BOOKS.
GARDINER'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND.*
BACON, in one of his "Essays," mentions a prophecy common in his childhood, whilst "Elizabeth was yet in the flower of her years," "When Hempe is spun
England is done."
These lines did not merely express the obvious truism that when the great staple of English manufacture was exhausted England would come to an end, but the letters forming the word Hempe re- ferred, ingeniously enough, to the initials of the Tudor Sovereigns, Henry VIII., Edward VI., Mary and Philip, and Elizabeth. The prophecy, therefore, implied that when they had passed away England should be no more ; "which, thanks be to God," says Bacon, "is verified in the change of the name ; for the King's style is no more of England, but of Britain." It does not generally happen that popular utterances of this kind contain beneath the envelope of their ingenuity so much truth as the one in question. Bacon was willing to persuade himself that it was adequately fulfilled in the change of the King's style ; that the adoption by James I. of "King of Great Britain," instead of the old Tudor appellation, "King of England," disarmed the prophecy of its Nemesis. It is curious to observe with what a hearty "thanks be to God" he relieves his mind of the apprehension this oracle had caused him. He is of opinion that such things should only "serve for winter-talk by the fire-side," and ought to be despised, Yet the immortality he gave it by transplanting it into his "Essays," the care he takes to inform his readers that "it was of certain credit," does not look as if he despised it more than did his contemporaries. Men talked of it as if there had been a mysterious truth couched beneath it, which appealed to con- victions within them they were very unwilling to sea presented in this external and definite shape ; and in spite of the severity of the laws against prophecies it obtained " grace " and circulation.
In fact, any man comparing the reign of James I. with that of his predecessor, could scarcely-help feeling that this oracular tradition spoke a truth not fully exhausted by the change of the regal style. When be looked through the land, and watched the measures, motives, thoughts, and conduct of those who ruled it, he must have felt that the England of the Tudors had passed away. It was not merely that a bra' Scotchman, the son of Mary Queen of Scots, was now sitting on the throne of Elizabeth; it was not merely that Scotchmen swarmed in and about the Court, to the displacement of the English gently and nobility; not merely that that Court presented an appearance totally dif- ferent from the royal decorum, stateliness, and severity of a Tudor Sovereign ; but somehow, a change had come over the whole land. That exchange of an English for a Stuart ruler had made itself felt through all the vital functions of the nation ; had altered the tincture of its blood ; had introduced, for good or evil, new influences which must introduce a new organization.
„ History of England from the deee-ssims of James 1". to the Dirgrace of Chief Justice Tao. By Samuel Rawson Gardiner. Hurst and Blackett. 1805.
He could feel it, though he could not exactly define it ; he could not tell up to what results it might ultimately lead, but he knew it was not that by which England had grown great and glorious under the Tudors. We are not describing a merely imaginary state of things ; we could appeal to many passages in the two careful and thoughtful volumes, which Mr. Gardiner has placed
before us, in confirmation of these observations. We think that he has not always kept so steadily in view, as he might have done, this uncertainty not unmixed with apprehension, this im- possibility of realizing their new position, this drifting, as it were, into new and unknown regions of a great national existence, which deeply possessed the minds of Englishmen at the commence- ment of the Stuart era. It is, however, the key, we believe, to much which otherwise seems inconsistent and incomprehensible in the conduct of men, whom we have a right to reckon among the greatest of English worthies. As with the dramatis personw in Shakespeare's "Hamlet," a darkness settles down upon the commencement of the play which is never fully withdrawn. It is not only an emblem, but, in part, a cause, of that moral darkness and confusion which prevail throughout ; and in this state men can never come to a full understanding of themselves, or of
things about them. •
