The Cradle King (56 page)

There was to be one final red herring. On 12 August, Olivares brought another scenario to the Council of State, proposing that the son of the ex-Elector Frederick (James’s grandson) should marry the Emperor’s daughter, and be raised a Catholic in the imperial court at Vienna. When the Duke of Bavaria died, he could become Elector Palatine, thus restoring title and lands to his father’s family. James, thought Olivares, would be in favour of this, since he would understand the advantages of having Catholic rather than Puritan grandchildren. But Olivares miscalculated. James refused to have any grandchild raised as a Catholic, and insisted that some restoration, albeit token, should be made now to Frederick. Charles took up his brother-in-law’s cause with Olivares, urging first the restoration of the Palatinate, which Olivares refused, and then an assurance that – as had been promised to Bristol – Spain would allow its troops to join with English soldiers to clear the Palatinate and restore it. When Olivares made it clear that Spain would under no circumstances agree to bear arms against any Hapsburg, Charles became angry. He later claimed to have told the Spanish minister that ‘if you hold yourself to that, there is an end of all; for without this you may not rely upon either marriage or friendship’.
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This outburst may well be an invention of hindsight, however, since Charles appears to have spent most of August still furthering his marriage plans. On one occasion he was said to have leapt over a garden wall the better to see his Infanta; and the Venetian ambassador wrote of how the Prince ‘longingly expecteth the nuptial day when the business so long in treaty is to be consummated in the bed’.
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It was time to go. Now their departure was delayed only by Buckingham’s illness, a fever which had left him weak and unable to walk. To James, though, he maintained his good spirits: ‘Sir, my heart and very soul dances for joy, for the change will be no less than to leap from trouble to ease, from sadness to mirth – nay, from hell to heaven.’
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On 28 August 1623, first Charles and Philip, and then their chief ministers, swore solemnly that they would see through the articles of the marriage treaty. Buckingham swore a particular oath that he would refrain from executing any law against an English Roman Catholic. Charles put his signature to a document authorising his marriage by proxy when the papal dispensation arrived, an arrangement that would expire at Christmas. And then, after the ritual exchange of gifts, the Prince and the favourite finally started on their journey home, travelling from Madrid to the Escorial palace, and then on via Segovia to Santander. One final piece of business occurred on this journey. Charles sent Buckingham’s man Edward Clerke back to Madrid, ordering him to stay in Bristol’s household until the papal dispensation arrived. At that moment, he would produce an undated letter from Charles instructing Bristol not to proceed with the proxy marriage until another condition was met: a promise that the Infanta would not carry out her oft-mentioned threat to go into a convent. While not rescinding his oath, it would buy time, and perhaps allow negotiations about the Palatinate to reopen (en route, Charles and Buckingham had met Elizabeth’s envoy Sir Francis Nethersole, carrying her plea not to conclude the marriage without new assurances about the future of the Palatinate).
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Sailing from Santander, the English party reached Plymouth harbour on 5 October. Charles, Buckingham and a small party rode to London, attempting to disguise their identities, but once again blowing their cover by paying a tavern bill in Spanish coin.
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Reaching London early on the 6th, they found that the celebrations had already started: 355 bonfires, fireworks, and the roof of St Paul’s decorated with torches, one for each year of the Prince’s life. Leaving York House later in the day to ride to his father at Royston, Charles had to drive his coach up Charing Cross Road rather than through the City because the streets were blocked by bonfires that ‘seemed to turn the City into one flame’.
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John Chamberlain wrote: ‘I have not heard of more demonstrations of public joy than were here and everywhere from the highest to the lowest, such spreading of tables in the streets with all manner of provisions, setting out whole hogsheads of wine and butts of sack, but specially such numbers of bonfires both here and all along as he went, as is almost incredible … At Blackheath there was fourteen load of wood in one fire, and the people were so mad with excess of joy that if they met with any cart loaden with wood they would take out the horses and set cart and all on fire.’ Condemned prisoners on the way to the gallows at Tyburn were reprieved; and in a solemn service at St Paul’s, Psalm 114 became ‘a new anthem’: ‘when Israel came out of Egypt, and the house of Jacob from among the barbarous people.’
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Later that day, Charles and Buckingham reached Royston, As they went up the steps to the King, he was already on his way down; ‘the sweet boys fell to their knees, James fell on their necks and they all wept’.
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CHAPTER TWENTY

