CECIL, Robert (1563-1612)

The brilliant second son of Queen Elizabeth’s lord treasurer, William Cecil^†, 1st Lord Burghley, Robert Cecil rose to prominence during the final years of Elizabeth’s reign. At the age of just 28 he was admitted to membership of the Privy Council, and five years later, in 1596, he became principal secretary of state. Though physically unimpressive – he was exceptionally short and afflicted with a crookback, which made him the target of derision – he was energetic and efficient. Like his father, who served simultaneously as lord treasurer and master of the Court of Wards, he proved capable of handling more than one major office at once, and in 1597 he added the chancellorship of the duchy of Lancaster to the secretaryship.

Following the death of his father in 1598, Cecil emerged as Elizabeth’s chief minister. His power was such that in 1601 James VI of Scotland described him as de facto king.65 Letters of King Jas. VI and I ed. G.P.V. Akrigg, 175. He nevertheless remained subject to the wishes of the queen, who in 1600 obliged him to surrender his duchy office in return for the mastership of the Court of Wards. Cecil was initially displeased, as the office of Wards was much less profitable than the duchy, and Elizabeth, desperate to pay for the war against Spain, expected him to surrender to the crown his profits as master. However, once in post, Cecil – who had inherited the magnificent but expensive-to-run house known as Theobalds, in southern Hertfordshire - soon contrived ways to siphon off considerable sums from the Wards over and above his official salary of £200 p.a. without Elizabeth’s knowledge. This was dishonest, perhaps, but between 1598 and 1603 Cecil nevertheless more than trebled the queen’s annual receipts from wardship.66 Hurstfield, 300-3, 313. On the value of the chancellorship of the duchy to Cecil, see De Maisse: A Jnl. of All that was Accomplished by M. de Maisse, Amb. in Eng. 89. Cecil understood, even if Elizabeth did not, that there was no necessary contradiction between private profit and the improvement of royal revenues. In 1601 he again reconciled these apparently competing demands when he bought a ten-year lease of the customs on imported satins and silks at an annual rent higher than the average receipts for the past seven years.67 Stone, Fam. and Fortune, 12-13.

His concern for the state of the royal finances meant that, after his father’s death, Cecil put himself at the head of the peace party at court.68 P. Croft, ‘Rex Pacificus, Robert Cecil, and the 1604 Peace with Spain’, Accession of Jas. I ed. G. Burgess et al., 145. He realized that unless the war with Spain – and particularly the campaign in Ireland - was brought to a swift conclusion, the Elizabethan state would soon be bankrupt. He was initially opposed by the royal favourite, Robert Devereux^†, 2nd earl of Essex, who sought to widen the conflict. However, following Essex’s execution in 1601, and the subsequent subjugation of Ireland, the way was cleared for Cecil – who became de facto lord keeper of the privy seal (being granted possession of the privy seal but not the accompanying office)69 The clerks of the signet nevertheless referred to him as lord keeper of the privy seal, an error that has sometimes been repeated: CSP Dom. 1603-10, p. 446; Handbk. Brit. Chronology, 97. For his custody of the privy seal, see Hatfield House, CP 134/31; HMC Hatfield, xvi. 420. - to pursue peace.

Although Essex’s death helped paved the way for peace with Spain, it also opened up for Cecil a crucial opportunity for weathering the succession, it being clear that the elderly and childless Elizabeth would not live much longer. Prior to 1601, Essex had been the chief supporter of James VI’s claim to the throne of England, which was in danger of being contested by the Archduchess Isabella, co-ruler of the Spanish Netherlands. Cecil, by contrast, was regarded with distrust by James, as Lord Burghley had played a prominent role in the execution of his mother, Mary, queen of Scots. Nevertheless, following Essex’s execution Cecil entered into a secret – and technically treasonable - correspondence with James, whose succession, unlike that of the Catholic Isabella, would ensure the continuation of English Protestantism. James was initially wary of treating with Cecil, but recognizing that no other minister at the English court could rival him for power and authority, he quickly overcame his qualms.70 Oxford DNB, x. 750. As early as May 1601 he promised that, on becoming king, he would bestow upon Cecil ‘greater favour’ than Elizabeth had done.71 Letters of King Jas. VI and I, 179-80.

The accession of James I, 1603

In planning for James’s succession, Cecil left little to chance. While Elizabeth was still alive, he not only drafted a proclamation declaring James to be king but also sent a copy to the latter, who gave it his approval. Moreover, on 22 Mar. 1603, as the queen lay dying, he wrote to James warning him to prepare to come south.72 Ibid. 208. The letter appears not to survive. Following the queen’s death two days later, Cecil, claiming that Elizabeth had finally acknowledged James as her successor,73 CSP Ven. 1603-7, p. 7. See also Les Reportes del Cases in Camera Stellata ed. W.P. Baildon, 227. publicly took charge of events, riding first to Whitehall, and then to Cheapside, where he read aloud the proclamation he had drafted.74 Manningham Diary ed. R.P. Sorlien, 208; Annales (1631) ed. E. Howes, 817.

Cecil would have liked to journey north immediately to greet the new king, not least because he was nervous that James, having now succeeded unopposed, might cast him aside in revenge for the execution of his mother. His enemies at court certainly expected him to fall from power on James’s accession. On 25 Mar. he informed James that he would hasten to his side just as soon as his public duties would permit, and assured him that he was ‘a member of that house which hath never yet been unfaithful to their masters’.75 CSP Dom. 1603-10, p. 1; Cecil, 194. For the widely held belief that James’s accession would precipitate his downfall, see CSP Ven. 1603-7, pp. 70, 515. However, his fear that he would soon be displaced proved groundless. On 27 Mar. James not only confirmed Cecil in all his offices but also gave him and his fellow councillors authority to act as they saw fit. Moreover, he waived payment of six months’ rent on the satin and silk farm, which had the effect of putting £4,411 into his pocket.76 Letters of King Jas. VI and I, 208; Stone, Fam. and Fortune, 208. Shortly thereafter, Cecil was informed by the Scottish secretary of state that James regarded him as ‘the principal who has been the upholder of his just title’.77 HMC Hatfield, xv. 28.

