburg family the succession of both Bohemia and the Empire, he resigned the crown of Bohemia as a first step and nominated his cousin, Ferdinand of Styria, in his place. Ferdinand was accepted by a majority in the Bohemian Council of State and crowned in July 1617. But Bohemia was a country sharply divided by religious belief and economic interest, while Ferdinand was Jesuit-trained, sincerely if fanatically Catholic. The Protestants on the Council of State rose in protest and in May 1618 denounced the rule of Ferdinand and established an alternative government.

The effect on the rest of Europe was profound. No one was more closely concerned than the young Elector Palatine, son-in-law to James and leader of the Protestant bloc, and none was more ready for action. Outside the Empire no one was more closely concerned than the King of England, both through his treaty with the Protestant Union and his family connections with the Palatine, yet no one was less anxious to come to the issue. James was in the midst of his marriage negotiations with Gondomar, and was about to improve his financial position through the good offices of Lionel Cranfield: to spend money on war was the last thing he wanted. As Frederick prepared to fight and the English people demonstrated their support for the Protestant cause and the Princess Elizabeth, James was torn between conflicting desires to support his son-in-law, keep the friendship of Spain, and refrain from spending money. The first tentative moves came from Savoy. Count Mansfeld, a soldier of fortune with a personal vendetta against the Hapsburgs, had been in the service of the

Duke of Savoy and still had some 2000 troups under his command. The Duke offered them to the Protestant Union and Mansfeld agreed to lead them for what he might get out of the conflict.

James meanwhile seized upon a proposal reputedly made by the King of Spain that he should use his prestige to mediate. This appealed to James's vanity as well as to his desire to postpone action and might, indeed, have offered a solution. But the mediator he chose to represent him was the most unsuitable James Hay, Viscount Doncaster, a courtier of wealth, good nature and personal charm whose talents lay elsewhere than in the tough and intricate diplomacy required on this occasion. As Doncaster made unhurried preparations for departure, troops began to move in Europe and Frederick, in January 1619, sent Baron Christopher Dohna to England to call upon his father-in-law for aid and to renew the treaty with the Protestant Union which was drawing to a close. It might have been taken as an augury that on the 12th of that month the Banqueting House in Whitehall, where Elizabeth and Frederick were married, was destroyed by fire. James renewed the treaty but nothing more. Charles made much of Dohna, who was a link with his sister. He was impatient to do something physical, something dramatic, for her cause. Instead of this he was caught up in close domestic trouble with the illness first of his mother and then of his father.

Early in 1619 Anne was taken ill. She had been in poor health for some time, she saw little of the King, and her personal following had dwindled. To Charles and to her brother she remained passionately attached. At Hampton Court in February Anne seemed to recover something of her old spirit, and the King went to Newmarket. But she relapsed, had her favourite bed set up and sent for Charles on March 1. He found her physicians in attendance, with the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London already at her bedside anxious to ensure that she died professing the faith of the Church of England. She spoke a word to Charles in the old bantering manner, asking how he did? 'At your service', he replied in the same spirit. She then begged Charles to go home. 'No, I will stay to wait upon your Majesty.' 'I am a pretty piece to wait upon', she replied wryly, once more commanding him to bed. He went unwillingly. After supper he returned and spoke a few words to her. She would not believe her end was near and very few of the courtiers who had thronged to Hampton Court on hearing that her condition had worsened were admitted. She became worse in the night, the Prince was sent for and she gave him her

blessing, her hand being guided and placed upon his head. She was just able to sign her will in which she left her property to Charles. Her power of speech was gone but the Bishop of London, Charles and her personal staff prayed with her. She called for James and made a sign to indicate that she died in the faith of the Church of England. 'She was in her great condition a good Woman', affirmed a near contemporary. Archbishop Abbot, many years after her death, perhaps wishing to scotch any rumour of Charles's illegitimacy, spoke of her as one of whose virtue he had not the least doubt.

