CHAPTER XXVI.

CONCLUSION OF WHITGIFT'S LIFE.

King James receives the news of the queen's death.-Whitgift's alarm concerning the king's religious views. James found to be a

churchman at heart.-Millenary petition.-Whitgift confers with the king. Coronation of James I.-Hampton Court Conference.Whitgift takes cold or the water.-His last illness.—The king visits him. His death, February 29, 1604.- His funeral, March 27 -Calumnies against Queen Elizabeth-Shakespere's testimony to her merits.

CHAP.

XXVI.

John

Whitgift.

1603-4.

ARCHBISHOP WHITGIFT was distinguished for nothing so much as for the boldness with which he opposed Queen Elizabeth when she followed her father's example in robbing the Church, or when she proceeded to acts of 1583severity which, even in that age when justice was most severe, were unjustifiable. People are sometimes therefore surprised at the fulsome flattery with which Whitgift thought to get influence over the weak-willed and pusillanimous king, James I.; but we must remember "nemo repente fuit turpissimus." Of all crowned heads, or, as in that age would have been said, of all anointed sovereigns, a character less to be respected than that of James I. has not existed; but it was not in this character that he first presented himself to his new subjects.

The whole country seems to have been intoxicated by the thought of good things to come, as James entered. the land. His progress from Scotland to the English metropolis was one incessant triumph.

It was not by the bishops or the clergy alone that the

CHAP.
XXVI.

John Whitgift.

1583

1603-4.

James receives the news of

death.

new king was overwhelmed by flattery: every statesman and all who held office under the government seemed to vie with each other, in extolling the good points of his character, while they overlooked or refused to notice those faults, which had even already displayed themselves to the eyes of all who had watched his career.

The news of Queen Elizabeth's death was first brought to the eager ears of King James by a layman, Sir Robert the queen's Carey, whose account of the queen's last hours has been already given. The Presbyterian party, represented by a Mr. Lewis Pickering, soon confirmed the intelligence, which seemed to announce the ascendency and triumph Whitgift's of Puritanism. The poor old archbishop knew, that the cerning the king had been bred a Presbyterian, and that through his tutor, George Buchanan, he was likely to entertain feelings decidedly hostile to the Church and to its reformation in England.

alarm con

king's re

ligious views.

On more occasions than one, James, as the representative of the Puritans, had communicated with the late queen. The archbishop was not likely to know how, in conversation with his private friends, the King of Scotland spoke of his detestation of the thraldom in which he had been held by the despotism and want of loyalty of the Presbyterian teachers. Whitgift did not know that, at one time, King James entertained a notion of flying the country, and settling as a private man, in some land where he would at least have liberty of thought and action. The alarm felt by all true churchmen must not be forgotten, when first it was announced, in an age when toleration was not known, that the English crown had devolved upon a Presbyterian sovereign. By a very slight stretch The king of the imagination, we can understand the enthusiastic feelings with which the opposite intelligence was gradually dispersed, when it became known that the king was, after all, a churchman at heart, and that with the claims of

found

to be a church

man at heart.

XXVI.

John Whitgift.

1583

1603-4.

the episcopate he was well acquainted. This welcome СНАР. news probably reached Whitgift through Dr. Neville, Dean of Canterbury, whom the archbishop had despatched into Scotland to offer to the new sovereign the congratulations of the English Church. The news increased as the king passed through the country, and became better acquainted with the character of the Church, and with its difference from the Puritan sect, at the hands of whose ministers the king had in former times feared every day as he went abroad, that he might be exposed to insults which he keenly felt, but which he had not presence of mind to resent with dignity or to repel.

nary

The great lying petition,-called the Millenary Pe- The Milletition, although only signed by 750 ministers,-was re- Petition. ceived by King James in a manner which confirmed the archbishop in the good opinion which he had begun to entertain of the new sovereign.