James was eager to meet his new chief minister, having received ambassadorial dispatches that he needed to discuss with Cecil. Accordingly, on 11 Apr., he summoned Cecil to York. However, Cecil, who set out four days later, remained nervous about meeting James, there being no money with which to pay for the late queen’s funeral or the forthcoming coronations of James and his wife, Anne of Denmark.78 Ibid. 43, 49; ‘Camden Diary’ (1691), 1. His anxiety was justified, though not because money was in short supply, because, at their first encounter, James proved less amenable than Cecil and his fellow councillors had hoped. When Cecil, who wished to negotiate for peace with Spain from a position of strength, advised relieving the besieged Dutch garrison at Ostend, he was rebuffed, as James regarded the Dutch not as allies to be nurtured but as rebels in arms against their lawful sovereign.79 CSP Ven. 1603-7, pp. 18, 20. Moreover, perhaps at this same meeting, James also revealed that he intended to bestow English government office on several of his countrymen. Positions that had remained unfilled under Elizabeth, such as the presidency of the Council and the office of lord steward, were now viewed eagerly by leading Scots, such as the king’s cousin, Ludovic Stuart^*, 2nd duke of Lennox [S] (later duke of Richmond), as were several posts currently held by Englishmen. This news, which caused widespread dismay on the Council, led Cecil, on his return to Whitehall in mid April, to enter into a successful negotiation with the elderly Sir John Fortescue^‡ to surrender the chancellorship of the Exchequer to James’s childhood friend, Sir George Home, Scotland’s lord treasurer.80 HMC Hatfield, xv. 62. 94.

In the long run, his role in this transaction paid handsome dividends for Cecil, who thereby secured a powerful Scottish ally. Indeed, it was widely believed that Home was the ‘chief cause’ why Cecil remained in power.81 CSP Ven. 1603-7, p. 515. See also Weldon’s account of Cecil’s first meeting with James, which, though absurd in some details, emphasizes the importance of Home: Hist. of the Ct. of Jas. I ed. W. Scott, i. 323-4. However, James was not satisfied with the single sacrifice of Fortescue. The following month, the lord keeper, Sir Thomas Egerton^* (later 1st Viscount Brackley), was prevailed upon to surrender the mastership of the Rolls to one of James’s principal Scottish advisers, Edward Bruce. At around the same time, the Venetian ambassador, a normally well-informed source, reported that Cecil himself had been deprived of the mastership of Wards and that Lennox had been appointed president of the Council. (The news that he had been deprived of the mastership almost certainly explains the wild report that reached Ireland in mid June that Cecil had been stripped of all his offices). Fortunately for Cecil, the latter two decisions were quickly reversed after James realized that, by favouring the Scots at the expense of the English, he had seriously discontented his new subjects.82 CSP Ven. 1603-7, pp. 33, 41; HMC Hatfield, xv. 132.

Despite the temporary loss of the mastership of the Wards, Cecil warmly welcomed James at Theobalds on 3 May. Indeed, he went to great lengths to cater for the king and his extensive entourage, even borrowing additional silverware for the occasion from Lord Keeper Egerton.83 Egerton Pprs. ed. J.P. Collier (Cam. Soc. xii), 369. Over the course of the next four days, James was feasted and treated to entertainments ‘so costly as can hardly be expressed’.84 Annales (1631), 822; J. Nichols, Progs. of Jas. I, i. 137. Shortly thereafter, Cecil, who now spent three four or hours at a time closeted with the king, was raised to the peerage as Baron Cecil of ‘Essendon’, a reference to Essendine manor in Rutland, which Cecil had inherited from his father.85 N. Cuddy, ‘Revival of the Entourage’, English Court from the Wars of the Roses to the Civil War ed. D. Starkey et al., 192-3. On his territorial suffix, see 47th DKR, 96, 98. This elevation was proof that James had been serious when he promised to bestow upon Cecil greater favours than his predecessor. However, Cecil remained shocked at having been deprived, albeit briefly, of a key office. ‘I am pushed from the shore of comfort’, he told Sir John Harington^* (later 1st Lord Harington) in late May, ‘and know not where the winds and waves of a court will bear me’.86 Nichols, i. 146.

Following the coronations of James and Anne of Denmark in July 1603, Cecil and the Council contemplated summoning a Parliament. Although new monarchs customarily met their subjects early in their reign, there were compelling financial reasons to call England’s representative assembly as soon as possible. It had been necessary to borrow from the City in order to pay for the coronations and the late queen’s funeral. Moreover, James, who saw in England a far richer country than his native Scotland, had failed to heed Cecil’s warning, given at their first meeting, of the poverty of the Exchequer, and had been distributing money and other riches at an alarming rate. To make matters worse, receipts from wardship had plummeted, to the dismay of Cecil, who attributed the collapse to a serious outbreak of plague and the reluctance of the collectors to travel to London.87 HMC Hatfield, xxiii. 117.

The sharp decline in receipts from wardship perhaps explains why, at a meeting of the Council on 7 Aug., Cecil announced that he wished to invite the forthcoming Parliament to buy out this feudal duty by means of an annual rent.88 ‘Wilbraham Jnl.’ ed. H. Spencer Scott, Cam. Misc. X (Cam. Soc. 3rd ser. iv), 63. For further details, see P. Croft, ‘Wardship in the Parl. of 1604’, PH, ii. 40. This was a radical proposal, not least because it meant that Cecil, unless otherwise provided for, would inevitably forfeit his private profit as master of the Wards. However, the scheme had clear political advantages for the chief minister. Abolition of wardship would remove one of the chief grievances of the landed classes, and an annual rent would assure the king a fixed sum every year. Moreover, by surrendering the mastership of the Wards, as the king had earlier wished him to do, Cecil would cease to be a pluralist (at least technically), at a time when many Scots were hungry for high office.

