The Impeachment of Mary Stuart, sometime Queen of Scots, and other papers historical and biographical

Front matter

i THE IMPEACHMENT OF MARY STUART AND OTHER PAPERS f A__- tvi&iM*, *** i^_, .- /Jcy 4 _ rX_T^^V Mti^^, M~<t* -t A^e^r ti-rs. " /5-_^_. xxxr //. T H F. IMPEACHMENT OF MAPY STUART SOMETIME QUEEN OF SCOTS AXD OTHER PAPERS HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL "IN DEFENCE!" BY JOHN SKELTON ADVOCATE AUTHOR OF ■XVO.E CRITICÆ.' '_ CAMPAIGNER AT ROME: ETC With a Design for a Portrait of Mary Stuart by Sir J. Noel Paton, R.S.A. WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS EDINBURGH AND LONDON MDCCCLXXVI TO SIR J. NOEL PATON, R.S.A., AN ILLUS TRIOUS INTERPRETER OF SCOTTISH SONG AND SHAKESPERIAN ROMANCE, THIS VOL- UME OF APOLOGIES IS INSCRIBED, BY HIS SINCERE FRIEND, THE AUTHOR. THE HERMITAGE OF BRAID, 1st Oct. 1875. CONTENTS. PACE

Part I

— THE POET AND THE STATES- MAN. 1. JOHN DRYDEN, 1 2. HENRY ST JOHN, 65

Part III

— THE SOLDIER AND THE DIVINE. 1. CHARLES JAMES NAPIER, . . .259 2. ROBERT LEE, 305 APPENDIX, I find that •five to Darnbeen used on _ B 11 A T A. 19, line 17, for "other" read " others." „ 54, line 17, for "wrote" read "write." „ 130, line 8, for " scared " read " scarred." „ 164, line 21. " Neither in these inventories," &c. here is one bequest to Bothwell — there being about twenty ey. The matter, however, is of no moment L92, line 81. This expression is alleged to have .nother occasion. Page 2i;j, line IS, for " Begirds " read " Reginœ." "Diyden taught to join The varying verse, the full-resounding line, The long majestic march, and energy divine." Pope : Imitations of Horace. "Dryden in immortal strain Had raised the Table Eound again, But that a ribald King and Court Bade him toil on, to make them sport ; Demanded for their niggard pay, Fit for their souls, a looser lay, Licentious satire, song, and play ; The world defrauded of the high design Profaned the God-given strength, and marr'd the lofty line."

Sik Walter Scott : Introduction to Marmion. JOHN DRYDEN stands in the foremost rank of English satirists. He is the most forcible and masculine of English poets. For sheer downright intellectual strength we must seek his fellow among the great philosophers and divines, — not among poets. His justice of judgment, variety of faculty, felicity of diction, splen dour of invective, have rarely been matched. It is true that the finer and more delicate forms of the imagination did not visit him ; his keen, observant eye failed to detect their difficult beauty ; his ear was deaf to their haunting music. Yet even in his infirmities we have been used to regard him as a not unworthy representative of the English type of character, — unideal, yet manly, sagacious, affectionate, indifferently honest. To Lord Macaulay, however, John Dryden was a man many degrees worse than his fellow men.

The Whig historian pursued the Tory B poet with a peculiar energy of dislike. It cannot be said, perhaps, that this hostility is calculated to do its object much permanent injury. Lord Macaulay is immensely popular with the masses, and many able men are unable to resist the charm of his diligent rhetoric and fluent logic ; but the violent contrasts of light and shade to which he habitually resorts are distasteful to the critical and somewhat colourless spirit of the time, and the men who mould the opinion of the future are little, if at all, under his influence. These men — going, it may be, to the root of the matter, yet too often brusque, arrogant, and paradoxical — are indis posed to surrender their independent judgments and their individual convictions to the guidance of any leader, and least of any to the guidance of one who occasionally sacrifices minute truthful ness to broad and striking effects, who divides so sharply the tangled motives of men, who is so constantly clever, ingenious, luminous, animated, picturesque, but who lacks, as they fancy, the subtle insight and curious cunning of the true interpreters of human nature.

