The Spanish Marriage

With Cecil no longer to guide him, James soon found himself in a hopeless tangle, in all that concerned foreign affairs. Notwithstanding its unpopularity in England, he persisted in his plan of marrying his son to the Spanish Infanta, whose dowry he needed to pay his debts. In 1613, as we know, the daughter of James had married Frederick of the Palatinate, who, on the death of his father, became Frederick V and also head of the Protestant Union of Germany. James would naturally be expected to support his son-in-law; but if his son should marry a Spanish princess and circumstances should arise placing Frederick V and Spain on opposite sides in a great struggle, the king of England might find it difficult to know what to do.

It was in this position that James found himself when the Thirty Years' War broke out in 1618. The Bohemians, in whose kingdom the first conflict took place, invited Frederick to be their king; but were he to accept the crown, he would virtually declare war against Austria, who had a hereditary claim to Bohemia, and whose archduke was emperor of the Holy Roman Empire.

SIR WALTER RALEGH.

Frederick applied to his father-in-law; but James, vacillating, could not nerve himself to give a straightforward answer, because he was afraid of the effect of such an answer on Spain. Frederick, trusting in aid from James, accepted the crown. But he was beaten at the White Mountain by the imperial forces in 1620, driven from Bohemia, and then had to see his own state, the Palatinate, invaded by the enemy.

James was compelled to make the restoration of the Palatinate one condition of the Spanish marriage; for it was clear that he could not marry his son to a Spanish princess while the Spaniards were helping the imperial troops to devastate possessions of his son-in-law. Inasmuch as the Spanish on their side were making as their chief condition the restoration of Catholicism in England by royal mandate, it is evident that the chances for the marriage were few.

The negotiations were continued, however, and in 1623 Prince Charles and the duke of Buckingham went to Madrid to complete the marriage treaty. The question was debated in the Spanish Council, where it was decided that to restore the Palatinate was to break with the emperor and could not be done. Charles returned to England unmarried, and James, angry because of the failure of his schemes, at once made new plans. Hoping by means of an alliance with France to recover the Palatinate, he turned from Spain and completely reversed his former policy, by seeking the hand of the French princess, Henrietta Maria, for his son, Prince Charles.

Relations of James with Parliament: Financial Difficulties

During this period James was hopelessly in debt, and, as we have seen, one reason for his friendly attitude toward Spain was the belief that a Spanish dowry would relieve him of some of his troubles. In 1614 he had been compelled to summon a second parliament. But as that body wished to discuss what it considered illegal taxation, impositions, and the like, before granting the king more money, James dismissed it at once. This parliament was called the Addled Parliament, because it did not pass a single measure. In the same year James tried to raise money by benevolences, or forced loans, first from the cities and rich merchants and afterward from the people generally. Many protests were raised against the scheme, and a certain Oliver St. John, a gentleman of Marlborough, refused to make a loan, and charged the king with breaking his coronation oath. St. John was in consequence sentenced to fine and imprisonment, though the sentence afterward was remitted . Inasmuch as the Addled Parliament had passed no measures, James ruled practically without parliament from. 1611 to 1621, and went on extending his expenditures and adding to his debts. He was upheld in his claims of prerogative by the Privy Council, the House of Lords, the bishops, and the courts of law. Chief Justice Coke, who refused to subordinate the independence of the judicial bench to the absolute power of the king, was removed in disgrace from his position, and shortly afterward Francis Bacon, a defender of the royal prerogative, became lord chancellor.

So complicated had foreign relations become by 1621 that James hoped a third parliament, were it called, would support him in his defence of the Palatinate. And at first this body consented to make him a grant of money. But James had no real intention of undertaking war; and thereupon the parliament began to find fault with him. The king reprimanded it Sharply for meddling "with anything concerning government or deep matters of state."' Parliament, in its turn, interpreted this action as an infringement on the right of freedom of speech, and made a vigorous protest, recording in its journal a statement that freedom of speech was a privilege of parliament. Ten days afterward, James, having sent for the journal, tore out the offending page, and then dissolved parliament . These events aroused great excitement in England and led to many expressions of bitterness and discontent. The Protest of 1621 supplemented the Apology of 1604, and both anticipated the struggle which was to be fought out under the successor of James, his less practical and less trustworthy son Charles.

Results of James's Rule

King James died in 1624. His policy had everywhere proved a failure. In his desire for peace and the Spanish alliance he had sacrificed Ralegh, had refused to help his Protestant son-in-law in Germany, and had got into trouble with parliament, only in the end to marry his son to a French princess, and, in 1624, to declare war on Spain. By his views on monarchy and his tenacious adherence to his royal prerogative, he had turned parliament against him; and yet, in the end, had been forced to yield most of the points in dispute. Parliament successfully defended its privileges; secured the right to discuss affairs of state; overthrew monopolies; and, by impeaching Sir Francis Bacon in 1621 for receiving bribes, made good the principle that the ministers of the king ought to be held responsible for their acts. When James died, it was evident that his successor would have to be a conciliatory and tactful man if he were to avoid a conflict with the suspicious and discontented representatives of the people.

Charles I

Charles I was not the man to meet the situation. He was personally more pleasing than James; and the fact that his reign opened with war against Spain made him for the moment popular. But Charles, by descent, was not an Englishman, and he never understood the English law or the English people. Gardiner, the historian of the Stuarts, says, "Born of a Scottish father and a Danish mother, with a grandmother who was half French by birth and altogether French by breeding, with a French wife, with German nephews, and a Dutch son-in-law, Charles had nothing in him in touch with that national feeling which no ruler of England can afford to despise."' Moreover, he had no great statesman to guide him. Buckingham was only a courtier ; and neither he nor the king had the genius to be a leader of a nation. By their lack of statesmanship and ability they destroyed, for the moment, the faith of the people in the kingly office, and provoked a civil war, which, for the time being, checked the commercial and colonial expansion of England, and deprived her of her naval prestige.