Solomon Slept

F
OR A WHILE
it seemed to be business as usual: ‘The Prince and my Lord of Buckingham spend most of their hours with his Majesty, with the same freedom, liberty and kindness as they were wont.’
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But the signs of dissent soon became evident to court observers. Despite the rapturous public acclaim on his homecoming, Charles was mortified by his failure to bring home the Infanta, and, encouraged by Buckingham, was easily won to the idea that the only honourable course was to go to war against Spain. James, pathologically opposed to war, declared himself convinced, despite all evidence to the contrary, that the Spanish might be trusted. He continued to carry on negotiations with Philip, and during October and November 1623, a succession of not altogether consistent instructions reached an increasingly bewildered Earl of Bristol in Madrid, as James attempted yet again to win assurances about the Palatinate. But then in early November, James fell ill again with gout and retired to Royston and Theobalds, attended by Buckingham. This had happened countless times before, and customarily government business slowed to a trickle until the King’s attention could be gained again. But his experiences in Madrid had given the Prince of Wales a new resolve, and commentators soon observed that in his father’s absence Charles was ‘entering into command of affairs … and all men address themselves unto him’.
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The Prince’s new confidence extended to relations with his father. In late November Charles finally told James in no uncertain terms that the Spaniards had deceived him, and would continue to deceive him if he allowed it. In the account of the Elector Frederick’s ambassador Johan van Rusdorf, James, with tears in his eyes, asked his son, ‘Do you want me to go to war, in my twilight years, and force me to break with Spain?’
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It spelled the end of many cherished dreams for the self-styled Peacemaker. Bowing to insistent pressure from Charles and Buckingham he recalled Bristol from Madrid. Charles and Buckingham knew that the next step to forward their war policy was to turn to Parliament. The Commons had shown their zeal for military intervention in the Parliament of 1621, and now the momentum of the glorious return from Spain should guarantee that their policy would be carried. James raged and called them fools, but they, and he, now realised that he could have little effect on their actions. On 28 December James agreed with great reluctance to call a Parliament. Together, the Prince and the Duke launched a campaign to ensure their success, exploiting their influence to select sympathetic MPs to fill the Commons, and giving lurid accounts of their time in Spain.

As he waited for Parliament to open, James received surprising new proposals via Spain’s ambassador the Marquis de Inojosa, offering to send the Infanta in March and to return the Lower Palatinate by August 1624 and agreeing to all James’s demands concerning military cooperation. Charles and Buckingham were momentarily winded by this unexpected move, but managed to interpret it as a response to their hardline approach, and continued to press ahead with their campaign. They had serious opposition: the Venetian ambassador reported home in cipher that he was afraid that ‘these two young men, without good advisers and without supporting props, may come off badly in opposing the obstinate will of a very crafty King and the powerful arts of the most sagacious Spaniards’.
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But Charles’s new confidence was real, and at the end of January 1624 he informed his father that he would not tolerate any alliance or even agreement of friendship with Spain. James realised that for the first time Charles would not be moved, and decided not to force the issue.