The fame of John Dryden, — "that noble old English lion," as Thackeray called him, — is probably safe enough : in the meantime, however, it may be worth our while to note how, and in what respects, Lord Macaulay's portrait of the great satirist is inade quate and misleading. The Society of the Restoration. 9 But this cannot be adequately accomplished until we have realised, more or less clearly, the character and the circumstances of the society in which he was placed. The literary public of England in the seven teenth century was a limited and a peculiar one. At present every popular work circulates from John-o'-Groat's to the Land's End. Readers and writers are to be found in every part of the king dom, and our literature is addressed, not to a sect or a coterie, not to a Dorset or a Buckingham, but to the educated intelligence of a whole people.

But it was not so two hundred years ago. To all intents and purposes the men who dwelt between Whitehall and the Tower constituted the English world of the belles-lettres at the Restoration. " To go about," says Vanbrugh, "to excuse half the " defects that this abortive brat is come into the " world with, would be to provoke the town with " a long preface, when 'tis, I doubt not, suf " ficiently soured already by a tedious play." The Court was the centre of " the town," and especially of " the town" as representing a minia ture world of fashion, letters, and taste. In the galleries of the Palace those hasty judgments were pronounced, and those ready witticisms repeated, which formed the criticism of the age. " The favour," Dryden remarks, in one of his argumentative prefaces, " which heroic plays have " lately found upon our theatres, has been wholly " derived from the countenance and approbation "they have received at Court." * To the town, therefore, and to the Court as controlling the taste and directing the judgment of the town, the cur rent literature was exclusively addressed.

There were exceptions, doubtless, — exceptions that strengthened the rule. The Observator of Le strange, with its panegyrics upon the King, and its invectives against Whigs and Dutchmen, was the oracle of the country gentlemen, and had a considerable circulation in the provinces. A dozen copies of the new poem or pamphlet might also at the same time leave the city, and after a tedious journey reach the cathedral and university towns to which they were addressed. Some copies of Farquhar's most genial comedy, being dedicated to his good friends around the Wrekin, and representing " the smoke, noise, scandal, " affectation, and pretension " that became the mimic gaieties of Shrewsbury, might possibly find their way to the pleasant banks of the Dee and the Severn. Sir Thomas Browne, amid his quaint and fantastic surroundings at Norwich, was pretty sure to be favoured with an early issue of the * Sonthey, with the habitual statement of fact as a specimen injustice of the Lakers to Dryofthe poet's "vile adulation." den, characterises this plain ' Oxford in 1681. 11 latest work on physics or demonology.

The Court and the Parliament, moreover, occasionally quitted the metropolis. During the Great Plague, London was nearly deserted by the upper classes, who retired to their country seats, or fluttered round the retreating Court. Roger North gives in the Examen an amusing account of the changed appearance of Oxford, when Charles, to separate the turbulent leaders of the popular party from the democracy of the city, appointed the Parliament to meet there in the year 1681. All the wits, writers, and place hunters, who cluster round the skirts of the political world, had sallied down in a body to the High Church University, and he discovered his lobby acquaintances discussing politics and cold punch amid its shady cloisters. Printers and publishers speedily established themselves, and a flood of caricatures and lampoons deluged the streets.

In one window the Duke of York might be seen busily engaged in setting fire to the Thames ; in another a host of the more noticeable Royalists were mounted upon the Church of England, and urging her with whip and spur in the direction of Rome. But, apart from occasional exceptions, the Capital was really the only place in the kingdom where literature could command a permanent audience, and the only tribunal to which it could appeal. The Court of Charles II. was not one which any Englishman can now regard with favour. The Kingdom of the Saints had become the Kingdom of the Flesh, and seldom had the devil presented a more shameless or seductive front. These magnificent English nobles were heartless profligates and swindling blacklegs. Of all the voluptuous beauties and noble matrons whom the ornate but exquisite pencil of Lely has rescued from decay, and consigned to a doubtful immortality, not one would now be tolerated in decent society.

