Some passages of the some princes. opposition that he might look for from that party, to begin the war anew. By these means there was a great fermentation over all the provinces, so that Maurice was not then in condition to give the elected king any considerable assistance; though indeed he needed it much, for his conduct was very weak. He affected the grandeur of a regal court, and the magnificence of a crowned head, too early: and his queen set up some of the gay diversions that she had been accustomed to in her father's court, such as balls and masks, which very much disgusted the good Bohemians, who thought that a revolution made on the account of religion ought to have put on a greater appearance of seriousness and simplicity. These particulars I had from the children of some who belonged to that court. The elected king was quickly overthrown, and driven, not only out of those his new dominions, but likewise out of his hereditary countries: he fled to Holland, where he ended his days. I will go no farther in a matter so well known as king James's ill conduct in the whole series of that war, and that unheard-of practice of sending his only son through France into Spain, of which the relations we have are so full, that I can add nothing to them. I will only here tell some particulars with relareligion of tion to Germany, that Fabricius, the wisest divine I knew among them, told me he had from Charles Lewis the elector palatine's own mouth. He said, Frederick II. who first reformed the palatinate, whose life is so curiously writ by Thomas Hubert, of Liege, resolved to shake off popery, and to set up Lutheranism in his country: but a counsellor of his said to him, that the Lutherans would always de pend chiefly on the house of Saxony: so it would parted with tionary Other circumstances concurred to make king King James James's reign inglorious. The states having bor-the caurowed great sums of money of queen Elizabeth, they towns. gave her the Brill and Flushing, with some other places of less note, in pawn, till the money should be repaid. Soon after his coming to the crown of England he entered into secret treaties with Spain, in I The author might have added to these instances, that it was said, that prince Maurice was in his opinion an Arminian, and Barnevelt a Calvinist. But as these religious points became state divisions, the one and the other took a order to the forcing the states to a peace: one article was, that if they were obstinate he would deliver these places to the Spaniards. When the truce was made, Barnevelt, though he had promoted it, yet knowing the secret article, he saw they were very unsafe, while the keys of Holland and Zealand were in the hands of a prince who might perhaps sell them, or make an ill use of them: so he persuaded the states to redeem the mortgage by repaying the money that England had lent, for which these places were put into their hands: and he came over himself to treat about it. King James, who was profuse upon his favourites and servants, was delighted with the prospect of so much money; and immediately, without calling a parliament to advise with them about it, he did yield to the proposition. So the money was paid, and the places were evacuated". But his profuseness drew two other things upon him, which broke the whole authority of the crown, and the dependence of the nation upon it. The crown had a great estate over all England, which was all let out upon leases for years, and a King James small rent was reserved. So most of the great families of the nation were the tenants of the crown, and a great many boroughs were depending on the estates so held. The renewal of these leases brought in fines to the crown and to the great officers: besides that the fear of being denied a renewal kept all in a dependence on the crown. King James obtained of his parliament a power of granting, that is selling, those estates for ever, with the reserve of the old quit-rent: and all the money raised by this was broke the greatness of the crown. m An action more to be commended for its honesty than wisdom. O. profusely squandered away. Another main part of 16 the regal authority was the wards, which anciently the crown took into their own management. Our kings were, according to the first institution, the guardians of the wards. They bred them up in their courts, and disposed of them in marriage as they thought fit. Afterwards they compounded, or forgave them, or gave them to some branches of the family, or to provide the younger children. But they proceeded in this very gently and the chief care after the reformation was to breed the wards protestants. Still all were under a great dependence by this means. Much money was not raised this way but families were often at mercy, and were used according to their behaviour. King James granted these generally to his servants and favourites and they made the most of them. So that what was before a dependence on the crown, and was moderately compounded for, became then a most exacting oppression, by which several families were ruined. This went on in king Charles's time in the same method. Our kings thought they gave little when they disposed of a ward, because they made little of them. All this raised such an outcry, that Mr. Pierpoint, at the restoration, gathered so many instances of these, and represented them so effectually to that house of commons that called home king Charles the second, that he persuaded them to redeem themselves by an offer of excise, which indeed produces a much greater revenue, but took away the dependence in which all families were held by the dread of leaving their heirs exposed to so great a danger. Pierpoint valued himself to me upon this service he did his country, at a time when Other er rors in his things were so little considered on either hand, that the court did not seem to apprehend the value of what they parted with, nor the country of what they purchased. Besides these public actings, king James suffered reign. much in the opinion of all people by his strange way of using one of the greatest men of that age, sir Walter Raleigh; against whom the proceedings at first were much censured, but the last part of them was thought both barbarous and illegal. The whole business of the earl of Somerset's rise and fall, of the countess of Essex and Overbury, the putting the inferior persons to death for that infamous poisoning, and the sparing the principals, both the earl of Somerset and his lady, were so odious and inhuman, that it quite sunk the reputation of a reign, that on many other accounts was already much exposed to contempt and censure; which was the more sensible, because it succeeded such a glorious and happy 17 one. King James in the end of his reign was become weary of the duke of Buckingham, who treated him with such an air of insolent contempt, that he seemed at last resolved to throw him off, but could not think of taking the load of government on himself, and so resolved to bring the earl of Somerset again into favour, as that lord reported it to some from whom I had it. He met with him in the night in the gardens at Theobald's: two bed-chamber men were only in the secret: the king embraced him tenderly and with many tears: the earl of Somerset believed the secret was not well kept; for soon after the king was taken ill with some fits of His death. an ague, and died of it. My father was then in London, and did very much suspect an ill practice |