In the event the plague outbreak proved so severe that all thoughts of summoning Parliament had to be abandoned. Cecil nevertheless decided to press ahead with his scheme to abolish wardship in return for a fixed annual sum. In late September and early October he wrote to the leading magistrates in every county inviting the local gentry to compound for the wardship of their heirs. However, only a handful of individuals took advantage of his offer. As Sir Thomas Hesketh^‡, the attorney of the Court of Wards, reported from Yorkshire in November, ‘men generally cannot find [it] in their hearts to part with money, although it be for their good’.89 Registrum Vagum of Anthony Harison ed. T.F. Barton (Norf. Rec. Soc. xxxii), 166-8; Illustrations of Brit. Hist. ed. E. Lodge, iii. 42-6; Sales of Wards in Som. 1603-41 ed. M.J. Hawkins (Som. Rec. Soc. lxvii), xxi; HMC Hatfield, xxiii. 119.

It was not just a Parliament that failed to materialize in 1603. So too did a peace treaty with Spain. Although hostilities were suspended in June, some observers assumed that Cecil was eager to prolong the conflict.90 Stuart Royal Proclamations, I: Jas. I ed. J.F. Larkin and P.L. Hughes, 30-2; Spain and the Jacobean Catholics I: 1603-12 ed. A.J. Loomie (Cath. Rec. Soc. lxiv), 6; CSP Ven. 1603-7, p. 20. In fact, Cecil remained committed to peace, not least because the state of the royal finances was giving him increasing cause for concern.91 For Cecil’s concern at the increased cost of the royal households, see Illustrations of Brit. Hist. iii. 34. Indeed, he was determined to ensure that, in the forthcoming peace settlement, the interests of the Dutch were not disregarded. In August he instructed England’s ambassador to The Hague to reassure the Dutch that ‘all the care and foresight will be taken for their preservation which possibly we can’, and in October he told the Venetian ambassador that England and Spain would remain enemies, even after peace was concluded.92 Winwood’s Memorials, ii. 3; CSP Ven. 1603-7, p. 108. The reason a treaty failed to materialize in 1603 was not that Cecil opposed it but that the Spanish council of state, hoping for an improvement in the military situation in order to strengthen its negotiating position, dragged its heels. When Cecil and four other leading members of the Council visited the newly arrived Spanish ambassador in late September, they were astonished to discover that he had been given no authority to negotiate.93 ‘Jnl of Levinus Munck’, 246, 250; Elphinstone Fam. Bk. ed. W. Fraser, ii. 201-2, 208; P.C. Allen, Philip III and the Pax Hispanica, 127. Not until January 1604 was there any movement on this front, and even then Spain prevaricated, pressing for the peace conference to be held in a neutral location to avoid loss of face.94 CSP Ven. 1603-7, pp. 130, 140.

The 1604 session of Parliament

Shortly before the accession of James I, Cecil’s former brother-in-law, Henry Brooke^†, 11th Lord Cobham, had attempted to undermine the chief minister in the eyes of the Scottish king. Cobham was aggrieved that he had been discarded by Cecil following the fall of Essex – Cecil had an unfortunate reputation for casting off those for whom he no longer had any further use95 Notes of Ben Jonson’s Conversations with William Drummond of Hawthornden (Shakespeare Soc. 1842), 24. - and hoped to ensure that he and his ally Sir Walter Ralegh^‡ gained the ear and favour of the king. Cobham’s efforts failed, and in July 1603 he and Ralegh were arrested for plotting to overthrow the new monarch. Although Cecil was related by marriage to Cobham, James relied upon his chief minister to ‘find out the bottom of this great ulcer’.96 HMC Hatfield, xv. 212. During the ensuing trials, in November 1603, Cecil behaved with unfailing courtesy towards the accused.97 A Collection of Letters, made by Sir Tobie Mathews (1660), 285. He also demonstrated that he was little interested in securing convictions for the sake of it. Indeed, thanks to Cecil, one of the defendants – Sir Everard Digby – was entirely acquitted.98 Carleton to Chamberlain ed. M. Lee, 38.

Cecil attended the Hampton Court Conference in January 1604, but contributed little to the proceedings, in which puritan grievances were discussed. However, he defended the bishop of London, Richard Bancroft^*, after John Reynolds, president of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, complained about the widespread availability of popish books.99 R.G. Usher, Reconstruction of the English Church, ii. 341; State Trials, ii. 80. It seems likely that, by the time of the conference, Cecil was already preoccupied with preparations for the forthcoming Parliament, which the king had decided to summon the following March. James regarded his uncontested accession to the English throne as evidence of a divine plan to unite his two kingdoms, and therefore wanted to effect a statutory union of England and Scotland. Unfortunately for him, however, his belief was not widely shared. Cecil was aware, even before Parliament met, that the Union was unpopular among the English. Writing to Gilbert Talbot^*, 7th earl of Shrewsbury in December 1603, he nervously remarked that anyone who absented themselves from the forthcoming meeting would be doing so ‘purposely because they would say no to the Union’.100 Illustrations of Brit. Hist. iii. 82-3. James’s English subjects would be more interested in pursuing their own interests in Parliament. This included the City of London, which in February 1604 sent a four-strong deputation to lobby Cecil ‘about the especial affairs of this city’,101 LMA, COL/CA/01/01/028, f. 275. a coded reference to recent complaints about the abuses associated with purveyance of goods for the royal household.

The prospect of managing a Parliament on behalf of the king may have filled Cecil with a sense of dread. Not only was the Union deeply unpopular, but also, in recent years, the Commons had proved increasingly difficult for the crown to control. This was partly due to the increasing size of the House’s membership and the dwindling number of councillors with seats in the Commons, but it was also due to the emergence of the general creation of the committee of the whole House, which allowed the Commons to bypass the authority of the Speaker, on whom the Council customarily relied to manage its business.102 M.A.R. Graves, ‘Managing Elizabethan Parls.’, Parls. of Elizabethan Eng. ed. D.M. Dean and N.L. Jones, 41-63. In order to reverse this trend, the number of councillors with seats in the lower House needed to be increased. Unfortunately for Cecil, one of the unintended consequences of James’s generosity in bestowing honours was that the number of councillors eligible to sit in the Commons had fallen dramatically. Cecil himself been ennobled, as had the treasurer of the household, Sir William Knollys^*, now Lord Knollys (later earl of Banbury), and his colleague the comptroller of the household, Sir Edward Wotton^* (now 1st Lord Wotton). When Parliament assembled in 1604, only three councillors had seats in the lower House, and of these the second secretary of state, Sir John Herbert^‡, was a nonentity.103 HP Commons, 1604-29, i. 370-1, 378. This meant that Cecil would be forced to operate in the Commons through a variety of Members with whom he was associated, either professionally or by blood. This was not necessarily a disadvantage, and might even prove helpful on occasion, for by enlisting the assistance of individual, ordinary Members, Cecil could hope to avoid the impression that the House of Commons – always fearful for its independence - was being manipulated by the Council. However, it was far from satisfactory.