For thirteen weeks Anne lay unburied while her effigy was made, money was with difficulty raised for the funeral, and the ladies of the Court quarrelled over precedence in the funeral cortège. Again the burden fell on Charles, for his father was ill at Newmarket. On the day of the funeral, 13 May 1619, Charles rode before the hearse and led the crowd of mourners, all in the black garments provided, as was customary, by the Court. It was, said an observer, 'a drawling, tedious sight', everyone being dressed alike and appearing 'tired with the length of the way or the weight of their clothes, each lady having twelve, and each countess sixteen yards of broadcloth in her dress.'^[1] It was not what the high-spirited Anne would have wished. Charles was harrowed still further when James summoned him to his bedside and advised him on suitable counsellors for the succession.

The death of Matthias, the Holy Roman Emperor, on March 20 lost some of its impact in England in the midst of these domestic affairs, but Doncaster, delayed by the death of the Queen and the illness of the King, at last got off on May 12, while James recovered and entered London on June 1 to an enthusiastic welcome. There was room now for the feelings of expectation and urgency which Charles shared with the rest. Eagerly he perused Doncaster's despatches from Europe and wrote somewhat stiffly but full of boyish enthusiasm:

I am verrie glad to heer that my brother is of so rype a judgement and of so forward an inclination to the good of Christendume as I fynd by you he is. You may assure your selfe I will be glade not onlie to assiste him with my countenance, but also with my person, if the King my father will give me leave.^[2]

But while Doncaster was making his leisurely way across Europe, receiving lavish entertainment at Heidelberg and other capitals, events marched rapidly forward. Ferdinand, the deposed King of Bohemia, was elected Holy Roman Emperor in succession to Matthias and was

crowned on August 18. Two days before that the Bohemian Council of State offered the throne of Bohemia to Frederick, Elector Palatine, James's son-in-law.

Frederick hesitated. Christopher Dohna was despatched again to England to seek James's advice. Elizabeth reputedly said she would rather eat sauerkraut as a Queen than eat off gold plate as an Elector's wife. James was thrown into an even wilder agony of indecision than before, for now a throne for his daughter was in the balance. He worried over the constitutional issue, evading Dohna, keeping him dangling between Bagshot, Windsor and Wanstead, but asking basic questions when they met: Could the Bohemian nobles of right choose their own king? What was Ferdinand's constitutional position? Not until a week after Dohna's arrival did he allow the matter to come before the Privy Council. This was already September 10 and a month had passed since Bohemia's invitation. It was not unreasonable that Frederick should act on his own initiative. He accepted the throne of Bohemia on September 28. He and Elizabeth entered Prague on October 31 and were crowned in November. The third of their children, Prince Rupert, was born there a month later on 7 December 1619.

The Catholic League could not accept such a situation. While rumours flew around of a flank attack by Spain upon Frederick's own Palatinate, feeling in England and in the Privy Council itself was running strongly against Spain and the Spanish match was discredited. Doncaster returned eager for war against the Catholic League. Achatius Dohna, brother of the unfortunate Christopher, was despatched as Ambassador from Frederick, King of Bohemia, to ask for his father-in-law's assistance in raising a loan of £100,000 in the City of London. Sir Andrew Gray, a Scottish officer in the Bohemian service, returned to England to beg leave to levy a regiment for his master to be paid out of the City loan. He brought with him a letter from James's little grandson, Prince Frederick Henry, which pleaded for help.

James was alone in seeing the other side of the picture. It was not his daughter's patrimony that was at stake, but a throne her husband had accepted rashly without waiting for his father-in-law's advice. At the same time Frederick's action had precipitated the Protestant-Catholic clash that James had laboured so long and so hard to avert. But, since the clash appeared imminent, should he not now throw his weight on the side of religion, his daughter, and the little grandson

whose letter had so strongly affected him? A practical reason against doing so was a shortage of money. More importantly he would forfeit his ambition to be Europe's arbiter for the far less satisfactory possibility of being Europe's Protestant leader. He saw something of the terrible catastrophe of a war-torn Europe; he was distressed that it was his own son-in-law who had taken the step which was likely to reduce his peace policy to ashes. So strong was James's belief that he should remain uncommitted that it was not until March that he gave his consent to the raising of volunteers and permitted the City loan to go forward. He worried incessantly and gave vent to his feelings against Frederick: 'It is only by force that he will ever be brought to reason!', he exclaimed. 'If my son-in-law wishes to save the Palatine', he said on another occasion, 'he had better at once consent to a suspension of arms in Bohemia!'. He would not allow prayers to be said for Frederick as King of Bohemia. 'James is a strange father', the Prince of Orange reputedly remarked, 'he will neither fight for his children nor pray for them.' No wonder it was reported that the King 'seemed utterly weary'. 'I am not God Almighty', he was heard to mutter, a remark so out of character that in itself it demonstrated his depression. He busied himself with writing a meditation upon St Matthew's Gospel, which he called The Crown of Thorns .^[3]