It is that moral confusion in the reign of the first Stuart that Mr. Gardiner has brought out ; the more vividly, to our notions, because often the more unconsciously. He does not start with any theory about the subject—so much the better. He finds it, and it disturbs his equanimity—it interferes with his admiration of noble characters, and he would gladly get rid of it. His instinct is to explain it away ; to find some theory and some reasonable in- terpretation about it. He is much too honest, too able, too careful, and too conscientious a writer to turn his face from the truth, and pervert it wilfully. He has too serious a conviction of the value and importance of historic reality to palm off upon his readers ideas for facts, or aim at a short-lived popularity by some bright and visionary paradox. But when he meets with instances of meanness equivocation, and indirectness in men, whom he had evidently pre- pared himself to admire, it is strange to see how troubled he is; how ingenious are his attempts to blunt the force of that evidence which, in spite of himself, he is obliged to give in against them. His in- stincts are continuallyprompting him to fall down and kiss the feet of his heroes; and he is only held back from so doing by his thorough conscientiousness as an historian. When ignoble men do ignoble actions, Mr. Gardiner feels no difficulty in admitting their enormity. He can point out the dangers and immorality of equivocation, when Garnet and Peacham, in dread of the rack, deny what they know to be true, or daily with the direct and obvious meanings of words. But it is otherwise when he finds similar instances of bad faith and crooked policy in Salisbury, Raleigh, and Bacon. He has stumbled on undeniable evidence that Salisbury sold the secrets of his office to Spain, for a pension of 6,000 crowns a year. He has good reason for thinking that the same minister supplemented this act of baseness,—we can call it by no milder a term,—by a similar bargain with the French Government. (i. 12241.) That is, the prime minister of James I., the son of Lord Burghley, not a needy man, but possessing, as Mr. Gardiner admits, " a considerable fortune," sells those secrets of which he is master, through the implicit confidence of his sove- reign, to the enemy of his country ; and then is guilty of the double dishonesty of selling them again to France, the enemy of both. Gladly would Mr. Gardiner produce evidence to rebut this charge. But he finds none. He has, however, an explanation to offer, which seems to us the most ingenious, if not the most suc- cessful, way of getting rid of it. He supposes that these secrets were quite as much Cecil's as they were his master's, and, there- fore, he had a right to dispose of them to the best bidder—to do that which, even had these secrets been his property, it would have been knavish to do. But then, as if not quite satisfied with the tenability of this hypothesis, he suggests that Cecil took this bribe as a means of worming himself into the secrets of Spain. '' May not Cecil," he asks, " have seen in the offers of the Spanish Government an opportunity of influencing their counsels ? With respect to the money which lie demanded, he may have thought that far more credit was likely to be given him if he.pretended to serve the Spaniards, front purcly mercenary motives, than if he presented himself in the guise of a disin- terested friend of Spain. Nor is it unlikely that he would feel a kind of pleasure in pocketing the gold of which he had thus tricked the enemy of England." (i , 125.) There is an old- fashioned saying which we wish hero-worshippers would remem- ber: "Thou shalt not do evil that good may come." Such apologies as this could hardly impose for a moment upon judg-
merits not warped by prejudice, and not interested in supporting a theory. Mr. Gardiner has shown the same tendency to look away from the facts, and find some other interpretation for them than the obvious and direct one, in the case of Sir Walter Raleigh. (i., 107.) It is certain that Raleigh stated what was not true at his celebrated trial. Mr. Gardiner endeavours to excuse him on the ground that he did so, "lest those accursed lawyers should torture it into the foulest crime." (p. 108.) We cannot enter here on an estimate of Raleigh's character. Mr. Gardiner tells us that he was the most unpopular man in England; that his character for veracity stood as low as Cobham's (p. 106) ; and that Cobham was "a most impudent liar." He further adds that Raleigh was "Cobham's greatest, if not his only friend," and both had been associated for years together in political intrigues. (p. 00.) Strange it is, that such a man as Raleigh found ro friends but the basest among the political parties of the times. His loss of the manor of Sherborn, upon the hardship of which his biographers have so much insisted, Mr. Gardiner shows, by incontestable evidence, was no loss. Raleigh had long been anxious to sell it, and he received for it a fair compensation ; whilst Mr. Gardiner and Raleigh's panegyrists alike forget the discreditable methods employed by Raleigh in obtaining this pro- perty. But we must urge this consideration upon Mr. Gardiner. If equivocation, to escape the rack, was base and ignoble in Garnet and Peacham, how was it otherwise in Raleigh, when "he made statements