Parliament assembled on 19 Mar., four days after James formally entered London, in which procession Cecil naturally took part.104 Nichols, i. 326. During the first week of the meeting there were few signs, if any, of the storms that lay ahead. On the opening day, James informed both Houses that their chief purpose was to bring about a statutory union of England and Scotland. Thereafter he decamped to Royston on a hunting trip, leaving Cecil to bring all other business of importance before Parliament. Cecil entrusted the task of laying an agenda before the lower House to the veteran Commons Member, Sir Robert Wroth^†. Not only was Wroth one of Cecil’s clients, but as a forest official in Enfield Chase and Waltham Forest he was also nominally subordinate to the chief minister, who held the office of master of the king’s game in the Lea valley. On 23 Mar. Wroth presented seven subjects to the lower House for consideration, among them wardship, which was described as ‘a burden and servitude to the subjects of the kingdom’. Wroth proposed that in place of wardship ‘the king might have a composition and the subject be freed [from] that tenure’, thereby echoing the proposal Cecil himself had made at the Council table seven months earlier. Another subject on Wroth’s list was ‘the general abuse and grievance of purveyors and car[t]-takers’, who were described as the ‘hell hounds of England’.105 CJ, i. 150b, 151a, 934a; ‘CD 1604-7’, pp. 22, 54-5; HMC Hatfield, xvi. 42-3. Wroth evidently stopped short of proposing that the Commons should offer to buy out purveyance, which was no less unpopular than wardship. However, composition arrangements with several counties already existed, and a proposed list of bills, probably drawn up by the Council ahead of the meeting, included a measure ‘against purveyors and for the better ratifying and distribution of the composition for the king’s household’.106 B.R. Dunn, ‘CD 1603/4’ (Bryn Mawr Coll. Ph.D. thesis, 1987), 32-3. The Council’s authorship of this list, which exists in two versions, has been disputed: W. Notestein, House of Commons 1604-1610, pp. 47-54; N. Tyacke, ‘Collective Hist.’, PH, xxxii. 536-8.

Since Wroth was not a councillor, many in the Commons were initially unsure how to interpret his proposals. Was Wroth acting on his own initiative, or was he, in fact, speaking on behalf of Cecil and the Council? After a long silence, it was decided to refer his motion to committee. During the intervening period it must quickly have become apparent that Wroth had spoken at Cecil’s behest. Thus reassured, the Commons quickly signalled that they were keen to compound for wardship. Indeed, on 26 Mar. they sought a conference with the Lords with the aim of inviting the peers to join them in petitioning the king for permission to negotiate over this matter.107 CJ, i. 151b, 153b; ‘CD 1604-7’, p. 56. However, so far as purveyance was concerned, the Commons resolved to proceed by bill, even though Elizabeth had always vetoed household legislation. Not until Cecil intervened later that same morning was the subject added to the conference agenda.108 LJ, ii. 266b; CJ, i. 154b.

That afternoon, midway through the ensuing conference, Cecil and his colleagues in the upper House belatedly learned that the Commons had unseated Sir John Fortescue, who had been returned as one of the knights of the shire for Buckinghamshire. In his stead they had installed Sir Francis Goodwin^‡, whose election had previously been quashed by Chancery on grounds of outlawry. Like his fellow peers, Cecil was appalled, as Fortescue was one of the few councillors with seats in the lower House. Furthermore, Cecil and his colleagues on the Council may have felt indebted to Fortescue, who had been sacrificed the previous year when the king had wanted senior government offices for his Scottish servants. Cecil therefore asked the Commons’ representatives if they would be willing to hear the Lords’ ‘reasons for their dislike’. However, the Commons’ deputation withdrew, claiming they had no authority to do so.109 ‘CD 1604-7’, p. 58. Russell misread this exchange. He claimed, incorrectly, that it was Cecil who accused the Commons of acting without authority: C. Russell, Jas. VI and I and his English Parls. 29.

How far Cecil realized that the quarrel over Fortescue had been engineered by Thomas Egerton, now lord chancellor and recently ennobled as Lord Ellesmere, in order to re-establish Chancery’s right to resolve disputed elections is unclear.110 A. Thrush, ‘Commons v. Chancery: the 1604 Bucks. Election Dispute Revisited, PH, xxvi. 301-9; Russell, Jas. VI and I and his English Parls. 29. However, since his interests and those of Ellesmere broadly coincided, the question is perhaps academic. Concerned to challenge the Commons’ verdict, Cecil turned to the judges, whom he consulted privately.111 HMC Hatfield, xvi. 43. This hastily arranged meeting necessarily caused him to be absent from the Lords on the morning of the 27th, when the peers offered to approach the king for permission to treat of wardship in return for a conference over the Buckinghamshire election. By then, however, the Commons had lost all interest in Cecil’s scheme to buy out wardship, and claimed that they alone had the right to adjudge disputed elections. Not only did they rebuff the offer, they also refused to furnish their reasons for unseating Fortescue.112 CJ, i. 156a.

At this critical juncture Cecil fell sick. Cecil had long been prey to illness, and as recently as the summer of 1603 had despaired of finding relief.113 HMC Bath, ii. 51. On learning that his chief minister had fallen ill, James, then at Royston, was understandably alarmed.114 HMC Hatfield, xvi. 45. The crisis at Westminster was not of his own making and concerned a Parliament of whose workings he knew little. Without Cecil’s hand on the tiller, James had little choice but to look elsewhere for advice. The result was that a bad situation was made worse. Ignorant of the convention that the lower House conferred only with the Lords, he ordered the Commons to consult the judges, who assured him that the lower House had acted ultra vires in suppressing Fortescue’s election.115 ‘CD 1604-7’, p. 33; CJ, i. 158b When the Commons declined to comply with this instruction, a frustrated James complained to the French ambassador that he had been given bad counsel.116 CJ, i. 160a; Russell, Jas. VI and I and his English Parls. 29.