Miss Jennings, the sister of the Duchess of Marlborough (she herself subsequently became Duchess of Tyrconnel), had once at least, in the guise of an orange-girl, visited the city theatre, and sold her wares to the courtiers in the lobby. Miss Wells, another of the maids of honour, had wittily, if not very de licately, declared that, as her father had been loyal to King Charles the sire, she was bound to be loyal to King Charles the son. The Countess of Shrewsbury was notorious for her scandalous amours. Dressed as a page, she had held Buck ingham's horse in the Park, and had witnessed, without emotion, her husband fall by her lover's hand. One of the most amusing pages in Hamil ton's Memoirs is occupied with the incidents of an intrigue between the Duke of York and Lady Chesterfield, to whom he remained constant, till The Court of Charles II. 13 a lucky but not very seemly accident permanently attached him to Arabella Churchill.

So conscious, indeed, was old Sir John Denham — the well known Cavalier poet — ofthe dangerous influences to which virtue was exposed, that, according to the scandal of the time, he sent his young and pretty bride out of the world to preserve her from the evil that is in the world. The writers of that age wax eloquent upon the maidenly virtues and charms of Frances Stewart. " Mrs. " Stewart in this dresse," Pepys rapturously ex claims, " with her hat cocked and a red plume, " with her sweet eyes, little Roman nose, and " excellent taille, is now the greatest beauty I " ever saw, I think, in all my life : and if ever " woman can, do excell my Lady Castlemaine, at " least in this dress." But even this virtuous paragon undertook to prove to Charles and his charmed Court, by evidence of the most direct kind, that the knees and ankles of the Duchess of Cleveland were not trimmer than her own.

A lively annalist — Anthony Hamilton — has celebrated this shameless society. With implicit and religious deference he follows his magnificent Chevalier through his amorous adventures : with cool audacity, with amazing effrontery, he de scribes every conceivable variety of intrigue; with grave and business-like composure he dis cusses the most trivial details of courtly etiquette. In the Court of the Most Christian Monarch, if we are to judge from this book, any sense of the relative value of things had been utterly lost. The small feet, the white bosoms, the languishing blue eyes, the not over-modest accomplishments, and the not over-scrupulous manners, of the saucy and pensive beauties of the royal circle, had become subjects of graver and more anxious concern to princes and statesmen and captains, than a war with Europe or a revolt in the capital.

They had been bitterly tried, but they had found no wisdom in sorrow, and learned none of the lessons of adversity. The vivacity of the Memoirs of Count Gram mont is somewhat unwieldy, and its wit rather elaborate; and the conduct of the narrative is careless, confused, and inartistic. But no other work brings us so directly into the Court of Charles. It is no longer King Charles the Second of sacred memory who rules these realms, but a good-tempered and easy-natured sultan, troubled Avith an awfully turbulent and disorderly hareem. He feeds his foreign ducks in the pond, saunters about his ill-kept palace, and indolently chaffers with the prettiest of the maidsof honour. Sometimes, however, his idle existence is disturbed. De Grammont has pre sented him with one of the new glass coaches just introduced from Paris, and each imperious The Court of Charles II. sultana is desirous to obtain the novel luxury.

The titular Queen has unsuccessfully preferred her timid claim. The Lady Castlemaine, being then in that interesting condition in which ladies wish to be who love their lords, threatens to miscarry if her wishes are disregarded ; but Frances Stewart, pettishly resolving never to be in that way at all, carries the point against her jealous rival, — who thenceforward, for many a day, with tears and menaces, and angry reproaches, vexes the soul of the Merry Monarch. The Duke of York continues to hunt and pray and intrigue, curiously uniting in his own person the debauchee and the devotee. The King be lieves, indeed, that this apparent anomaly can be explained, — his brother's mistresses, he says, being so hideously ugly, that they must have been prescribed him for his sins. Even the precise and formal Rupert (whom the younger gallants covertly ridicule as out of date) cannot -escape the prevailing epidemic, and leaving chemistry and mezzotinto, he follows Mrs. Hughes to the green-room.

De Gramniont, not yet captivated by Elizabeth Hamilton, is success fully engaged in carrying on the war among the subordinate nymphs, aided, as we are told, by a weekly packet from the French capital, containing among other small wares (thus was the soft passion ministered to in the seventeenth eentury) " perfumed gloves, pocket looking-glasses, " rare essences, and apricot pastes." The pallid Saint Evremond lectures an idle pupil ; while Buckingham, with earnest assiduity, builds card houses with Miss Stewart. Rochester, indeed, is absent from the Court, — having fallen into disgrace for the present, he has assumed an uncouth Teutonic title, and, with inimitable im pudence, but to the great contentment of the fair lieges, has taken to practise physic in the city. This was the public upon whose patronage wits, poets, and philosophers were dependent, and to whose passion and caprice they were required to minister.

