myself saw, and had for some time in my possession. Sir Everard Digby died for being of the conspiracy; he was the father of the famous sir Kenelm Digby. The family being ruined upon the death of sir Kenelm's son, when the executors were looking out for writings to make out the titles of the estates they were to sell, they were directed by an old servant to a cupboard that was very artificially hid, in which some papers lay that she had observed sir Kenelm was oft reading. They looking into it, found a velvet bag, within which there were two other silk bags, (so carefully were those relics kept), and there was within these a collection of all the letters that sir Everard wrote during his imprisonment. In these he expresses great trouble because he heard some of their friends blamed their undertaking; he highly magnifies it, and says if he had many lives he would willingly have sacrificed them all in carrying it on. In one paper he says, they had taken that care that there were not above two or three worth saving, to whom they had not given notice to keep out of the way; and in none of those papers does he express any sort of remorse for that which he had been engaged in, and for which he suffered. Upon the discovery of that plot there was a general prosecution of all papists set on foot : but king James was very uneasy at it which was much increased by what sir Dudly Carlton told him upon his return from Spain, where he had been ambassador; (which I had from the lord Hollis, who said to me that sir Dudly Carlton told it to himself, and was much troubled when he saw it had an effect contrary to what he had intended.) When he came home, he found the king at Theobald's hunting in a very careless and unguarded manner: and upon that, in order to the putting him on a more careful looking to himself, he told the king he must either give over that way of hunting, or stop another hunting that he was engaged in, which was priest hunting: for he had intelligence in Spain that the priests were comforting themselves with this, that if he went on against them they would soon get rid of him: queen Elizabeth was a woman of form, and was always so well attended, that all their plots against her failed, and were never brought to any effect: but a prince who was always in woods or forests would be easily overtaken. The king sent for him in private to inquire more particularly into this: and he saw it had made a great impression on him: but wrought otherwise than he intended. For the king, who resolved to gratify his humour in hunting, and in a careless and irregular way of life, did immediately order all that prosecution to be let fall. I have the minutes of the council books of the year 1606, which are full of orders to discharge and transport priests, sometimes ten in a day. From thence to his dying day he continued always writing and talking against popery, but acting for it. He married his only daughter to a protestant prince, one of the most zealous and sincere of them all, the elector palatine; upon which a great revolution happened in the affairs of Germany. The eldest branch of the house of Austria retained some of the impressions that their father Maximilian II. studied to infuse into them, who as he was certainly one of the best and wisest princes of these latter ages, so he was unalterably fixed in his opinion against persecution for matters of conscience: his own sentiments were so very favourable to the protestant doctrine, that he was thought inwardly theirs. His brother Charles of Gratz was on the other hand wholly managed by the jesuits, and was a zealous patron of theirs, and as zealously supported by them. Rodolph and Matthias reigned one after another, but without issue. Their brother Albert was then dying in Flanders: so Spain with the popish interest joined to advance Ferdinand, the son of Charles of Gratz: and he forced Matthias, to resign the crown of Bohemia to him, and got himself to be elected king. But his government became quickly severe he resolved to extirpate the protestants, and began to break through the privileges that were secured to them by the laws of that kingdom. This occasioned a general insurrection, which was followed by an assembly of the States, who together with those of Silesia, Moravia and Lusatia joined in deposing Ferdinand: and they offered their crown, first to the duke of Saxony who refused it, and then to the elector palatine who accepted of it, being encouraged to it by his two uncles, Maurice, prince of Orange and the duke of Bouillon. But he did not ask the advice of king James: he only gave him notice of it when he had accepted the offer. Here was the most probable occasion that has been offered since the reformation for its full establishment. The English nation was much inclined to support it: and it was expected that so near a conjunction might have prevailed on the king: but he had an invincible aversion to war: and was so possessed of the opinion of a divine right in all kings, that he could not bear that even an elective and limited king should be called in question by his subjects: so he would never acknowledge his son-in-law king, nor give him any assistance for the support of his new dignity. And though it was also reckoned on, that France would enter into any design that should bring down the house of Austria, and Spain by consequence, yet even that was diverted by the means of De Luynes; a worthless but absolute favourite, whom the archduchess Isabella, princess of the Spanish Netherlands gained, to oblige the king into a neutrality by giving him the richest heiress then in Flanders, the daughter of Peguiney, left to her disposal, whom he married to his brother. : * Thus poor Frederick was left without any assistance. The jealousy that the Lutherans had of the ascendant that the Calvinists might gain by this accession had an unhappy share in the coldness which all the princes of that confession shewed towards him; though