James naturally felt aggrieved, as the Buckinghamshire election dispute threatened to derail his plans for a statutory union of England and Scotland. Unless he established a harmonious relationship with the Commons, there was little chance of achieving his objective. Indeed, when, on the morning of 31 Mar., Sir William Maurice^‡ attempted to begin a debate on the Union, he found himself ignored.117 CSP Ven. 1603-7, p. 142; CJ, i. 160a. By that time, however, Cecil had resumed his seat in the Lords. Although presumably not responsible for advising the king to confer with the judges, Cecil could not allow the rebuff administered to the king to go unanswered, not least because of the damage it might cause to James’s reputation abroad. ‘Whatever you may hear’, he later told England’s ambassador to The Hague, ‘the cause [of the Commons’ initial refusal to confer with the judges] was only by lack of understanding of what was intended by his Majesty, and not any other point of importance’.118 Winwood’s Memorials, ii. 18. Consequently, James, doubtless guided by his first minister, forced the lower House to fall in with his wishes. However, if Cecil hoped that this was a prelude to complete victory for the Council, he was to be disappointed. At the ensuing conference, held on 5 Apr., James brokered a compromise, whereby the returns of both Goodwin and Fortescue would be suppressed and a fresh election held. He also conceded that the lower House had as much right as Chancery to determine dispute elections. In so doing, he effectively handed victory to the lower House.119 CJ, i. 166a, 166b, 168a; CSP Ven. 1603-7, pp. 143, 147.

In the short term, the king’s decision to put the Union ahead of the wishes of Cecil and the Council paid dividends. On 14 Apr., two days after they formally thanked James for his intervention, the Commons agreed to confer with the Lords on the subject.120 LJ, ii. 277b; CJ, i. 172a. However, it soon became clear that the lower House had little appetite for James’s plan to unite the two kingdoms. Indeed, a majority of its Members claimed that, were the two countries to be replaced by one known as Great Britain, the laws governing England would instantly cease to exist. The most outspoken critic of the Union in the Commons was Sir Edwin Sandys^‡ who, in 1601 at least, considered himself one of Cecil’s confidants. On 26 Apr. Sandys delivered a devastating speech, whereupon the French ambassador reported that those most opposed to the Union in the Commons were secretly receiving comfort and support from members of the Council.121 HP Commons 1604-29, vi. 165, 167.

It is not only the suspicions of the French ambassador that suggest that Cecil himself was one of these Council malcontents. After the judges confirmed that the Commons were correct in believing that the creation of Great Britain would necessarily extinguish the laws of England, Cecil was barely able to conceal his satisfaction. Writing to the Scottish secretary of state, Sir James Elphinstone, in late April, he described the judges’ ruling as ‘a very good stop to the work so much desired of his Majesty’.122 C. Russell, ‘Jas. VI and I and Rule over Two Kingdoms: an English View’, HR, lxxvi. 159. Moreover, at around the same time, his older half brother, Thomas Cecil^*, 2nd Lord Burghley offered the chief minister thinly veiled congratulations for apparently putting paid to the Union: ‘I hope I have seen the end of this great cause, wherein you have by all men’s opinions carried yourself most honourably and faithfully towards your country’.123 HMC Hatfield, xvi. 243.

Despite his brother’s belief to the contrary, Cecil was not, in fact, averse to the Union in principle. Rather, he was opposed to adopting the name ‘Great Britain’ before the continued existence of English law had been guaranteed. In a letter to the king’s cousin, the duke of Lennox, written on 4 May, Cecil explained that ‘they that wish the Union with all their souls’ had been forced to ‘protest against the present name [of Great Britain] both in the higher and lower House’, until such times as ‘the laws may be so compounded as the island may not have two forms of government’. This work, he declared, belonged to the parliaments of both kingdoms and commissioners appointed for the purpose. He did not doubt, though, that God, through his providence, had offered them ‘a conjunction ... for the mutual felicity and peace of both realms’.124 Elphinstone Fam. Bk. ii. 170.

Cecil’s letter to Lennox, which came perilously close to an admission of guilt, helps to explain why the king’s suspicions about his chief minister were aroused by the parliamentary opposition in 1604. Sometime before the end of the session, James discussed with Sir George Home, in barely concealed terms, the subject of Cecil’s loyalty. Home reassured the king that Cecil would always give him honest, impartial advice. James, who had been impressed by the fact that Cecil had made no attempt the previous autumn to defend his late wife’s traitorous brother, Lord Cobham, agreed that Home was correct. However, Home was sufficiently unsettled to relay an account of this conversation to Cecil,125 HMC Hatfield, xvi. 254-5; Russell, Jas. VI and I and his Eng. Parls. 15-16. On James’s surprise at the lack of support for Cobham and his fellow conspirators among Cobham’s kinsmen, see Annales (1631), 833. who was well aware that he had been playing with fire. Early in May, he urged Elphinstone to act swiftly to stamp out any rumours emanating from Westminster that might make the Scottish Parliament ‘apt to be froward or retrograde’ in the matter of the Union. He also assured him that, so far as England was concerned, ‘his Majesty’s prudence, power and careful labours will overcome all such further humours as may proceed out of levity or pertinacity, wherein his Majesty hath many humble and honest servants that will labour to their best’.126 Elphinstone Fam. Bk. ii. 210.

The Buckinghamshire election dispute had caused the Union to be put on hold for three weeks, but it did not bring all business to a halt. During the midst of the quarrel over Fortescue’s election, the Commons gave two readings to a bill against purveyance.127 CJ, i. 160b, 162b. Cecil was no doubt dismayed by this development, as the Commons had initially agreed to confer with the Lords before taking any action, a promise they quickly forgot once the quarrel over Fortescue erupted. James, who was shown a copy of the bill on the morning of 5 Apr.,128 Letters of Philip Gawdy ed. I.H. Jeayes, 144. could have demanded that the measure be quashed, since the Commons had not requested permission to proceed in a matter that concerned his prerogative. However, anxious to do nothing that might jeopardize the Union, he stayed his hand. Not until 14 Apr. did the Commons resolve to ask the king for permission to proceed by bill.129 CJ, i. 171b, 172a. What led them to do so at such a late stage is not entirely clear. It may be significant that the officers of the board of Greencloth, who were responsible for overseeing the purchase of provisions for the royal Household, had complained to the king that the lower House was threatening his prerogative.130 Ibid. 190b. However, Cecil may also have used his influence behind the scenes to persuade the Commons that they were more likely to be given a sympathetic hearing if they avoided antagonizing James.

