Rebellion: The History of England from James I to the Glorious Revolution by Peter Ackroyd Read Free Book Online Page A

years of his reign she had enjoyed all the comforts and considerations of the court. She had even been considered as a replacement for James himself, by Raleigh and others, but she had taken no part in the plot. It was still of the utmost importance that she married wisely and well. At the beginning of 1610, however, she came to a pre-contractual arrangement with William Seymour, who by indirect and circuitous route had some small claim to the throne. This always aroused the horror of princes.
    The couple agreed to renounce their plans but, in June, they took part in a secret ceremony of marriage at Greenwich. On hearing the news, the king raged. Seymour was instantly confined to the Tower while Arabella was taken to Lambeth before it was decided to send her further north to Durham. En route, at Barnet, she planned her escape. She disguised herself, according to a contemporary chronicler, John More, ‘by drawing a pair of great French-fashioned hose over her petticoats, putting on a man’s doublet, a man-like peruke, with long locks over her hair, a black hat, black cloak, russet boots, with red tops, and a rapier by her side’. She took ship for France at Leigh, but was overtaken by a vessel sent from Dover to arrest her. She was escorted to the Tower, where her reason gave way under the oppression of her trials, and she died insane four years later. It is a sad story of the perils and perfidies that attended anyone of high estate.
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    When a new session of parliament opened in the autumn of the year it was clear to everyone that Salisbury’s idea of a ‘great contract’ between the king’s necessities and the country’s generosity was not to be obtained by any means. The Commons abandoned discussions on the matter by 8 November, with repeated animadversions against ‘favourites’ and ‘wanton courtiers’. The Scots were also attacked as men with open mouths. The king was in a fury, and told the privy council that ‘no house save the house of hell’ could match the House of Commons. He went on to say that ‘our fame and actions have been daily tossed like tennis balls amongst them’. He was inclined to blame Salisbury for putting too much trust in a parliament which he dubbed ‘this rotten reed of Egypt’; he continued in biblical mode when he told him that ‘your greatest error hath been that you ever expected to draw honey out of gall’. He adjourned and then dissolved parliament within a matter of weeks.
    The economic woes of the king were not all of his own making. The fiscal system of England had to a large extent been formulated in the fourteenth century, and it could not deal with the problems attendant upon the seventeenth century. It simply did not work, especially in times of warfare, and all manner of fiscal expedients had to be found. Thus in the spring of the following year James offered to sell hereditary titles to any knights or esquires who desired them. The title of baronet could be purchased for £1,080 in three annual payments, but the overall gain to the exchequer of approximately £90,000 was not enough to balance the profusion of the king’s expenditure. Peerages were put on the market four years later. When in 1616 Sir John Roper made over the sum of £10,000 to become Lord Teynham, he was given the nickname of Lord 10m. A seventeenth-century historian, Arthur Wilson, remarked that the multiplicity of titles ‘made them cheap and invalid in the vulgar opinion; for nothing is more destructive to monarchy than lessening the nobility; upon their decline the commons rise and anarchy increases’.
    The king had another scheme to raise money. It was proposed to him that his oldest son might be pleased to accept the hand of the Infanta Maria Anna, daughter of Philip III of Spain; at once James sent one of his envoys to Madrid. Robin Goodfellow in Ben Jonson’s Love Restored , performed at court on Twelfth Night 1612, complained ‘’tis that impostor, PLUTUS , the god