Saxony only declared for Ferdinand, who likewise engaged the duke of Bavaria at the head of a catholic league to maintain his interests. Maurice prince of Orange had embroiled Holland by the espousing the controversy about the decrees of God, in opposition to the Arminian party, and by erecting a new and illegal court by the authority of the States general to judge of the affairs of the province of Holland; which was plainly contrary to their constitution, by which every province is a sovereignty within itself, not at all subordinate to the States general, who act only as plenipotentiaries of the several provinces to maintain their union and their common concerns. By that assembly Barnevelt was condemned and executed : Grotius and others were condemned to perpetual imprisonment and an assembly of the ministers of the several provinces met at Dort by the same authority, and condemned and deprived the Arminians. Maurice's enemies gave it out that he managed all this on design to make himself master of the provinces, and to put those who were like to oppose him out of the way. But though this seems a wild and groundless imagination, and not possible to be compassed, yet it is certain that he looked on Barnevelt and his party as men who were so jealous of him and of a military power, that as they had forced the truce with Spain, so they would be very unwilling to begin a new war; though the disputes about Juliers and Cleves had almost engaged them, and the truce was now near expiring; at the end of which he hoped, if delivered from the opposition that he might look for from that party, to begin the war anew. By these means there was a great fermentation over all the provinces, so that Maurice was not then in condition to give the elected king any considerable assistance; though indeed he needed it much, for his conduct was very weak. He affected the grandeur of a regal court, and the magnificence of a crowned head too early: and his queen set up some of the gay diversions that she had been accustomed to in her father's court, such as balls and masks, which very much disgusted the good Bohemians, who thought that a revolution made on the account of religion ought to have put on a greater appearance of seriousness and simplicity. These particulars I had from the children of some who belonged to that court. The elected king was quickly overthrown, and driven, not only out of those his new dominions, but likewise out of his hereditary countries: he fled to Holland, where he ended his days. I will go no farther in a matter so well known as king James's ill conduct, in the whole series of that war, and that unheard of practice of sending his only son through France into Spain, of which the relations we have are so full that I can add nothing to them. I will only here tell some particulars with relation to Germany, that Fabricius, the wisest divine I knew among them, told me he had from Charles Lewis the elector palatine's own mouth. He said, Frederick II. who first reformed the palatinate, whose life is so curiously written by Thomas Hubert of Liege, resolved to shake off popery, and to set up Lutheranism in his country. But a counsellor of his said to him, that the Lutherans would always depend chiefly on the house of Saxony; so it would not become him who was the first elector to be only the second in the party: it was more for his dignity to become a Calvinist he would be the head of that party: it would give him a great interest in Switzerland, and make the huguenots of France and in the Netherlands depend on him. He was by that determined * It is plain here must be meant by king the king of Fiance. to declare for the Helvetian confession. But upon the ruin of his family the duke of Newburgh had an interview with the elector of Brandenburgh about their concerns in Juliers and Cleves and he persuaded that elector to turn Calvinist; for since their family was fallen, nothing would more contribute to raise the other than the espousing that side, which would naturally come under his protection: but he added, that for himself he had turned papist since his little principality lay so near both Austria and Bavaria. This that elector told with a sort of pleasure, when he made it appear that other princes had no more sense of religion than he himself had. Other circumstances concurred to make king James's reign inglorious. The States having borrowed great sums of money of queen Elizabeth, they gave her the Brill and Flushing, with some other places of less note, in pawn till the money should be repaid. Soon after his coming to the crown of England he entered into secret treaties witli Spain, in order to the forcing the States to a peace: one article was, that if they were obstinate he would deliver these places to the Spaniards. When the truce was made, Barnevelt, though he had promoted it, yet knowing the secret article, he saw they were very unsafe while the keys of Holland and Zealand were in the hands of a prince, who might perhaps sell them, or make an ill use of them so he persuaded the States to redeem the mortgage by repaying the money that England had lent, for which these places were put into their hands: and he came over himself to treat about it. King James, who was profuse upon his favourites and servants, was delighted with the prospect of so much money; and immediately, without calling a parliament to advise with them about it, he did yield to the proposition. So the money was paid, and the places were evacuated. But his profuseness drew two other things upon him, which broke the whole authority of the crown, and the dependence of the nation upon it. The crown had a great estate over all England, which was all let out upon leases for years, and a small rent was reserved. So most of the great families of the nation were the tenants of the crown, and a great many boroughs were depending on the estates so held. The renewal of these leases brought in fines to the crown, and