The Commons laid their petition before the king on 28 April. After promising to punish offenders and improve the existing system, James thereupon instructed the lower House to confer with the Privy Council.131 Ibid. 190a; P. Croft, ‘Parl., Purveyance and the City of London’, PH, iv. 15. Since most members of the Council had seats in the Lords, this was akin to ordering the Commons to confer with the Lords, which Cecil, of course, had advocated from the very start. As a result of these meetings, which took place at Whitehall between 3 and 8 May, the king offered to surrender purveyance in return for an annual payment by the Commons of £50,000. This proposal probably originated with Cecil, and might have been made much sooner had the Buckinghamshire election dispute not intervened. However, the Commons baulked at such a high price, and perhaps also at the unprecedented demand for annual taxation, and decided to establish a committee to consider the matter.132 CJ, i. 204b; Croft, ‘Purveyance’, 16.

Now that the idea of buying out purveyance had been suggested, it must have seemed to Cecil an ideal moment to revive his earlier proposal regarding composition for wardship. On 11 May, the day on which the Commons debated purveyance, Sir Edwin Sandys did precisely that. However, the Commons were still reeling from the high price demanded for purveyance, and temporarily lost interest in the scheme.133 CJ, i. 969b, 207a; T.K. Rabb, Jacobean Gent. 100. Indeed, one Member wrote later that same day that ‘there is now no speech of composition for wardship’.134 A Collection of Letters, made by Sir Tobie Mathews (1660), 293. However, Cecil was not so easily dissuaded, and five days later Sir Maurice Berkeley^‡, a distant kinsman by marriage, not only revived the scheme but also proposed that composition for wardship should go hand-in-hand with buying out purveyance. Berkeley’s intervention seems to have led the Commons to rethink their earlier loss of interest in compounding for wardship. Although they rejected the idea of treating wardship and purveyance together, they agreed to ask the Lords to join them in petitioning the king for permission to negotiate over wardship. Following a further intervention by Sandys three days later, a conference to frame just such a petition was arranged for the afternoon of 25 May.135 CJ, i. 973a, 973b, 976a, 222b; HP Commons 1604-29, iii. 208.

Sandys and Berkeley may not have been the only Members of the Commons to have acted as spokesmen for Cecil at around this time. On 12 May, the day after Sandys revived Cecil’s scheme on wardship, the veteran Member Sir Edward Hoby^‡ announced that there was more to be gained by continuing the war with Spain than there was by ending it. Ostensibly, this speech, which had been timed to coincide with the arrival of the Spanish and Flemish peace commissioners, looked like a veiled attack on Cecil by Hoby’s long-standing ally, the lord high admiral, Charles Howard^*, 1st earl of Nottingham, whose income from prizes was threatened by peace. However, Hoby was Cecil’s first cousin and had offered his services to the first minister on James’s accession. For all its apparent hostility, his speech may actually have served Cecil’s interests, since it demonstrated to Spain that strong support for war still existed, and that a peace treaty was not James’s only option. The French ambassador certainly interpreted Hoby’s intervention as a conciliar attempt to secure better terms from the Spanish by underhand means. From Cecil’s point of view, there were obvious advantages in employing Hoby, who was known to be something of a maverick and could plausibly be disavowed if necessary.136 A. Thrush, ‘Parliamentary Opposition to Peace with Spain in 1604’, PH, xxiii. 301-15.

For Cecil, the arrival of peace commissioners in the midst of a Parliament must have been a mixed blessing. On the one hand, it was helpful to remind Spain that a continuation of the war remained an option, but on the other the peace negotiations, which were only concluded on 6 July, the day before Parliament was prorogued, would necessarily distract Cecil and his colleagues on the Council from affairs at Westminster. This was unfortunate, to say the least, but it was probably not a situation that either Cecil or his colleagues on the Council could reasonably have foreseen, as Elizabethan assemblies had generally lasted only two or three months at most. By that reckoning, the Parliament should have ended by the time the peace commissioners arrived.

Even before the peace talks commenced on 20 May, Cecil’s attendance in the Lords began to tail off, suggesting that the chief minister was employed in entertaining the newly arrived Spanish and Flemish diplomats. Cecil nevertheless did his best to keep a close eye on proceedings. When, in late May, a bill to confirm a grant of property around Berwick-upon-Tweed to his friend and ally Sir George Home came before the Commons, Cecil called upon Sir John Stanhope^* (later 1st Lord Stanhope), vice chamberlain of the household and the only remaining councillor with a seat in the lower House aside from Secretary Herbert, to rally support for the measure.137 CJ, i. 228b; HMC Hatfield, xvi. 264. Inevitably, however, the effects of Cecil’s absence soon began to be felt in the Lords, where the chief minister was named to several committees in absentia. These included a committee appointed on 28 May for the bill to prevent married men from living in college with their wives and children, in which Cecil necessarily had an interest as chancellor of the university of Cambridge.138 LJ, ii. 332a. In addition, on 24 May the upper House was forced to postpone until the 26th the conference with the Commons on wardship, which was due to assemble the following afternoon. The peace commissioners were due to sit on the 25th and Cecil, with the best will in the world, could not be in two places at once.139 CJ, i. 225a; HMC 8th Rep. I, 95.