We need not wonder that some writers — and these the greatest — haughtily with drew. Butler, in a stinging satire, denounced the fine gentlemen, who, reversing the practice of the Puritan, exhibited " a forced hypocrisy of " wickedness," and made haste " with all their ut " most vigour to be damned." Sir Thomas Browne lived at Norwich, and was seldom visible in the capital. The piety and purity of Henry Vaughan, and the rustic freshness and simplicity of Izaak Walton, had no element in common with those witty and graceless idlers, those high-born and high-bred Bohemians. And one — greater still — who, through the darkness, had beheld the hosts of the Most High flashing across the battle ments of heaven, — The Popular Literature. 17 The helmed cherubim And sworded seraphim, — regarded with moody and angry bitterness the evil days and evil tongues on which he had fallen.

But with these exceptions (and with the excep tion, also, of a school of eminent divines) the wit, the poetry, the philosophy of the age were enlisted by the Court. And the result was one which might have been foreseen. The literature be came as ribald, as heartless, and as foul as the men to whom it was addressed. It was witty, indeed ; but the wit was local and sectional — the raillery being intelligible to the initiated only, to the privileged caste who were able to interpret its covert and veiled allusions. Nor was it with out brilliancy : but it was a fitful and feverish brilliancy, — the froth of that mental fermentation, which the concentration of the whole intellectual activity of the nation necessarily communicated to the life of the capital. The satirist of the drawing-room, and the wit of the boudoir, though seldom appearing in public, are not quite un known figures in our society; but during the reien of Charles that class of writers exerted a prodigious influence upon the fastidious and effeminate civilization from which, mushroomlike, they sprang.

Milton withdrew, but a figure almost as notice able condescended to join in the masquerade. It is not necessary for my present purpose to do more than to indicate briefly and generally the more prominent incidents in John Dryden's life. The Drydens, who originally came from Cumberland, settled latterly at Canon Ashby in Northamptonshire. John Dryden's great-grandfather, by his last will and testament, solemnly bequeathed his soul to his Creator, "the Holy " Ghost assuring my spirit that I am the elect of " God." The poet — who thus came of a Calvinistic house — was born on the 6th of August, 1631. He was educated at Westminster under Dr. Busby, and at Trinity College, Cambridge. From the University he went to town ; and, as the only way by which a firing could be earned by literature in those days, began to write for the stage.

He continued to do so, more or less industriously, all his life. In 1668 he succeeded Sir William Davenant as poet-laureate. It was not, however, until the fierce contest on the Exclusion Bill had broken out that Dryden's magnificent faculty as a satirist was manifested. Absalom and Achitophel was published in 1681. It was eagerly welcomed, and became at once amazingly popular. Dr. Johnson's father, an old bookseller, told his son that the sale had never been equalled in his time, except by Sache verell's Trial, Absalom and Achitophel Avas followed by The Medal, in which the writer His Want of Independence. 19 ridiculed Shaftesbury ; and by Mac Flecknoe, in which he ridiculed Shadwell. In 1686 he be came a convert to Roman Catholicism; and, at the desire of James, wrote The Hind and Pan ther, to explain and vindicate the arbitrary ecclesiastical measures which the King had been induced to adopt.

After the Revolution he ceased to be laureate, and returned to his old trade of playwright. The writing of plays, of prologues, and of translations, occupied the remainder of his life. To the last he retained his vigour. The celebrated Ode to St. Cecilia was composed at " a heat " shortly before his death. He died on the 1st of May, 1700, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. Dryden was a man of an easy, indolent, and careless temper. None of his principles were deeply rooted. He never found leisure to mature his convictions. He had been a busy man from his youth upwards ; he had been forced to work hard and incessantly for daily bread; and among the eager crowd of courtiers, and playwrights, and poets, he had found it difficult to keep his footing. A high sense of duty was not to be expected from a man trained in such a school.

