A.D. 1624. DETECTS PLOT AGAINST BUCKINGHAM. 175 prosecution against him. Being found guilty, the Lord Keeper, the associate in his real offence, pronounced sentence against him, "that he should lose all his offices, should thereafter be incapable to hold any office, place, or employment, should be imprisoned in the Tower during the King's pleasure, should pay a fine of 50,000l., should be disqualified to sit in parliament, and should never come within the verge of the Court." 8 But the Lord Keeper, not quite sure when his own turn might come,-under colour of compassionating the hardships of which Middlesex had complained in his trial, prevailed on the Lords to pass a resolution, that in all subsequent impeachments for misdemeanour the accused should be furnished with copies of the depositions, and should be allowed the aid of counsel.h The petitions against the Lord Keeper were suffered to lie dormant till the end of the session, when the Committee to whom they were referred reported, "that of those which had been examined some were groundless in fact, and the others furnished no matter for a criminal charge." Morley, one of the petitioners, who had complained of the Lord Keeper for some indirect practice against him in the Star Chamber, and had printed and circulated his petition, was committed to the Fleet, fined 1000l., ordered to stand in the pillory with a copy of the petition on his head, and to make acknowledgment of his fault to the Lord Keeper at the bar of the House and in the Court of Chancery.i Williams regained, to a certain degree, the good graces of Buckingham, by skilfully discovering and counteracting a plot against him. Ynoiosa and Coloma, the Spanish ambassadors, having been long carefully prevented from having any personal communication with the King, at last contrived to deliver to him privately a letter, describing him as a prisoner in his own palace, and offering to communicate important information to him. In consequence, Carendolet, the secretary of legation, was admitted to a secret interview with James, and stated several things which made so deep an impression on his mind, that his manner to Buckingham was visibly altered. The Prince, at Buckingham's suggestion, came early one morning g When this sentence was exultingly reported to the King by Buckingham and the Prince, who had procured it, he prophetically said to the one, "You are making a rod for your own breech;" and to the other, "You will yet live to have your bellyful of impeach. ments." h Lords' Journals. i 1 Parl. Hist. 1399. from Windsor to the House of Lords before prayers, and taking the Lord Keeper aside, acknowledged his past services, and said, "You may receive greater thanks of us both, if you will spread open that black contrivance which hath lost him the good opinion of my father, and myself am in little better condition." "The curtain of privacy," answered the Lord Keeper, "is drawn before the picture that I cannot guess at the colours.' "Well, my Lord," said the Prince, "I expected better service from you; for if that be the picture drawer's shop, no councillor in this kingdom is better acquainted than yourself with the works and the workmen." "I might have been," says the Keeper; "and I am panged like a woman in travail till I know what misshapen creature they are drawing." He then intimated that he knew so much, that the Spanish secretary of legation had had a private interview with the King; and being pressed by the Prince to state how he came by this information, he observed: "Another, perhaps, would blush when I tell you with what heifer I plow; but knowing mine innocency, the worst that can happen is to expose myself to be laughed at. Don Francisco Carendolet loves me because he is a scholar he is Archdeacon of Cambray. Sometimes we are pleasant together. I have discovered him to be a wanton, and a servant to some of our English beauties, but, above all, to one of that gentle craft in Mark Lane. A wit she is, and one that must be courted with news and occurrences at home and abroad, as well as with gifts. I have a friend that hath bribed her in my name to send me a faithful conveyance of such tidings as her paramour Carendolet brings to her. And she hath well earned a piece of plate or two from me, and shall not be unrecompensed for this service about which your Highness doth use me, if the drab can help me in it. Truly, Sir, this is my dark-lantern, and I am not ashamed to inquire of a Delilah to resolve a riddle; for in my studies of divinity I have gleaned up this maxim, Licet uti alieno peccato. Though the devil make her a sinner, I may make good use of her sin.' "You!" says the Prince merrily, "do you deal in such ware ?" "In good faith," exclaimed the Bishop, (and we are bound to believe him,) "I never saw her face." As soon as the House rose he set about gaining further in k The Lord Keeper, who thus acted the part of Cicero in discovering Catiline's conspiracy, was famous for having a great number of spies and informers in his employ " k ment, from whom he gained much useful information, both domestic and foreign, and whom he is said to have paid very handsomely from his large ecclesiastical revenues. A.D. 1624. CLOSE OF THE REIGN OF JAMES I. 177 formation, but doubting whether more could be drawn from the lady, he resorted to the expedient of arresting a mass priest in Drury Lane, a particular friend of Carendolet, for whom it was certain he would interest himself. Accordingly the Secretary came to the Lord Keeper to sue for his friend's liberation, and was prevailed upon to disclose every thing that had passed between him and the King. All this Williams communicated to Buckingham, who immediately went to the King, and with the Prince's assistance obtained a promise from him never more to confer with the Spanish ambassadors, and if they should attempt to renew their secret correspondence with him, to send them out of the kingdom." Thus James was kept in subjection till his death. 