The postponement of the meeting with the Commons over wardship may not have been entirely attributable to the peace negotiations; it may also have been the first sign that Cecil had now had second thoughts about his scheme for composition.140 Croft, ‘Wardship’, 41. If that is the case, then Cecil neglected to inform Sir Edwin Sandys of his doubts. As late as the morning of 25 Mar. Sandys presented the Commons with a detailed set of propositions, thrashed out in committee, intended to form the basis for negotiations over wardship. Not until the following morning, after the House endorsed these propositions, were the Commons given any inkling that the scheme was no longer likely to find favour. Sir Robert Wroth, who had first suggested composition, announced that it was ‘impossible that any good could come of this course in the matter of wardship’. He was clearly speaking on Cecil’s instructions, for that afternoon, at the conference between the two Houses, the Lords advised the Commons to ‘forbear any further dealing therein’.141 CJ, i. 227a-228a; LJ, ii. 309b.

Why Cecil suddenly developed cold feet remains unclear. The most likely explanation is that he was unsettled by the officers of the Court of Wards, who stood to lose their jobs if agreement over composition was reached. They argued that abolishing wardship would cost the king £60,000 p.a., and that, since the Commons were also hoping to secure the surrender of certain additional feudal dues, such as respite of homage and licences of alienation, the total loss of annual revenue would be in the region of £120,000. Even allowing for considerable exaggeration in these figures, Cecil must have realized, as Pauline Croft has observed, that ‘the king’s losses were likely to be far greater than any conceivable composition by the Commons’.142 Croft, ‘Wardship’, 43-4. Conrad Russell challenged this interpretation, arguing that the officers’ appeal made no difference to Cecil, as the lower House offered to compensate the officers for the loss of their posts. However, this overlooks the fact that the Commons never dealt with the officers’ explicit concern, raised in their petition, namely the cost to the king of abolition.143 Russell, Jas. VI and I and his English Parls. 22.

Aside from the officers’ petition, there may have been another important factor behind Cecil’s change of heart. James expected the first Parliament of his reign to vote him a subsidy, but Cecil may have realized that it was unlikely to do so if the Commons agreed to compound for wardship and purveyance. It is certainly striking that as soon as the Lords announced that composition was to be abandoned, they reminded the Commons that they had not yet voted supply.144 HMC Portland, ix. 12. It seems unlikely that Cecil decided not to proceed with composition because James was concerned for the future of wardship north of the border, as Russell claimed.145 Russell, Jas. VI and I and his English Parls. 23. Although the Commons’ attention was certainly drawn to Scottish wardship, James did not object when composition was next debated in Parliament, in 1610.

The Commons were understandably dismayed at the rejection of their offer to compound, but they were also angry at being rebuked for demanding more from the king ‘than of any of predecessors since or before the Conquest’. The scheme to compound had originated with Cecil, yet the Lords behaved as though it had arisen in the Commons. The accusation of presumption simply added insult to injury. How far Cecil was responsible for this insensitive treatment of the Commons is unclear, but it would not have been necessary to rebuff the lower House at all had he calculated the cost of abolition correctly in the first place. Not surprisingly, less than a week later, the Commons exacted their revenge. When Sir George More^‡, the vice chamberlain of the Exchequer, offered a bill to replace purveyance with composition, the matter was ordered to be set aside until the next session, even though Sir Walter Cope^‡, perhaps Cecil’s closest confidant in the Commons, now offered to value purveyance at just £30,000 p.a., a considerable concession.146 CJ, i. 984b; Croft, ‘Purveyance’, 18.

These damaging episodes may have undermined James’s confidence in Cecil’s ability to continue managing the Commons. At the very least, it must have been clear by the end of May at the latest that Cecil, now almost wholly occupied with the peace negotiations, had increasingly little time to devote to parliamentary business. Since he still expected the Commons to vote supply, James decided to take matters into his own hands. Aware that puritan Members of the lower House were opposed to a fresh set of canons then being drafted by Convocation, the king entered into private negotiations with Sir Francis Hastings^‡, the chairman of the Commons’ committee for religion, who was not, and never had been, a Cecil client. Despite the wardship fiasco, Hastings was instructed to discover whether there was any appetite in the Commons for subsidies. On 12 June he reported back – via Sir George Home – that a demand for supply would be unwelcome, as the subsidies voted in the last Elizabethan Parliament were still being collected and there was a widespread expectation that peace would result in fewer taxes. This was not at all what James wished to hear, and one week later Hastings initiated a subsidy debate in the Commons. The result was little short of disastrous. Not only was the motion defeated but also an embarrassed Hastings felt obliged to apologize to the Commons. James was forced to deny that he had ever sought a subsidy.147 HP Commons 1604-29, i. 23-4, 381-2.

The extent to which Cecil can be held responsible for this débâcle is unclear. On the face of it, the blame lay squarely with James. After all, Cecil continued to be diverted by the peace negotiations –he and his fellow peace commissioners sat the day before the subsidy debate148 HMC 8th Rep. I, 96. - and can have had little opportunity to influence proceedings or mobilize support in the Commons. However, it is hard to believe that James bypassed Cecil altogether. Cecil was certainly kept informed of the behind-the-scenes negotiations, as Hastings’ letter to Home – the original, not a copy - is among his papers. It may be significant, too, that Hastings was seconded in his motion for supply by Cecil’s cousin, Sir Edward Hoby.149 Letters of Sir Francis Hastings ed. C. Cross (Som. Rec. Soc. lxix) 85-6; CJ, i. 242a. Like James, Cecil probably discounted Hastings’ gloomy assessment on the grounds that, under Elizabeth, the Commons had never denied the crown supply. If so, then Cecil had committed a second serious blunder in the space of three weeks.

One reason Cecil may have thrown caution to the wind was that he had become increasingly alarmed at the state of the royal finances. James had been on the throne of England for less than15 months, but in that short space of time he had given away considerable sums and large amounts of crown land. By early July at the latest Cecil, presumably acting in concert with the lord treasurer, Thomas Sackville^*, 1st earl of Dorset, decided to take steps to protect James from himself. A bill to entail a large chunk of the crown lands was hastily drafted by the attorney general, who presented it to Cecil, probably on the morning of 3 July.150 HMC Hatfield, xvi. 244. The following day, the bill was rushed through the Lords and sent to the Commons, where it received two readings. However, after close scrutiny by the lower House, it was found to contain many serious defects. A conference between the two Houses was hastily arranged, but Cecil, though named to the Lords’ committee, may not have attended, as the peace commissioners sat that same day, 5 July. His presence was perhaps immaterial, as there was now not enough time left to address the concerns of the Commons, who announced the following morning that they had decided to let the bill sleep.151 LJ, ii. 339b, 340a, 341b; CJ, i. 252a, 252b, 253b, 1002a; HMC 8th Rep. I, 97.