And duty, in its highest acceptation, was a word unknown in Dryden's vocabulary. He was unfitted by nature to play the part of a martyr. He had scarcely an opinion, in his earlier years at least, for which he would have gone to the stake or the pillory. There is considerable resemblance between the character of Dryden, in this respect, and the character which the popular voice assigns to The Times newspaper. Like The Times, he did not desire to form the opinion or to mould the policy of his contemporaries. He was content to reflect the age as in a mirror. His vigorous logic was ever eager to vindicate the fashion of the hour. His prefaces show an admirable critical sagacity ; but they are often sophistical. For his plays, reflecting the popular taste, are whimsical and grotesque ; and when a critic is ready to vindicate the whimsical and grotesque, he must borrow the weapons of the sophist.

He liked to float with the stream : it seemed to him neither wise nor safe to swim against the tide. Thus he was often inconsistent: his opinions were con stantly changing. He welcomed Cromwell: he welcomed the Restoration. He was a Puritan in his youth: a Prelatist in his manhood: a Papist in his old age. But it is unfair to assume that meanness or baseness lay at the root of Dryden's pliability. His genius was masculine, but his moral nature was dependent. He had a sovereign intellect, but a subject will. He needed sympathy. He liked to be liked. He leant upon others. His More an Orator than a Poet. 21 quick, active, generous sympathies eagerly sought for a return. He could not suffer in silence, — estranged from those who had charmed his imagination, or captivated his affections. Discord hurt and worried him : isolation was to him the keenest misery.

Nor was this the worst : opposition chilled his imagination as well as his heart. Ere he could bring his faculties into highest working order, he required to be caught up, and hurried along, by the passion of the moment. To the arbitrium popularis aurœ he was acutely sensitive. Milton's soul was like a star, and dwelt apart ; but Dryden could not work in soli tude. He was in his element in the city, in the coffee-house, at court, in the theatre. It has been said that necessity forced the poet to pros titute to low present uses a sublime and noble genius. But it may be doubted whether in happier circumstances he would have done so much, or so well, as he did. His faculties were naturally sluggish, and required to be spurred into activity. His temperament, more over, was the temperament of the orator rather than ofthe poet.

When at his best, it is easy to see that he is en rapport with an imaginary au dience. In the heat of an excited imagination, he addresses a listening assembly. All his greatest works — his Absalom and Achitophel, his Medal, his Hind and Panther — were produced, in the C hurry of battle, to serve a temporary end. Had he lived in the country, and farmed his father's acres, it ismore than probable that his poetry would never have risen above mediocrity — would have wanted the electric spark which is struck out when the imaginative reasoner is brought into instant contact with those whom he desires to persuade. Dryden was thus all his life an inconsistent man. Acutely sensitive to the changes of the seasons, he lived in an age of sudden, severe, and violent change. It was difficult hi that a<re for the steadiest man to maintain his constancy, and Dryden scarcely made the effort.

But, " if he "changed" (as Dr. Johnson loftily observed), " he changed with the nation." You may go round with the globe — innocently enough : and inconsistency is often only another name for the i evitable progress of opinion. An obstinate man shuts his eyes and closes his ears : but Dryden, as we have seen, was easily accessible to direct and popular impressions. He some times went wrong ; but, generally speaking, his inconsistencies will be found to represent the stages of an intellectual growth. Dryden's was essentially a teachable nature. He was never insolently bigoted. When experience had opened his eyes, he was able to lay aside pleasant rices, to renounce favourite errors, to acknowledge His Conversion to Rome. 23 freely and frankly that he had been wrong. The veiy impressibility of his character was a point in his favour.

His grasp of principle was not tenacious : but he could the more easily fling prejudices away. His taste, which had been vitiated by evil example, improved as he grew old. His enemies might tell him, indeed, that he who had once been the most vehement advo cate of rhyme — " my long-loved mistress " — had become its most vehement assailant. But the reproach was in truth a compliment ; for it showed that he could learn and unlearn, and that, though frequently led astray, the purity of his taste and his natural sagacity ultimately asserted their superiority. Dryden's conversion to the Church of Rome has been, indeed, eagerly seized upon by those who dislike his political persuasion. Lord Mac aulay, echoing the language of many of his contemporaries, designated him "an illustrious " renegade," and attributed his change of faith to the meanest and most despicable motives.