Charles now chaired meetings of the Privy Council while James did as he had done so often – stayed in the country with Buckingham. ‘The balance of affairs leans to the side of the Prince,’ observed the Venetian ambassador; ‘while Buckingham remains at Newmarket to prevent any harm, he stays here [in London] to achieve the good. Thus they both cooperate towards the same end, although with different functions, yet with a good understanding.’ Buckingham watched the King ‘like a sentinel’ and wisely so: ‘at the present moment one may say that he needs watching as closely as the Spaniards themselves, as he is as willing to be deceived as they are to deceive him. They therefore watch him with great jealousy, and as though he were in a state of siege they keep away from him those whom they consider suspect.’
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At the end of January, the Council followed the Prince’s lead, and sent the King the advice that he should break off negotiations with Spain.
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Diplomatic reports from this period testify to a sharp decline in James’s health, both physical and mental. The Venetian ambassador wrote home that James seemed ‘practically lost; he comes to various decisions and inclines to his usual negotiations; he does not care to fall in with the wishes of his son-in-law and the favourite. He now protests, now weeps, but finally gives in.’ It was reported that the King had become obsessed with importing Spanish asses from the Low Countries, ‘making great estimation of those asses, since he finds himself so well served with the mules to his litter’. Tillières, the French ambassador, wrote sadly that ‘the King descends deeper and deeper into folly every day, sometime swearing and calling upon God, heaven and the angels, at other times weeping, then laughing, and finally pretending illness in order to play upon the pity of those who urge him to generous actions and to show them that sickness renders him incapable of deciding anything, demanding only repose and, indeed, the tomb’.
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On 16 February 1624, Parliament was ‘expected to have begun, the King ready to have gone, thousands of people gathered to see him, the Lords in their robes’ – until news reached James of the sudden death of the Duke of Lennox, early that morning of apoplexy.
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The opening was postponed for three days, and Lennox was buried the following day at Westminster in the Chapel of Henry VII, with Bishop Williams officiating; on 19 April he was afforded a splendid funeral, ‘celebrated with great pomp, his portraiture being drawn in a chariot from Ely House … to Westminster’.
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James opened Parliament on Monday 19 February with a meandering and defensive opening speech.
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He had always tried to rule well, he claimed, and he deserved the love of his people. Now he needed the advice of his Parliament. How could the treaties with Spain be dealt with in such a way as to advance religion and the common good, and to restore the Palatinate to Frederick? He knew that there was talk that in negotiating with Spain he had sacrificed religion to political expediency, ‘But, as God shall judge me, I never thought or meant it, nor ever in a word expressed anything that savoured of it.’
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‘Never soldiers marching the deserts and dry sands of Arabia where there is no water, could more thirst in hot weather for drink, than I do now for a happy end of this our meeting. And now I hope that after the miscarriage of three Parliaments this will prove happy … Consider with yourselves the state of Christendom, my children and this my own kingdom. Consider of these, and upon all give me your advice … you that are the representative body of this kingdom … [be] my true glasses to show me the hearts of my people.’
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Five days later, in Whitehall’s Banqueting House, Buckingham met with a joint meeting of Lords and Commons to give the details of the past year’s relations between England and Spain, pointing up the duplicity of the Spanish at every opportunity. The Spanish ambassadors objected to James about the Duke’s characterisation of their King, but Buckingham’s was precisely the message the parliamentarians had been waiting to hear: he was cleared by both Houses of any blame in his dealings in Madrid. Buoyed by this account, the Commons and a small group of lords decided to petition the King to break off negotiations with Spain. But while Buckingham was back in Westminster, James had been in contact with the Spanish ambassadors, and was being tempted back towards negotiations with Philip.
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He seems to have attacked Buckingham, since the Duke wrote angrily to the King, complaining of the ‘unfavourable interpretation I find made of a thankful and loyal heart in calling my words crude Catonic [severe] words’, and the suspicion that he was prone ‘to look more to the rising sun’, Charles, ‘than my maker’, the King. James had cried off a meeting with him, giving as an excuse the ‘fierce rheum and cough’ he had caught while hunting that afternoon; ‘notwithstanding of your cold,’ Buckingham wrote bitterly, ‘you were able to speak with the King of Spain’s instruments, though not with your own subjects.’
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