It was a different situation in August 1620 when, while the Emperor moved against Prague, Spain from the Netherlands invaded Frederick's hereditary territory in the Palatinate. James immediately announced to his Council that he would defend the Palatinate. Charles headed a subscription list for its defence with £5000. Buckingham gave £1000, the rest of the Council and the City of London brought the total to £28,000. But the rest of England could raise no more than a paltry £6000. Meanwhile on September 4 the Spanish General, Spinola, entered Oppenheim on the Rhine, well within the Palatine territory. James had no alternative but to call a Parliament, for which Proclamation was made on November 6. A fortnight later news reached London that on 29 October 1620 at the battle of the White Hill just outside Prague Frederick had suffered utter defeat at the hands of the Emperor and that he and his family were in flight.

Charles was at Royston with his father when he heard the news. For two days he remained shut in his room, speaking to no one. Inadequacy and insufficiency tormented him. Henry would have been in Prague or Heidelberg long before, fighting for his faith and his sister. Yet Charles's more statesmanlike feelings assured him that this

could have given no more than an instant lifting of the spirit and the consolation of mutual support. It might have brought in more volunteers, more money, but would have been unlikely, in the end, to affect the outcome. If in part he regretted that his nature permitted no such spontaneous reaction, he had also to grapple with the consciousness that he loved neither his sister nor Frederick's Calvinism with the intensity that Henry had shown. Deep down an even darker consideration stirred — the unspoken fear that also haunted his father — fears of the popularity of the Protestant Princess whose resemblance to her brother Henry was still commented upon, fears of the succession of Elizabeth and her children if Charles left no heir: 'it hangs on a single thread', it was said, 'whether she and her children may not reign one day in these realms.' The desire of Elizabeth and Frederick to send one of their sons to England to be educated might be merely a device to depose James, by-pass Charles, and proclaim the boy king. James's refusal to allow his grandson to come had indicated some such train of thought. The King was reluctant, even now, when his daughter was in flight, to offer her a home in England. When it was rumoured that he had invited her and Frederick to come to England his comment was 'God forbid!' and he wrote to Carleton, Ambassador at The Hague, for 'the stay of his daughter . . . from coming into England'. Elizabeth was informed confidentially by the Dutch Ambassador and mentioned the matter no more. But she had her own personal reasons for wishing to remain with her husband near the scene of action, and whatever were James's motives, and they were probably mixed, Elizabeth herself felt strongly that to leave Continental Europe at this time would be both strategically and politically a false move.

The Parliament of 1621 was the first in which Charles played a full part, and he rode with his father to open it at Westminster on January 30. The King was suffering from arthritis and had to be carried in a chair into Westminster Abbey for the sermon and then into the House of Lords where Lord Chancellor Bacon presided. As the Commons crowded to the bar of the House James commended his son to them and they to him. The position in Europe was grim. Earlier in the month Frederick had been put under the ban of the Empire with all his lands and dignities confiscate. James told his hearers that he had borrowed from the King of Denmark and given from his own privy purse and now was reduced to beginning 'as a man would beg an alms' for the recovery of the Palatinate. 'I declare unto you', he announced,

'that if I cannot get it with peace, my crown and my blood and the blood of my son shall not be spared for it.' A Council of War declared on February 12 that an army of 30,000 men was required at an initial cost of £250,000 and a subsequent charge of £900,000 annually. The Commons granted two subsidies, amounting to some £160,000 — but not for war, upon which they remained uncommitted, but for the King's general expenses. James was delighted to receive a promise of money so early in the session but it soon became apparent that before considering further supplies the House had affairs of its own to discuss.