to the great officers: besides that the fear of being denied a renewal kept all in a dependence on the crown. King James obtained of his parliament a power of granting, that is selling, those estates for ever, with the reserve of the old quit-rent: and all the money raised by this was profusely squandered away. Another main part of the regal authority was the wards, which anciently the crown took into its own management. Our kings were, according to the first institution, the guardians of the wards. They bred them up in their courts, and disposed of them in marriage as they thought fit. Afterwards they compounded, or forgave them, or gave them to some branches of the family, or to provide for the younger children. But they proceeded in this very gently and the chief care after the reformation was to breed the wards protestants. Still all were under a great dependence by this means. Much money was not raised this way; but families were often at mercy, and were used according to their behaviour. King James granted these generally to his servants and favourites; and they made the most of them. So that what was before a dependence on the crown, and was moderately compounded for, became then a most exacting oppression, by which several families were ruined. This went on in king Charles's time in the same method. Our kings thought they gave little when they disposed of a ward, because they made little of them. All this raised such an outcry, that Mr. Pierpoint at the restoration gathered so many instances of these, and represented them so effectually to that house of commons that called home king Charles the second, that he persuaded them to redeem themselves by an offer of excise, which indeed produces a much greater revenue, but took away the dependence in which all families were held by the dread of leaving their heirs exposed to so great a danger. Pierpoint valued himself to me upon this service he did his country, at a time when things were so little considered on either hand, that the court did not seem to apprehend the value of what they parted with, nor the country of what they purchased *. Mr. Pierpoint scems to have arrogated too much to himself, when he considered he was the means of obtaining the abolition of the Court of Wards. From the ournals of the house of commons, it appears his part of : the transaction was only that of a general supporter of the abolition. He was not even the originator of the proposition that the revenue to the crown in exchange for it should be secured by an excise duty upon ale, &c. Sir Besides these public actings king James suffered much in the opinion of all people by his strange way of using one of the greatest men of that age, sir Walter Raleigh; against whom the proceedings were at first much censured, but the last part of them was thought both barbarous and illegal. The whole business of the earl of Somerset's rise and fall, of the countess of Essex and Overbury, the putting the inferior persons to death for that infamous poisoning, and the sparing the principals, both the earl of Somerset and his lady, were so odious and inhuman, that it quite sunk the reputation of a reign, that on many other accounts was already much exposed to contempt and censure; which was the more sensible, because it succeeded such a glorious and happy one. King James in the end of his reign was become weary of the duke of Buckingham, who treated him with such an air of insolent contempt, that he seemed at last resolved to throw him off, he could not think of taking the load of government on himself, and so resolved to bring the earl of Somerset again into favour, as that lord reported it to some from whom I had it. He met with him in the night in the gardens at Theobalds; two bed-chamber men were only in the secret: the king embraced him tenderly and with many tears: the earl of Somerset believed the secret was not well kept; for soon after the king was taken ill with some fits of an ague and died of it. My father was then in London, and did very much suspect an ill practice in the matter; but perhaps doctor Craig, my mother's uncle, who was one of the king's physicians, possessed him with these apprehensions; for he was disgraced for saying he believed that the king was poisoned *. It is certain no king could die less lamented or less esteemed than he was. This sunk the credit of the bishops of Scotland, who as they were his creatures, so they were obliged to a great dependence on him, and were thought guilty of gross and abject flattery towards him. His reign in England was a continued course of mean practices. The first condemnation of sir Walter Raleigh was very black; but the executing him after so many years, and after an employment that had been given him, was counted a barbarous sacrificing him to the Spaniards. The rise and fall of the earl of Somerset, and the swift progress of the duke of Buckingham's greatness, were things that exposed him to the censure of all the world. I have seen the originals of about twenty letters he wrote to the prince and that duke while they were in Spain, which shew a meanness as well as a fondness that render him very contemptible +. The great figure the crown of England had made in queen Elizabeth's time, who had rendered herself the arbiter of christendom, and was the wonder of the age, was so much eclipsed, if not quite darkened during this reign, that king James was become the scorn of the age; and while hungry writers flattered him out of all measure at home, he was despised by all abroad as a pedant without true judgment, courage, or steadiness, subject to his favourites, and delivered up to the counsels or rather the corruption of Spain. "We Henry Cholmley proposed the abolition, (Nov. 19, 1660) and Sir Samuel Jones moved that the recompensing revenue be raised by the excise. The grievance had been long felt, and as early as 1620 the abolition had been proposed, though without success. Sir Edward Coke, after