A.D. 1639.

A PARLIAMENT SUMMONED.

235

after a solemn hearing before the Council, Archy was sentenced "to have his fool's coat pulled over his head, and to be dismissed the King's service."

But more serious consequences were at hand. The King, notwithstanding the moderate counsels which were given to him by the Lord Keeper, and even by Laud himself, was resolved to make no concessions to the Scottish rebels, and to suppress the insurrection by military force. He diMay, 1639. rected summonses under the Great Seal to issue to all the nobility to meet him at York with trains suitable to their rank and possessions, and he marched to the north at the head of a feudal army, like another Edward I., to conquer Scotland.

But in England the national prejudice against the Scotch was overpowered by sympathy in their cause. The King's forces dwindled away as they approached the border, and were not in a condition to engage their opponents, under the veteran Leslie. At Berwick, Charles found it indispensably necessary to negotiate, and after agreeing to abolish episcopacy (under a secret protest that he would restore it on the first favourable opportunity), he was obliged, for want of money, to disband his troops, and he ingloriously returned to London.

Fresh writs, to raise ship-money to the amount of 200,000l., were issued, and all sorts of expedients were resorted to for the purpose of filling the Exchequer,-but in vain. The Covenanters, becoming more insolent, talked of invading England, so that Presbytery, the only true form of church government, might be established all over the island, and there were no means of raising an army to resist them. A new tax might be imposed by proclamation, but in the present temper of the people, there was no chance of its being paid.

Under these circumstances, Coventry, and the whole Council, including even Archbishop Laud, and Juxon, the Lord Treasurer, recommended that a parliament should be called -a calamity, they privately said, from which England had now been happily exempt for eleven years, and with which they had well hoped that the country would never more be visited. The King for some time resisted, looking for assistance from Strafford and the Irish; but, finding his ministers steady in their unanimous advice, he put to them this perti

* Rush, ii. 470.

nent question: "If the new parliament should prove as untoward as some have lately been, will you then assist me in such extraordinary ways as in that extremity may be thought fit?" They all replied in the affirmative; and the Lord Keeper was ordered to prepare a proclamation, and writs of summons for a parliament, to meet in the month of April following, the interval being allowed for the meeting of a parliament in Ireland, which, it was hoped, the Lord Deputy could manage at his pleasure, and would set a good example for England.

Although Coventry had concurred in the advice to call a parliament as an inevitable evil, he looked forward to it with the deepest apprehension. The fate of Lord Bacon twenty years before was ever present to his imagination; and although he might have the consciousness of being free from personal corruption, notwithstanding the charges against him on that score, he knew well that a considerable share of the misgovernment while he held the Great Seal was imputed to him by the public, and that he was particularly obnoxious for the illegal patents of monopoly which he had sealed, for the arbitrary proclamations which he had countersigned, for the cruel sentences of the Star Chamber pronounced by him, -and for the active part he had taken in procuring the corrupt judgment in favour of ship-money.

There can be little doubt that, had he survived, the storm which burst upon his successor would have overwhelmed him, and that if he had escaped the scaffold, he would have been driven into exile.

But, while in possession of his high office and of the great fortune which he had amassed, without

A.D. 1640. any judicial exposure of his misdeeds, or temporal

retribution for them, he was snatched away from impending misfortunes. On the 13th of January, 1640, he suddenly died at his residence, Durham House, in the Strand, in the 60th year of his age. Upon his death-bed he sent this last request to the King, "that his Majesty would take all distastes from the parliament summoned against next April with patience, and suffer it to sit without an unkind dissolution." y

The only contemporary writer who bestows upon him any thing like unqualified praise, is Lloyd, the author of "The State Worthies,”—who even lauds his love of constitutional

y Echard, p. 476.

A.D. 1640.

66

HIS DEATH.

66

237

government saying, "of all those counsels which did disserve his Majesty he was an earnest dissuader, and did much to disaffect those sticklers who laboured to make the preroga tive rather tall than great, as knowing such men loved the King better than Charles Stuart; so that, although he was a courtier, and had had for his master a passion most intense, yet had he always a passion reserved for the public welfare, an argument of a free, noble, and right-principled mind." But Whitelock says, he was of no transcendent parts or fame;" and Sir Anthony Weldon, that if his actions had been scanned by a parliament, he had been found as foul a man as ever lived." L'Estrange is more impartial: "His train and suit of followers was disposed agreeably to show both envy and contempt; not like that of Viscount St. Alban's, or the Bishop of Lincoln whom he succeeded, ambitious and vain; his port was state, theirs ostentation. They were indeed the more knowing men, but their learning was extravagant to their office; of what concerned his place he knew enough, and, which is the main, acted according to his knowledge." Fuller observes, with happy ambiguity, "It is hard to say whether his honourable life or seasonable death was the greater favour which God bestowed upon him." His most valuable eulogium is from Clarendon: "He was a man of wonderful gravity and wisdom, and understood not only the whole science and mystery of the law at least equally with any man who had ever sat in that place, but had a clear conception of the whole policy of the government both of church and state, which, by the unskilfulness of some well-meaning men, jostled each other too much. He knew the temper, disposition, and genius of the kingdom most exactly; saw their spirits grow every day more steady, inquisitive, and impatient, and therefore naturally abhorred all innovations, which he foresaw would produce ruinous effects; yet many, who stood at a distance, thought he was not active and stout enough in opposing those innovations. For though by his place he presided in all public councils, and was most sharpsighted in the consequence of things, yet he was seldom known to speak in matters of state, which he well knew were for the most part concluded before they were brought to the public agitation; never in foreign affairs, which the vigour of his judgment could well have comprehended; nor indeed freely in anything, but what immediately and plainly concerned the justice of the kingdom; and in that, as much as he could, he procured references to the