Charles could now be seen regularly walking through King Street and Westminster Hall with his guard and retinue on his way from St James's to the Parliament House. He heard the Members discuss the economic situation. Trade had been declining, largely because of the loss of markets resulting from the European war; in the clothing areas, particularly, there was much unemployment and considerable distress. Members were concerned for the industry which was the very backbone of English prosperity and with which many of them were closely connected, and they were worried at the threat of insurrection as starving cloth workers began to take food from the market place and from the homes of richer people. Some employers were helping their workpeople by giving them food or keeping them on in work in spite of the fact that unsold cloth was accumulating in their barns. The House was sympathetic. Sir Edwin Sandys, who represented Ipswich in the clothing area of East Anglia, made an impassioned speech for 'the poor man's labour, his inheritance' and a few months later the first Commission on Unemployment was appointed.

Charles heard the Commons marshall their grievances and denounce monopolies, particularly the monopolies of inns and alehouses and of gold and silver thread. He knew that Buckingham's family was concerned in these and he watched as Sir Giles Mompesson was made the scapegoat and was banished the kingdom. He enjoyed many of the debates, particularly the contributions of Sir Edward Coke. 'I am never weary of hearing you', he told the Chief Justice, 'you do so well mix pleasant things with these sad and serious matters.' He was able to calm the more excitable spirits in the House when James sent a tactless message. He intervened in the case of the aged Roman Catholic Floyd, a barrister who had been imprisoned in the Fleet by the Council for openly rejoicing at Frederick's defeat outside Prague. Though he denied the words attributed to him, the House of

Commons, which was doing nothing to assist the Palsgrave and his family, turned on Floyd in fury. 'Let a hole be burnt in his tongue', 'Let his tongue be cut out', 'Let his nose and ears be cropped off!' they cried one after another. The nauseating scene became merged in questions as to who could claim jurisdiction over the unfortunate old man. When it fell to the House of Lords they fined him £5000, imprisoned him for life, and ordered him to be whipped at the cart's tail from London Bridge to Westminster Hall. It was at the instance of Charles that the whipping was remitted.

This was also the Parliament of Bacon's disgrace. He had made enemies; and in his own conduct, in the sphere where his public duties impinged upon his private life, he was careless and gifts exchanged hands while suits were pending. There is no evidence that Bacon's judgment was affected and in an age where the line between bribery, gift, and legitimate payment was finely drawn it is unlikely that anything would have been heard to Bacon's discredit had it not been for jealousy and personal rancour. As it was, even with the support of the Prince and of Buckingham, Bacon could not stand up to the charges brought against him in the House of Lords. Charles himself carried to the House Bacon's letter of submission. On 3 May 1621 after the Great Seal had been taken from him and his further punishment was being debated, both Charles and the Earl spoke in his favour. The sentence, nevertheless, was severe and Bacon never returned to public life. James, for all his erudition, had never recognized the qualities of Bacon's scientific mind. Bacon's plea for a science based upon observation and experiment, and co-ordinated by an official body, could have blossomed into a national institution which would have redounded to James's credit. But James preferred an aphorism. The Novum Organum of 1620, which embodied Bacon's plan, 'resembled the peace of God', said James, 'for it passed all understanding'. Charles, on the other hand, kept Bacon's Advancement of Learning with him throughout the troubles of his later life and annotated the book in his captivity.

Charles delivered the speech of thanks from the Lords to the King on the adjournment on 4 June 1621. As the Members dispersed to their homes it became apparent that the bad summer was delaying the ripening of the crops. In the continuing cold of autumn the harvest was disastrous and the price of corn rose steeply. The Court augmented its supplies by progresses and cheered itself by entertainments. Ben Jonson's masque The Gypsies Metamorphos'd was played

three times, Buckingham appearing as a gypsy in the performance at Windsor early in September. A feature of the play was the fortunetelling of the gypsies in which the first gypsy, taking the King's hand, asked

Could any doubt, that sawe this hand,
Or who you are, or what commaund
     You have upon the fate of things,
Or would not say you were let downe
From heaven, on earthe to be the Crowne
     And top of all your neighbour kings?

When a gypsy took the hand of Charles it was to offer a singularly apt and charmingly turned fortune, predicting a Spanish bride and

. . . the promise before day
of a little James to play
     Hereafter
'Twixt his Grandsires knees, and move
All the prettie waies of Love,
     And laughter

It was enough to move the old King to tears!