detailing the proposition and its failure, adds, thought good to remember this, hoping (hope is the dream of a waking man) that so good a motion will some time (by the grace of God) by authority of parliament, one way or other take effect and be established." (4th Institute, 203.) His hope was accomplished during the interregnum, and even before, in the year 1645, during the contest between Charles and the parliament, These being considered illegal transactions, the act introduced by sir H. Cholmley, (12 Car. 2, c. 24,) completed the abolition. A curious tract was published in 1642, entitled "Strange Apparitions, &c.," pretending to be a conversation between the ghosts of king James, the duke of Buckingham, the marquis of Hamilton, and Dr. George Eglisham, the king's physician. In this the duke is openly charged with murdering the king, and that Dr. Eglisham had accused him of the crime to king Charles and the parliament, but was, in consequence, obliged to fly into Holland, where he was murdered. He charged the duke and his mother with giving the king a white Many of these addressed to "Baby Charles," and his "Dog Steenie," are among the MSS. in the British Museum. The following note to the king will be sufficient to show the ridiculous familiarity they practised towards each other : : The puritans gained credit, as the king and the bishops lost it. They put on external appearances of great strictness and gravity: they took more pains in their parishes than those who adhered to the bishops, and were often preaching against the vices of the court; for which they were sometimes punished, though very gently, which raised their reputation, and drew presents to them that made up their sufferings abundantly. They begun some particular methods of getting their people to meet privately with them and in these meetings they gave great vent to extemporary prayer, which was looked on as a sort of inspiration: and by these means they grew very popular. They were very factious and insolent; and both in their sermons and prayers were always mixing severe reflections on their enemies. Some of them boldly gave out very many predictions; particularly two of them who were held prophets, Davison and Bruce. Some of the things that they foretold came to pass: but my father, who knew them both, told me of many of their predictions, that he himself heard them throw out, which had no effect but all these were forgotten, and if some more probable guessings which they delivered as prophecies were accomplished, these were much magnified. They were very spiteful against all those who differed from them; and were wanting in no methods that could procure them either good usage, or good presents. Of this my father had great occasion to see many instances: for my great grand-mother, who was a very rich woman, and much engaged to them, was most obsequiously courted by them. Bruce lived concealed in her house for some years; and they all found such advantages in their submissions to her, that she was counted for many years the chief support of the party; her name was Rachel Arnot. She was daughter to sir John Arnot, a man in great favour, and lord treasurer's deputy. Her husband, Johnston, was the greatest merchant at that time; and left her an estate of 2000 pounds a year, to be disposed of among his children as she pleased and my father marrying her eldest grand-child, saw a great way into all the methods of the puritans. Gowry's conspiracy was by them charged on the king, as a contrivance of his to get rid of that earl, who was then held in great esteem; but my father, who had taken great pains to inquire into all the particulars of that matter, did always believe it was a real conspiracy. One thing, which none of the historians have taken any notice of, and might have induced the earl of Gowry to have wished to put king James out of the way, but in such a disguised manner that he should seem rather to have escaped out of a snare himself than to have laid one for the king, was this: upon the king's death he stood next to the succession to the crown of England; for king Henry the seventh's daughter that was married to king James the fourth did after his death marry Douglas, earl of Angus: but they could not agree so a pre-contract was proved against him: upon which, by a sentence from Rome, the marriage was voided, with a clause in favour of the issue since born under a marriage de facto and bona fide. Lady Margaret Douglas was the child so provided for. I did peruse the original bull confirming the divorce. After that the queen dowager married one Francis Steward, and had by him a son, made lord Methuen by king James the fifth. In the patent he is called Frater noster uterinus. He had only a daughter, who was mother, or grandmother, to the earl of Gowry: so that by this he might be glad to put the king out of the way, so that he might stand next to the succession of the crown of England. He had a brother then a child, who when he grew up and found he could not carry the name of Ruthven, which, by an act of parliament made after this conspiracy, none might carry, he went and lived beyond sea; and it was given out that he had the philosopher's stone. He had two sons who died without issue, and one daughter married to sir Anthony Vandyke, the famous picture drawer, whose children, according to his pedigree, stood very "DEAR DAD AND GOSSIP, "The chiefest advertisement of all we omitted in our other letter, which was to let you know how we like your daughter, his wife, and my lady mistress. Without flattery, I think there is not a sweeter creature in the world. Baby Charles himself, is so touched at the heart, that he confesses all he ever yet saw is nothing to her, and swears that if he want her, there shall be blows. I shall lose no time in hastening the conjunction, in which I shall please him, her, you, and myself most of all, in thereby getting liberty to make the speedier haste to lay myself at |