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had been as a lover, and faithful as he continued to be as a husband, he was in all other respects, simply a shrewd man; and not indeed always that. There is little of this quality in a husband who begins and continues his married life with an indifference upon the matter of borrowing. With James it was silver spoons to-day, silk stockings to-morrow, and marks and moidores from any one who would give him credit. The old French knight who drank broth out of his own helmet rather than sip it from a borrowed bowl, was moved at least by a good principle. James rather agréed with Carlo Buffone, in Jonson's "Every Man out of his Humor," that "it is an excellent policy to owe much in these days." A policy which, unfortunately, is still deemed excellent, in spite of the ruin which attends its practice.

The grave chivalry impressed on the face and features of Charles I., is strikingly alluded to by Ben Jonson in his Masque of “The Metamorphosed Gypsies;" for example:

"His brow, his eye, and ev'ry mark of state,

As if he were the issue of each grace,
And bore about him both his fame and fate.

Echard says of him, that he was perfect in all knightly exercises, "vaulting, riding the great horse, running at the ring, shooting with cross-bows, muskets, and sometimes great guns; that if sovereignty had been the reward of excellences in those arts, he would have acquired a new title to the crown, being accounted the most celebrated marksman, and the most perfect manager of the great horse, of any in the three kingdoms."

It was with reference to the expression of the face, alluded to by Jonson, that Bernini the sculptor said, on executing the bust of Charles, that he had never seen any face which showed so much greatness, and withal such marks of sadness and misfortune. The knight, Sir Richard Bulstrode, tells us, that when the bust was being carried across Greenwich Park, it suffered, what Moore calls on another occasion, some "Tobit-like marks of patronage"

from the sparrows. "It was wiped off immediately," says Charles's

good knight" but, notwithstanding all endeavors, it would not be gotten off, but turned into blood." No chevalier in poetic romance meets with more threatening portent than the above.

The Scotch soldiers of fortune, at this period, were as good representatives as could be found of the old knight-errant. To them, Vittorio Siri imputes many of the misfortunes of the period. Some one tells of an old Scottish knight exclaiming, in a year of universal peace, "Lord, turn the world upside-down, that gentlemen may make bread of it." So, for the sake of furthering their trade of arms, the Scottish, and, indeed, other mercenary men-at-arms, fanned the flame. The words of Siri are precise on this point, for he says, "Le Leslie, le Gordoni, le Duglas ed altri milordi della Scotia, del' Inghilterra, e dell' Irlanda."

Never had knights of romance worse fare in the dungeons of morose magicians than they who entered the bloody lists, where was fought out the quarrel between royalty and republicanism. "I heard a great officer say," remarks Blount, "that during the siege of Colchester, he dined at an entertainment, where the greatest delicacies were roast horseflesh."

The warlike spirit was, probably, never stronger than in this reign. It is well illustrated by Hobbes, who remarks that, the Londoners and citizens of other county capitals, who fought against Charles, "had that in them which, in time of battle, is more conducing to victory, than valor and experience both together; and that was spite."

But it is as a lover that Charles I. is chiefly distinguished when we consider him solely to discover his knightly qualities. In his early days he was strongly impressed by romance, and possessed of romantic feelings. This fact is best illustrated by his conduct in connection with the Spanish Match; and to this matter we will devote a brief space, and go back to the time when James was king, and Charles was Prince of Wales.

THE SPANISH MATCH.

THIS unhappy and ill-advised affair, will ever remain one of the darkest blemishes on the uniformly pacific but inglorious reign of the royal pupil of Buchanan;-the whole detail is an ungrateful one of intrigue and ill-faith, and however justly Buckingham may be accused of exerting his baleful influence to dissolve the treaty, and that he did so in the wantonness of his power is now past doubt; the disgrace which should have attached to him, still hangs round the memory of the timid king and his weak yet gallantlydisposed son. I am more inclined to allow a high-mindedness of feeling to Charles than to his father. The king, who supposed the entire art of reigning lay in dissimulation, may not be charged with an over-scrupulous nicety in his observations of the rules of fair dealing; but the young prince, at this period, had the sentiments without the vanity of a knight-errant, his only error was in the constitutional weakness which bent to the arrogance of Buckingham's somewhat stronger mind. With such a disposition, the favorite found it as easy to persuade Charles to break off the match, as he had with facility advised him to the romantic journey

as rash as it was impolitic. It would be almost an unprofitable occupation to search for Buckingham's motives, they are quite unattainable, and, like hunting the hare in a wagon, conjecture might lead us on, but we should, at every step, be farther from our object. It is the received opinion, that the prince's visit was begun in caprice; and with caprice it ended. Buckingham viewed it, perhaps, at first as a mere adventure, and he terminated it, because his wounded pride suggested to him that he was not the favorite actor in the piece. His terms were, "Ego et rex meus," and a less-distinguished station would not satisfy the haughty insolence of Somerset's succession in the precarious favor of the king.