Shortly afterwards James went to Newmarket, where he was confined by the cold weather and a slight indisposition. It was therefore Charles who, on his twenty-first birthday, rode in through the early morning chill from Newmarket, dining at Epping and reaching St James's by two o'clock in the afternoon, in order that the following day he might open the new session of Parliament.

The question of concrete help for the Palatinate was once again the main issue. Lord Digby, English Ambassador at Madrid, who also knew Central Europe and was more able than most to grasp the essentials of the situation, hammered home the points: the necessity of holding the Lower Palatinate during the winter, which meant supplies for the 20,000 men already there under Vere and Mansfeld; the need in the spring for an additional army for which some £900,000 a year would be required. But there was no enthusiasm for a land war which would have swallowed much money and still further disrupted trade and commerce. Members spoke instead of diversionary action at sea to cut off Spanish supplies — in other words a good old naval war in the old style for the glory of God, the winning of treasure and, they hoped, the discomfiture of Spain and the rescue of the Palatinate at little expense to themselves. They did, however, grant a subsidy for

the maintenance of the troops already in the Palatinate (for which recusants were to be assessed at double rates), they asked for the enforcement of the anti–Catholic laws, and they begged that their Prince be married to one of the Protestant faith. Charles, bitterly complaining that 'his marriage was being continually prostituted in the House', sent to his father at Newmarket a copy of the petition in which the Commons had expressed their views. James exclaimed in wrath that 'some fiery and popular spirits' had been 'emboldened . . . to argue and debate publicly of matters far above their reach and capacity' and commanded Parliament not to 'presume henceforth to meddle with anything concerning our government or deep matters of state, and namely not to deal with our dearest son's match with the daughter of Spain'. The response of the Commons was first a further petition and then the Protestation of December 18 in which they maintained that 'affairs concerning the King, State and defence of the realm and of the Church of England, and the maintenance and making of laws, and redress of mischiefs and grievances' were 'proper subjects for debate in Parliament' and that in all these matters Members of Parliament had the right of free speech. This was too much for the harrassed King. He first adjourned and then dissolved Parliament on 6 January 1622; he imprisoned Coke and Sir Robert Phelips, confined John Pym to his house, and solemnly, in the presence of Charles and the members of his Council, tore the offending Protestation from the Journal of the House of Commons.

As the bitterly cold weather continued John Chamberlain took to wearing gloves as he wrote to his friend, Dudley Carleton, at The Hague. Among other events he reported a series of fires in the capital: the Fortune theatre was burnt down in two hours, destroying the players' costumes and their play books, there was a serious fire in the clerk's office in Chancery Lane. Though fire was not unusual in the close-packed streets of the capital with its many wooden or half-timbered buildings, Chamberlain thought the present outbreak was because 'some firie planet raigned'. More likely people were trying to keep warm with bigger fires than normally. On Twelfth Night 1622, the day James tore the Commons' Protestation from their Journal, Jonson's Masque of Augurs opened Inigo Jones's new Banqueting Hall, which replaced the one destroyed by fire three years earlier. Although the work was not complete and seats had to be improvised, the scale and balance of the building was unmistakeable. The bad weather

continued into the spring when the anniversary celebrations of the King's coronation, including tilting and a masque devised by the Prince, were several times postponed, to Charles's extreme annoyance, not only because he had worked hard on the preparation of the entertainment but because he wanted to wear at the tilting a feather which had been sent him from the Infanta.

Charles had matured considerably during the Parliament of 1621. Not only had he made the acquaintance of some of the great orators and parliamentarians of the day but he had experienced personally the clash of his father's outlook and theirs. He was himself popular with the Members who liked his modest manner, his obvious desire to please, and his voice which was 'lowe' but 'good'. His popularity increased his poise and self-confidence, he was much less reserved than formerly, and spoke with greater firmness. He needed all the strength of character he could muster as, after the dissolution, his father became the laughing-stock of Europe. Why should James assume to himself the title of Defender of the Faith, it was asked, when he suffered the Protestants of Germany to be extirpated? When he was called at Court a second Solomon someone was heard to hope he was not, after all, the fiddler's son! In Brussels they depicted him with his pockets hanging out and never a penny in them, nor in his purse, turned upside down. At Antwerp they pictured the Queen of Bohemia as a poor peasant woman with her hair hanging about her face, and her child on her back, while the King, her father, carried the cradle after her. Comedies showed the Palatine being presented with 100,000 pickled herrings by the King of Denmark, 100,000 butter boxes by the Dutch, and 100,000 ambassadors by the English. In England the pamphlets Vox Populi and Tom Tell-Troath were repeating such gibes and many more. It was said that for one health drunk to the King, ten were drunk to the Palatine and to the Lady Elizabeth.^[4]