Whitgift was, nevertheless, doubtful as to the amount of concession King James would feel compelled to make to the Puritans, and, during the summer months, he remained pensive, sad, and apprehensive. The king had required of him an exact account of the state of the Church, which was given; and towards the end of the year Whitgift received a letter from his majesty announcing his intention of "standing by the Church of England," an assurance joyfully communicated by Whitgift, in a letter to the Earl of Shrewsbury.

We need not suppose therefore that Whitgift was an intentional deceiver or a designing flatterer. His mind had been depressed, even while he sought relief from the hand of the Almighty, and now, when his prayer seemed to be

*Whitgift's Works, vol. iii. p. 620; Strype's Whitgift, vol. ii. p. 484; Appendix to book iv. No. xliii. (vol. iii. p. 391); Brooke's Hist. Religious Liberty, i. 378.

XXVI.

John

CHAP. heard, almost as it were by a miracle, it was impossible for him to restrain his feelings of gratitude to the Giver of all Whitgift. good, or to refrain from a laudation of the sovereign, who was an instrument in the Divine hand of conveying a blessing to a threatened Church. It was an age when men put small restraint on their feelings or upon the expression of them.

15831603-4.

Whitgift's flattery of the king.

Whitgift confers

with the

king.

When all the world was thus eulogizing the new king, fulsome language no doubt was used, and Whitgift was betrayed into expressions, the greater part of which would have been cancelled, if he had lived to see the end of King James's life. Extravagant eulogy was suffered to escape from the lips of Whitgift, not, as in the case of a flatterer seeking to gain something for himself by his more than loyal expressions, but simply because he was taken by surprise, and was overflowing with gratitude on finding the king far different from what he had expected. Some allowance, too, must be made for the tendency of certain loyal minds to exaggerate the merits, or to invent them where they do not exist, of any sovereign who undertakes to exert his power in favour of the party they uphold. In these days we scarcely hear of anyone making allowance for the faults of George IV.; but those who are old enough to remember his reign, and the dangers to which the monarchy was in his time exposed, will not forget how enthusiastically that sovereign was received, by a large class of the community who had brought themselves to think that the welfare of the monarchy was bound up in his life.

It was not till May 7, 1603, that King James entered the capital of his new dominions. But the archbishop had sought for an earlier opportunity of waiting upon the king, and had obtained an interview with him when he had approached London so near as Theobalds. Having laid before his majesty an account rendered by the bishops to

XXVI.

John Whitgift.

1583

1603-4.

their metropolitan, he pointed out the existing state of CHAP. public affairs. They conferred about the future proceedings of the Church, which there was the greater need to do from the continued importunity of the Puritans, by whom it was still attacked, and who assured themselves, though now with less confidence, of the intention of the king to place himself at the head of their faction. Nevertheless, although the archbishop was at length fully satisfied that the king's loyal inclinations were towards the Church, he was filled with anxiety as to what would occur at the ensuing parliament.

The parliament had grown in strength, and it remained to be seen whether the king, though willing to serve the Church, would have strength to do so. It was therefore with anxiety mingled with his joy, that Whitgift retired to Lambeth. There he prepared with alacrity for the coronation, which, as usual, took place in the Collegiate Church of Westminster. It would have been a great point if the coronation of King James could have been conducted on the usual scale of old magnificence, but, unfortunately, at this very time, the plague was raging in London, and marred the pomp of the ceremony.

of James I.

The solemnity took place gloomily on July 25. The Coronation usual ceremonies were observed; but, as Calderwood July 25, remarks, "the streets were almost desolate, and the 1603. pageants stood without spectators to gaze on them." The coronation, however, as a religious rite, was performed with minute attention to its various details; and, infirm as he was, the venerable primate performed his part with that dignity and decorum for which he had been always distinguished in the discharge of his spiritual functions.

Court

It was agreed, that, to pacify the Puritans, a conference Hampton should be held; and that conference, as the "Hampton ConferCourt Conference," has obtained an historical importance

ence.

1604.