Judges. Though in his nature he had not only a firm gravity, but a severity and even some morosity, yet it was so sharply tempered, and his courtesy and affability towards all men so transcendent and so much without affectation, that it marvellously recommended him to all men of all degrees, and he was looked upon as an excellent courtier without receding from the native simplicity of his own manners. He had, in the plain way of speaking and delivery, without much ornament of elocution, a strange power of making himself believed (the only justifiable design of elocution'), so that though he used very frankly to deny, and would never suffer any man to depart from him with an opinion that he was inclined to gratify when in truth he was not, holding that dissimulation to be the worst of lying, yet the manner of it was so gentle and obliging, and his condescension such to inform the persons whom he could not satisfy, that few departed from him with ill will and ill wishes. But then this happy temper and these good faculties rather preserved him from having many enemies and supplied him with some wellwishers, than furnished him with any fast and unshaken friends, who are always procured in Courts by more ardour and more vehement professions and applications than he would suffer himself to be entangled with. So that he was a man rather exceedingly liked than passionately loved; insomuch that it never appeared that he had any one friend in the Court of quality enough to prevent or divert any disadvantage he might be exposed to. And therefore it is no wonder, nor to be imputed to him, that he retired within himself as much as he could, and stood upon his defence without making desperate sallies against growing mischiefs, which he knew well he had no power to hinder, and which might probably begin in his own ruin. To conclude, his security consisted very much in his having but little credit with the King; and he died in a season most opportune, in which a wise man would have prayed to have finished his course, and which in truth crowned his other signal prosperity in the world." But under this blaze of eager commendation, it is easy to discover the features of a character wary, selfish, unprincipled, reckless, plausible, of refined hypocrisy, desirous of preserving the decencies of life, but sincerely anxious about nothing beyond his own ease and advantage,-which by his sagacity and

z This is like the well-known observation, that "speech is given to man to enable him to conceal his thoughts."

A.D. 1628.

HIS CHARACTER.

239

adaptation to the times he cultivated so successfully, that he continued comfortably till death in an office the tenure of which was so precarious that no man died in it for many years before or after him.

As a politician he must ever be held mainly responsible for all the troubles arising from the collision between prerogative and law which he brought about. He was checked for a time by Montagu, who had been Chief Justice of the King's Bench, and was afterwards Lord Treasurer and President of the Council; but during nearly the greatest portion of the sixteen years he held the Great Seal, he was the only adviser of the government on legal and constitutional questions; and if he did not originate, he is nearly equally culpable for not having strenuously opposed the many fatal measures brought forward during the interval of parliaments, and for having abetted the scheme of subverting the ancient liberties of his country. Lord Clarendon represents that Coventry gave good advice in the Cabinet; and "perplexed the designs and councils of the Court with inconvenient objections in law." But I look to his language in public, and to his acts,-which we authentically know, and which would only acquire a deeper hue of atrocity if they were in opposition to his strong conviction and earnest remonstrances.

A.D. 1628.

He was named in a commission which he drew, and to which he affixed the Great Seal, "to concert the means of levying money by impositions or otherwise -form and circumstance to be dispensed with, rather than the substance be lost or hazarded." In the Star Chamber, “although the Archbishop of Canterbury was higher in rank, and all the Councillors and Judges who were summoned to attend had an equal voice, yet the Lord Keeper was specially appointed by his patent to hear, examine, and determine all causes, matters, and suits in that Court; and he was in reality the President. He is answerable, therefore, for those sentences of frightful and unprecedented cruelty which brought proverbial odium upon that tribunal, and within a year after his death led to its abolition, amidst the universal execrations of the people.

I ought not, however, to omit a story thus told to his credit by Sir Anthony Weldon, which, however improbable it may be, I have no means of contradicting: "Buckingham is grown now so exorbitant, he aspires to get higher titles both in honour and place as Prince of Tipperary and Lord High Con