Charles tried to assert his new-won confidence—'showing his teeth' the Venetian Ambassador called it—though James still kept him tightly reined. But he would question others closely, using the knowledgeable Venetian, for example, to tell him about Count Mansfeld. Otherwise he kept his own council, still saying and doing what he was expected to say and do. Observers were puzzled. 'He moves like a planet in its sphere', wrote the Venetian Ambassador in 1622, 'so naturally and quietly that one does not remark it. In speech he shows good sense, his replies are prudent, he grasps things with quick judgment and leans to the better opinion. But if he hears his father or

the favourite say anything to the contrary, he immediately changes.' Perhaps it was intended dissimulation, learned from James himself ('that falst Scotch Urchin' as Queen Elizabeth called him) or from Guicciardini.

It was observed that he would retire for hours to his model house working upon out-of-the-way mathematics and methods of campaigning and encamping, and that he was dressing 'absolutely without jewels, more modestly than any gentleman soever', no doubt out of sympathy for Elizabeth and her family. The year following the dissolution of Parliament was full of strange undercurrents. At Christmastime 1622 four of Charles's musicians performed in Gondomar's Roman Catholic chapel; Charles dismissed them. But when Gondomar complained to the King, Charles was compelled to reinstate them. About the same time the Lieutenant of the Middle Temple and some thirty others drank the health of the distressed Lady Elizabeth, kissed their drawn swords, and swore to live and die in her service. James was displeased. Charles's reaction was touched with bitterness, the more so that it was not he but their cousin, Duke Christian of Brunswick, who was most vociferous and most active in helping Elizabeth. Not only did he declare himself, 'Your most humblest, most constant, most faithful, most affectionate, and most obedient slave, who loves you, and will love you, infinitely and incessantly to death', but he was actually fighting in her armies.^[5]

Perhaps as a reaction to the enforced inactivity of his own life Charles at this time entered into a freer, more light-hearted social round than he had known hitherto. It is possible that his father had encouraged Buckingham to lead him. At all events in Court entertainment Buckingham, his wife and Charles were now frequently joined by the Duchess of Lennox, a thrice-married beauty, still young, who was said 'to be much courted and respected by the Prince' and even to have 'cast her cap' at the widower King himself. The quartet were frequently observed going round from one place of entertainment to another, turning up unexpectedly with a minimum of etiquette and an abandon of high spirits. When the Marquise of Buckingham had smallpox the Duchess of Lennox attended her assiduously. There was considerable gossip shortly afterwards when a chain of diamonds, valued at over £3000, was put round the Duchess's neck by Charles himself—'which was taken by all for an extraordinary and unusual honour done unto her'. But the chain carried the picture of James, not Charles, and was said by some to be a tribute to her care

of the Marquise, of whom James was extraordinarily fond. Not long afterwards Charles gave another 'faire jewell' to another fair lady, the attractive Mlle St Luc, when she departed for home with her aunt, the wife of the French Ambassador. It was clear that Charles had thrown off much of his reserve and was enjoying the courtier's life in which hitherto he had shown little interest.^[6] If there is any truth in the story that Joanna Bridges, who was living in Mandinam in Carmarthenshire in 1648 and who married Jeremy Taylor as his second wife, was a natural daughter of Charles she would have been conceived at this time. Her mother could have been the Duchess of Lennox.

Charles was, indeed, thinking of marriage. His own inclinations were leading him in that direction and he was beginning to believe with his father that a Spanish match could, strange though it might seem, help the Palatinate. As he discussed the matter with Buckingham their friendship deepened. When the Venetian Ambassador found Charles in 1622 caressing Buckingham like a brother and 'behaving as if the favourite were prince and himself less than a favourite', he thought it was to please the King, but it was, on the contrary, the outcome of his developing affection for Buckingham and an indication of the interests they now held in common.