" Dryden," he says, " was poor, and impatient of " poverty. He knew little, and cared little about " religion. If any sentiment was deeply fixed in " him, that sentiment was an aversion to priests of " all persuasions, Levites, Augurs, Muftis, Roman " Catholic divines, Presbyterian divines, divines " ofthe Church of England. . . Finding that if he c " continued to call himself a Protestant, his ser " vices would be overlooked, he declared himself a " Papist. The King's parsimony instantly relaxed. " Dryden was gratified with a pension of a hun " dred pounds a year, and was employed to defend " his new religion both in prose and verse." * It will be observed that Lord Macaulay's in dictment assumes that James refused to do any thing for the laureate until he had changed his faith, but that, whenever the change was declared, the King's parsimony relaxed, and Dryden received a pension of a hundred pounds a year.

The fact is, however, that Dryden received his pension before his conversion, and under circumstances which make it extremely difficult to con nect it with an anticipated change of faith. The pension was originally granted by Charles ; lapsing on Charles's death, it was renewed by James ; the letters patent are dated March 4, 1685, about a year after Charles's death, but they set forth that the annuity was to run from March 25 preceding, — that is, from the date when the annuity granted by Charles ceased ; Dryden's conversion, so far as is known, did not take place, or at least was not " declared," till late in the year 1686.f History of England, ii. 196. poems, he quotes at length the t I am indebted to Mr. Robert documents referred to.-Dryden's Bell's investigations for the facts Poetical Works, edited by Robert mentioned in the text.

In the Bell (1854), i. 55. preface to his edition of Dryden's His Conversion to Rome. 25 There are no grounds, therefore, for holding that Dryden received a pension in consequence of his conversion; on the contrary, it is abundantly clear that at the time when he received the pension from Charles, and at the time when it was renewed by James, there was no reason to doubt that he was a Protestant. The sordid motives assigned by Lord Macaulay are inconsistent, therefore, with the visible cir cumstances of the case, nor is it difficult — if we consider attentively the character of the man, and of the position in which he was placed — to arrive at the probable grounds of the poet's change of faith. The Roman Catholic was the religion of the royal family, — of a family to whom Dryden was attached by feelings of strong personal regard.

Charles, if the worst of kings, was yet the plea santest of companions. Perfectly unaffected, and perfectly fearless, he did not hesitate to mix with his subjects in the most familiar manner. And he had a shrewd eye both for men and books. He had acquired his experience in a school, in deed, which had aged him before his time. He was an old man at the Restoration. " I never " till this day observed that the King was mighty "grey," Pepys says, about 16 G2. In his care less brilliancies (and many of them are really, and not royally, brilliant only) we see a mind of great natural parts, that has been permitted to run to seed. Good-humoured, if somewhat cynical, toleration was his habitual mood. His courtiers might quiz him: he only laughed. When he heard of Rochester's well-known epi gram, he observed : " Quite true : my sayings are " my own, but my doings are those of my min " isters."

Shaftesbury, with his usual felicity, said that under King Charles the unfortunate fell lightly; and, had Charles consulted his own in clinations, he would never have sent anything sharper than a jest or an epigram after his bitterest enemies. But though habits of indulgence had weakened the spring of his mind, it still retained a fine edge. His taste was good, and he liked good books. If it be true that the fine lines of Shirley, — The glories of our birth and state Are shadows, not substantial things ; There is no armour against fate ; Death lays his icy hands on kings. Sceptre and crown Must tumble down, And in the dust be equal made With the poor crooked scythe and spade, — were greatly admired by him, he must clearly have possessed a capacity for appreciating poetry of the highest class.

Charles starved his poets ; but, so long as they did not weary him with im portunities, he was pleased to meet them, and to have them about him. He was frankly intimate Character of Charles II. 27 with Waller and Dryden. He told the former, it is said, that his ode on Cromwell was superior to that on himself. " Poets, sire," was the witty itpology, " succeed better in fiction than in truth." Not unfrequently, of a morning, the King might be seen with Dryden in St. James's Park, con versing familiarly about the last rhyming play, or the new book of poems. Charles appears to have had a real regard for Dryden; he was always ready to defend him when assailed, telling those critics, for instance, who charged the laureate with theft, that he only wished they would steal him plays like Dryden's ; and Dryden, on his side, who loved the great, was intoxicated by this flat tering intimacy with royalty.