Our British Solomon who willed, but could not restore, the Palatinate to his son-in-law, had long been accustomed to consider the union of Charles with the Infanta, as the only available means left by which he could secure the object he had so much at heart. He was not made of the stern stuff, which in other kings would have set a whole army in motion. That "sagacious simpleton" was never in so turbulent a vein. His most powerful weapon was an ambassador, and the best of these were but sad specimens of diplomacy, and thus, weak as he was, both in the cabinet and field, we may guess at his rapture when the marriage was agreed to by the Court of Spain-the restoration of the Palatinate talked of as a wedding present, and the bride's dowry two millions of eight.

It was at the expiration of five years of negotiation, that James at length saw the end of what had hitherto been an ever-continuing vista. The dispensation of the Pope, an indispensable preliminary to the union of a Most Catholic princess, with a Protestant heirapparent, had been held up as a difficulty; James immediately loosened the reins with which he had held in the Catholic recusants

he set them at liberty, for the good of the reformed religion, he said; then apologized to his subjects for having so set them at liberty-for the benefit of Protestantism; and finally, he exulted in having accomplished so honorable an end for England, as making her the first to enter the path of moderation. He, moreover, sent to Spain, Digby, the good and great Lord Bristol, and while he was negotiating with Philip IV., the Infanta's brother, George Gage, "a polite and prudent gentleman," was employed at Rome to smooth down the obstacles which the zeal of the Fourteenth Gregory raised in behalf of his mother-church. The parties were a long time at issue as to what period the presumed offspring of this marriage should remain under the guardianship of their mother; that is to say, under the Catholic tuition of her confessors. The period of "fourteen years," was suggested by the Pope, and agreed to by the Court of Spain. Now, George Gage, we are told, was both polite and prudent; George made some slight objection. The father of the faithful and the descendant of Roderic now named twelve years as the stipulated period of maternal or ecclesiastical rule. Mr. Gage, without losing sight of his prudence. retained all his civility; he treated the Pope courteously. Greg

ory, in return, granted the dispensation, condescended even to agree to the term of nine years, and merely asked a few privileges for the Catholic suite of the Infanta, which were not hard to grant, and would have been impolitic to refuse. James's advisers counselled him to demand the restitution of the Palatinate by a preliminary treaty. This he wisely refrained from doing; he saw that his desired object was considered inseparable from the marriage, and he was content to trust to the existing treaty which, probably, would not have been changed, had he so expressed his wish. There is a curious item in all these diplomatic relations; beside the public treaty there were various private articles, passed between and signed by the parties concerned, agreeing that more toleration should be granted to the papists, and that more of the penal laws against them should be repealed than was expressed in the public document. There appears also to have existed a yet more private treaty, of even more restricted circulation, whereby James was not to be required to act up to the very letter of that article, by which his royal word pledged what was then considered -emancipation to the Catholics.

Thus far had proceeded this tedious affair of state; the nation was beginning to consider its accomplishment with diminished aversion, and a few months would have brought a Spanish Princess of Wales to England, when all this goodly and fair-wrought edifice was destroyed by the temerity of the man who was the evil spirit of the age. Charles's youth and inexperience readily lent a willing ear to the glowing description which Buckingham recounted of the celebrated journey. His young melancholy was excited into cheerfulness, when he dwelt oa the hoped-for and surprised rapture with which his destined bride would receive a prince whose unusual gallantry spurned at the laws of political interest, and whose chivalric feeling had broken through state negotiation, and, despising to woo by treaty, had brought him to her feet to win her by his merits. His blood warmed at the popularity he would acquire by such a step, from a nation famed for its knightly devotion to the fair, and whose watch-word, according to one of its poets, has ever been, "love and the ladyes." Charles would have been a dull lover, indeed, had he only, like other princes, thought his bride not worth the fetching. He would have been

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