As soon as the House rose he set about gaining further information, 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. 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 gifts.† 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 Hobart should succeed him. But this great lawyer, either disinterested and sincere, or preferring to continue his repose on "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." conspiracy, was famous for having a great number of spies and informers in his employment, 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. *Hardwicke Papers, vol, i. 460. † 1 Parl. Hist. 149. So he seems always to have been called while he held the Great Seal, as if he had been a layman. Hacket. "After In the following spring James was attacked by the ague, which in spite of the adage with which the courtiers tried to comfort him*, carried him to the grave. The account of the closing scene by Hacket is creditable to all the parties he introduces. 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 preachhis 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 seventeenth 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 † Hacket, 223. "An ague in the spring 2 Chron. ix. 29-31. § He printed the sermon under the title, "Great Britain's Solomon." 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 during the session of 1621, that in the time of Henry VI. no more than four hundred subpœnas issued one year with another out of the Chancery, whereas in the reign of James I. the number was not less. than thirty-five thousand.|| CHAPTER LIX. CONTINUATION OF LIFE OF LORD KEEPER WILLIAMS TILL HIS AP» POINTMENT AS ARCHBISHOP OF YORK. CHARLES having returned from Theobald's the evening of his father's death, next morning sent for the Lord [MARCH 27, 1625.] Keeper to St. James, continued him in his of * 21 Jac. 1. c. 3. † 21 Jac. 1. c. 16. Toth. 286. Allen v. Macpherson, Dom. Proc. 1845. § Toth. 233. See Barr, on Stat. 404, 405. fice of Lord Keeper, employed him to swear in the Privy Councillors, and desired him to prepare two sermons, one for the funeral of the late King, and another for the coming coronation.* But Williams soon saw that his downfall was at hand, and before the coronation of Charles it was accomplished. The power of Buckingham was now, if possible, greater than it had been in the late reign, and he resolved to have a new Lord Keeper. He therefore took every opportunity of slighting and trying to disgust the present holder of the Seal, with a view to induce him to resign it; for it was then a very unusual thing forcibly to turn a man out of an office which he held, even during pleasure, without a charge of misconduct being judicially substantiated against him. The cour tiers were quick-sighted enough to anticipate William's disgrace. Laud, as soon as he saw that his advancer was under the anger of the Duke, would never acknowledge him more, but shunned him as the old Romans in their superstitions walked aloof from that soil which was blasted with thunder." However, as cold looks and rebuffs were preferred to voluntary resignation, it was necessary to wait till a decent pretext could be found for the change, particularly after the éclat which the funeral sermon on the late King had conferred upon the preacher. Some thought that he would have objected to a proclamation for suspending the penal laws against Papists, but he put the Great Seal to it without remonstrance. So impatient was Charles to have a supply, and so unconscious of what he was to suffer from popular assemblies, that he wished to continue the sitting of the last [A. D. 1625.] parliament, but he was told by the Lord Keeper that it was ipso facto dissolved by his father's death. A new parliament summoned by him met on the 18th of June. Prayers were said in the presence of both Houses, while the King uncovered, knelt at the throne. He then deliyered a short speech, which has the appearance of being his own extempore composition. But a laboured oration followed from the Lord Keeper, urging a supply from the state of affairs in the Palatinate, in the Low Countries, and in Ireland, and inculcating loyalty on the maxim amor civium regis munimentum.” There was much greater inclination in the Commons to inquire into grievances than to grant liberal supplies; and the plague breaking out in London,-at a council called to consider what ought to be done, a prorogation was proposed to Oxford, where it was thought the malcontents might be more manageable. This *On this occasion the Seal was surrendered to Charles and delivered back by him to Williams as Lord Keeper, and a formal letter was written to him in the name of the new King, desiring him to use the old Seal till the new Seal was engraved.-Rot. Pat. 1 Car. n. 13. † Hacket, part ii. 23. He begins by thanking God that the business to be treated required no eloquence to set it forth; "for," says he, “I am neither able to do it, nor doth it stand with my nature to spend much time in words." was strongly opposed by the Lord Keeper, who urged that when they came together there, they would vote out of discontent and displeasure, and that his Majesty was ill-counselled to give offence in the bud of his reign,- quæ nulli magis evitandæ sunt quam juveni et principi, cujus gratia cum ætate debet adolescere." Buckingham grinned at him while he spoke. At Oxford the Commons were more refractory, and the attempt ended in an abrupt dissolution.* The Lord Keeper was now most unjustly accused by Buckingham of having intrigued with Sir Edward Coke and the popular leaders, and stirred them up to oppose the Court; and, to justify himself, he drew up and privately put into the King's hand a paper entitled-" Reasons to satisfy your most excellent Majesty concerning my carriage all this last parliament." This made a favourable impression on the King, and the young Queen Henrietta was disposed to protect him,-pleased by his forbearance to the Roman Catholics, and by a speech he had addressed to her in French, when he presented the Bishops to her on her arrival in England. But Buckingham was not to be diverted from his purpose. He revived the charge of intriguing with the discontented parliamentary leader at Oxford, and he reminded the King that when Williams was first made Lord Keeper, he himself had proposed the rule that" the Great Seal ought never to be held by the same person more than three years." Charles yielded; and Lord Conway, deputed by him, came to the Lord Keeper's lodgings at Salisbury, and said "that his Majesty understanding that his father, is with God, had taken a resolution that the Keepers of the Great Seal of England should continue but from three years to three years, and approving very well thereof and resolved to observe the order during his own reign, he expects that you should surrender up the Seal by All Hallowtide next,―alleging no other cause thereof,—and withal, that having so done, you should retire yourself to your bishopric of Lincoln." Williams respectfully professed his submission to the royal mandate, thanking God that the Seal was not demanded on any other ground. He said the late King had continued it to him after the expiration of the three years, and the present King had restored it to him without condition or limitation of time,-" yet it is his Majesty's, and I will be ready to deliver it up to any man that his Majesty shall send with his warrant to require it." He strongly remonstrated against the order that he should be restrained to his diocese, or any place else. Lord Conway tried to soothe him by saying, "he understood this was merely meant, that he should not, after parting with the Seal, be obliged to attend the council-table, but that he should be free to go to his bishopric." The Lord Keeper afterwards addressed a valedictory epistle to the King, and had an audience of leave preparatory to his formal * 2 Parl. Hist. 36. |