66 The last time of his appearing on the throne was at the close of this session, when he delivered a very learned and elaborate answer to the address of the Speaker; and the Lord Keeper, forgetting all he had said about "the true nightingale and the croaking of a Chancellor," delivered another equally learned and elaborate,-the chief object of which was to justify the King's refusal to pass certain bills. "Indeed," said he, it is best for the people that this royal assent is in his Majesty, and not in themselves; for many times it falls out with the assent of Kings as it doth with God, for Almighty God many times does not grant those petitions we do ask. Now God and the King do imitate the physician, who knoweth how to fit his patients better than they do desire." He then gives the instances of Solomon refusing the petition of Bathsheba for Adonijah, and God refusing the petition of St. Paul to remove the prick of the flesh that was a hindrance to him in the performance of good things, but gave him grace-a better gift. n After some compliments from James on the harmonious close of the session, the Lord Keeper prorogued the Parliament, and it never met again under this Sovereign. In the next Michaelmas term Williams had a fresh difference with Buckingham, who wished to turn him out, and tried to persuade Lord Chief Justice Hobart either to deliver to the King with his own mouth, or to set it under his hand, "that Lord Williams was not fit for the Keeper's place because of his inabilities and ignorance," undertaking that m Hardwicke Papers, vol. i. 460. n 1 Parl. Hist. 1498. So he seems always to have been called while he held the Great Seal, as if he had been a layman.- Hacket. N on ་ Hobart should succeed him. But this great lawyer, either disinterested and sincere, or preferring to continue his repose "the cushion of the Common Pleas," answered,- My Lord, somewhat might have been said at the first, but he should do the Lord Williams great wrong that said so now. In the following spring James was attacked by the ague, which, in spite of the adage with which the courtiers A.D. 1625. tried to comfort him, P carried him to his grave. The account of the closing scene by Hacket is creditable to all the parties he introduces. "After the Lord Keeper had presented himself before his Lord the King, he moved him unto cheerful discourse, but it would not be. He continued till midnight at his bedside, and received no comfort; but was out of all comfort upon the consultation that the physicians held together in the morning. Presently he besought the Prince that he might acquaint his father with his feeble estate, and, like a faithful chaplain, mind him both of his mortality and immortality, which was allowed and committed to him as the principal instrument of that holy and necessary service. So he went into the chamber of the King again upon that commission, and kneeling at his pallet told his Majesty, he knew he should neither displease him nor discourage him if he brought Isaiah's message to Hezekiah to set his house in order, for he thought his days to come would be but few in this world, but the best remained for the next world.—I am satisfied, says the sick King, and I pray you assist me to make me ready to go away hence to Christ, whose mercies I call for and I hope to find them." Williams, being soon after admitted, was constantly with him to the last,-administered the holy communion to him-and when he expired closed his eyes with his own hand. He likewise preached his funeral sermon from the text, "Now the rest of the acts of Solomon, first and last, are they not written in the book of Nathan the prophet, and in the prophecy of Ahijah the Shilonite, and in the visions of Iddo the seer against Jeroboam the son of Nebat? And Solomon reigned in Jerusalem over all Israel forty years. And Solomon slept with his fathers, and he was buried in the city of David his father." It would be unjust to judge this performance by the standard of the present age, and the parallel between the two Solomons is rather a proof of the bad taste in pulpit oratory prevailing in England in the beginning of the seven P "An ague in the spring Is physic for a King." 9 Hacket, 223. 2 Chron. ix. 29-31. A.D. 1625. LEGISLATION IN THE REIGN OF JAMES I. 179 teenth century than of any peculiar servility or fulsomeness in Lord Keeper Williams." I ought now to take a retrospect of the changes in the law during the reign of James I.,-but under this head there is little to relate. His first parliament chiefly occupied itself in legislating against papists and witches, and regulating licences to eat flesh in Lent. No memorable law was introduced till the twenty-first year of his reign,-when monopolies were for ever put down, reserving the right, now so frequently exercised by the Crown, of granting patents for useful inventions, and the statute was passed which regulated prescription and the limitation of actions down to our own time. " The courts of common law were filled by very able Judges, many of whose decisions are still quoted as authority. Equity made some progress; but it was not yet regarded as a system of jurisprudence, and so little were decisions in Chancery considered binding as precedents, that they were very rarely reported, however important the question or learned the Judge. We have seen how, after a violent struggle between Lord Coke and Lord Ellesmere, the Jurisdiction of the Court of Chancery to stay by injunction execution on judgments at law was finally established. In this reign the Court made another attempt,-which was speedily abandoned,—to determine upon the validity of wills, and it has been long settled that the validity of wills of real property shall be referred to courts of law, and the validity of wills of personal property to the Ecclesiastical Courts,-equity only putting a construction upon them when their validity has been established.* We have the first instance in the reign of James I., of the exercise of a jurisdiction by the Court of Chancery, which has since been beneficially continued, of granting writs ne exeat regno, by which debtors about to go abroad are obliged to give security to their creditors. Barrington says there must have been much business in the Court of Chancery while Lord Keeper Williams presided there, because fifteen Serjeants or Barristers of great eminence attended when he was invested with his high office; and Sir Edward Coke asserts in the debates in the House of Commons He printed the sermon under the title, "Great Britain's Solomon." t 21 Jac. 1, c. 3. u 21 Jac. 1, c. 16. * Toth. 286. Allen v. Macpherson, Dom. Proc. 1845. y Toth. 233. |