Quarrel with the King by Adam Nicolson

Author:Adam Nicolson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins

Too much liberty having been given for making keys of his Majesty’s Privy Lodgings at Whitehall, he is to take off the locks and make them in such sort that the former double keys may be quite shut out, but without interfering with the King’s, Queen’s and Lord Chamberlain’s treble keys.

In the next session of Parliament in 1628, Pembroke called off the attack on Buckingham, but affairs went no better for the duke. The disastrous campaign at La Rochelle and the Isle de Rhé had blackened his name still further. The commons then called on the king to consider “whether, in respect the said Duke hath so abused his power, it be safe for your majesty and your kingdom to continue him either in his great offices or in his place of nearness and counsel about your sacred person.” But Charles would not abandon him, and again the session of Parliament was brought to a close. Buckingham equipped himself with a bodyguard. His personal astrologer was torn to pieces in a London street. Finally, in August 1628, in Portsmouth, an enraged ex-soldier called John Felton murdered him, stabbing him from behind. Buckingham was able to shout “Villain!” and pull the knife from the wound before staggering back dead. Felton said later, when asked for a motive, that he thought by “killing the Duke he should do his country great service.” It was one conclusion of the long debate between court and country, custom and corruption, Pembroke and Buckingham, which had held England in its grip for so long.

For all the elaborate alliances, Pembroke had remained hostile to his old enemy. After the assassination, he wrote to the elegant self-indulgent old courtier and diplomat the Earl of Carlisle (a man who had spent “over £400,000 in a very jovial life”) that “the king our master begins to shine already. And I hope this next session to see a happy agreement between him and his people.” Every element of Pembroke’s statement—a dawnlike glowing of light, happiness, agreement, an Edenic togetherness in the nation—reflects a kind of Arcadian optimism, the conclusion of the sort of plot on which masque after masque had relied for decades.

But it was hope without foundation. England, in the words of Izaak Walton, had changed from what they thought it used to be, “that garden of piety, of pleasure, of peace, and a sweet conversation,” into “the thorny wilderness of a busy world.” Demons had been loosed at every level, fuelling widespread distrust of royal government at every level. The joint enterprise of England was under threat, and trust in the ancient constitution had been eroded.

The parliamentary opposition that Pembroke had fostered was not radical; it was defensive, set up to oppose the power-acquiring, independence-enjoying instincts of the new crown and its new counsels. England would have loathed Buckingham whether Pembroke had encouraged the country in that or not. But his orchestrating of the campaign against him and his championing of the anti-Buckingham cause had done nothing to diminish the hatred.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.