which he must have known at the time to be untrue" (p. 87), to escape "the accursed lawyers ?" We cannot understand how it is that a thoughtful writer, like Mr. Gardiner, does not see that his theories about the characters of these men are not reconcilable with his facts. Like many other historians of this day, he has brought to his task certain historical gene- ralizations with which the new facts he has been enabled to collect will not harmonize. He has not the courage to throw away his theories or reconstruct them on the broader basis of his discoveries. "There is a subtle evil in science and philosophy," says Bacon ; "our first conclusions infect and determine the place of all subsequent facts and discoveries, though they are more definite and sure." And this is an evil against which Mr. Gar- diner has not always struggled successfully. He has had strength and penetration enough to throw aside the calumnies of Wilson, Weldon, and Coke ; he has resolutely set his foot on those his- torical libels which swarmed in the Commonwealth, and have hitherto been accepted without examination as true pictures of he reign of James I.; he has cleared away much of the dust and rust with which the character of James and his advisers have been overlaid ; but he has not so completely emancipated him- self from modern theories about that reign and the men who flourished in it—theories more pleasing, we admit, than the libels of Wilson and Weldon, but resting sometimes on no better his- torical evidence.
We should have been glad, had our space permitted us, to enter into a more detailed examination of the conduct and character of Lord Bacon, as set down by Mr. Gardiner. He has produced new facts and new documents in reference to the great philosopher and statesman well worthy of careful study. We cannot say they have done much to remove the charges rest- ing on Bacon's memory, or much to modify our estimate of Bacon's political life. We see him here throwing the whole weight of his genius, his eloquence, his activity and ingenuity, into the scale of the prerogative. We see him labouring to defeat, disunite, and intimidate the constitutional opposition of the House of Commons (ii., 142), devising methods for tampering with the judges and keeping them dependent on the Crown. For all this, which we cannot but regard as a blot on Bacon's character, whether as a philosopher, a statesman, or a man, Mr. Gardiner is ready with his theory (ii., 114). It is too long for us to give it in detail. The upshot is this. Bacon considered that all the functions of government were vested in the Crown, and whatever interfered with the prerogative ought to be resisted. To him the supremacy of the House of Commons was the supremacy of the mob. With these views, he felt no difficulty in joining in all the irresponsible acts of James, or in lending the weight of his name, his legal and philosophical acquirements, to the arbitrary and irregular proceedings of that monarch and his favourites. Such conduct, Mr. Gardiner thinks, was a flaw in his theory, not in his morals, He would save Bacon's moral character at the expense of his intellectual. But does it not occur to Mr. Gar- diner, as it certainly will occur to unsophisticated minds, of what value is a grand, penetrating, and capacious intellect, if (the Moral condition of men being the same) its only tendency be, not
to rescue men from the slavery of idols within and without them, but rivet that slavery more deeply ? What is the use of great philosophical powers, if it be to subject the possessor of them to an intellectual blindness from which men of less intellect are free? If so, then "ignorance is bliss," and stupidity is a blessing. We do not know who would be convinced by such reasonings ; certainly it would not be Bacon himself.
Meanwhile, we take our leave of Mr. Gardiner, thanking him much for his able, intelligent, and interesting book. We will not do him the injustice to say it is the best history of the period which it covers ;--it is the only history. We hope that Mr . Gardiner will continue his labours at least to the close of the reign. And when he resumes his pen we beg him to ponder over a much neglected passage in Lord Bacon's" Wisdom of the Ancients," which seems to us —much better than even Mr. Gardiner's clever theory — to explain much of Lord Bacon's political conduct, and the true sympathy between him and his master :—" Governments (he says) are like the sheep-hook of Pau, bent at one extremity ; for in all human rule, provided it be of a scientific kind, they who sit at the helm can more successfully superinduce and insinuate into the people their own wishes, and what is suitable, by dissimulation and by indirect proceedings, than by direct and open ways." In other words, the science of government is incompatible with open and plain dealing. This is James's kingcraft stated in a more ingenious form.
Previous page