Preparations for the second session, 1604-5

Although badly shaken by his first experience of the English Parliament, James could not bring himself to be angry with Cecil, whom he increasingly referred to affectionately as ‘my little beagle’. On the contrary, shortly after the prorogation, he commiserated with his chief minister for having spent ‘these three months past’ in hunting ‘cold scents through the dry beaten ways of London’. Nevertheless, he proved unable to resist advising Cecil to beware in future ‘of too greedily drawing in the lyam [i.e. leash], for you know how that trick hath already galled your neck’.152 Letters of King Jas. VI and I, 233. One reason for the king’s good mood, perhaps, was that the peace negotiations had finally ended. On 14 July Cecil and his fellow commissioners sealed the articles of agreement,153 ‘Jnl. of Levinus Munck’, 253. leaving only the formal signing to be performed. James was delighted, and immediately gave orders that Cecil – the chief architect of the treaty - should be raised to the rank of a viscount and granted precedence over all others of the same standing (though there were then only two other English viscounts).154 Bodl., Ashmole 62, f. 29v; ‘Camden Diary’, 3. The other viscounts were Thomas Howard^*, 3rd Viscount Howard of Bindon, and Anthony Maria Browne^*, 2nd Viscount Montagu. Cecil, who was also granted the right to sport a coronet by a tame herald, contrary to convention, thereupon adopted the title Viscount Cranborne (after Cranborne in Dorset, where he had recently purchased three manors).155 Coll. of Arms, WA, ceremonials I, f. 35; Stone, Fam. and Fortune, 34-5. He took no less pleasure in his triumph than James, and after feasting and entertaining the Spanish and Flemish delegations at Theobalds,156 Carleton to Chamberlain, 61-2. he seems to have commissioned the now famous group portrait of all the peace negotiators. In this image, probably painted by his favourite artist, Jan de Critz the elder, Cecil is shown nearest to the viewer, with the treaty placed squarely before him.157 Cecil’s responsibility for the painting was first suggested by Pauline Croft at the conference held at Somerset House in 2004 to commemorate the four hundredth anniversary of the treaty.

Cecil had good reason to feel pleased, for in addition to having his reputation and status enhanced he also acquired a Spanish pension.158 A.J. Loomie, Toleration and Diplomacy: the Religious Issue in Anglo-Spanish Relations, 1603-5 (Trans. Amer. Philosophical Soc. n.s. liii. pt. 6), 52. However, the combined effect of Parliament and the treaty negotiations had taken a considerable toll on his health. As early as March he had fallen ill, and although he had recovered shortly thereafter he was again unwell by 21 July.159 HMC Hatfield, xvi. 179. Consequently, once the king signed the treaty (19 Aug.) and he himself had been formally invested with his new title (20 Aug.), Cecil, or rather Cranborne as he was now known, set out for Bath to visit the natural springs.160 ‘Jnl. of Levinus Munck’, 254. However, on reaching Wiltshire he turned back after learning of a severe plague outbreak in the town.161 Bodl., Ashmole 62, f. 31v; HMC Hatfield, xvi. 309, 313-14, 465.

It was thus without the benefit of a badly needed period of rest and recuperation that Cranborne returned to work in early September, when he and the Council debated the crown’s policy towards England’s Catholics. James was grateful for the support he had received from the Catholic community on Elizabeth’s death, and for this reason the penal laws had not been strictly enforced since his accession. Recently, however, several Catholics who had paid their fines for not attending church had been imprisoned by magistrates appalled at the leniency now being shown. Cranborne, who regarded loyal Catholics as ‘well affected subjects to the state’, disapproved of this presumptuous behaviour. He advised the king to continue to refrain from rigorous enforcement, as England’s Catholic ‘govern themselves moderately and well’ and ‘intend nothing against the state of our country’. When Lord Bruce of Kinloss [S] objected that, without harsh treatment, the number of Catholics would increase to such an extent that James would be driven from the throne, Cranborne retorted that he feared no such thing, ‘as I have never understood that people rebel for the sake of religion but more for politics and matters of state under pretext of religion’. Like many moderate Protestants, Cranborne was impressed that the Catholic community had not rebelled during the war with Spain.162 Loomie, Toleration and Diplomacy, 56; HMC Hatfield, xv. 131. (Although two priests had recently plotted to capture the king, their conspiracy had aroused widespread horror among their fellow Catholics).163 A. Fraser, Gunpowder Plot, 63-4. Cecil may also have had entirely selfish reasons for wishing to continue the lenient treatment of Catholics, as one of his key allies at court was the crypto-Catholic councillor Henry Howard^*, earl of Northampton.

It was not only the treatment of England’s Catholic community that occupied Cranborne’s attention at this time; so too did the parlous state of the royal finances. The Council remained alarmed at the king’s proclivity for impoverishing himself, and on 20 Sept. Cranborne (as de facto keeper of the privy seal) and Lord Chancellor Ellesmere were authorized to stay any grant of crown land, even if made by James personally, until such time as legislation creating a royal entail was enacted.164 CSP Dom. 1603-10, p. 150; Egerton Pprs. 396-7. It seems likely that Cranborne was behind this instruction, for despite holding no formal responsibility for the royal finances he frequently berated James for giving ‘in an unresponsible sort’.165 HMC Hatfield, xix. 185. Cranborne was probably in the forefront that autumn of attempts to increase royal income, and in particular the revenue arising from fines payable by those who had illegally created clearings, or assarts, in land deemed to be royal forest. In so doing, he courted unpopularity, for only recently the Commons had sought to abolish these fines.166 CJ, i. 980b.

More significant than assarts, however, were the great customs, which Cecil and the Council concluded would be more profitable if they were farmed. Over the summer of 1604 Cranborne put together a syndicate of interested merchants, as did his fellow councillors Northampton and Dorset. Although one of these rival consortia offered to pay £26,000 a year more than the crown currently received, Cranborne and his associates promised the king £28,500 over and above his normal receipts. Not surprisingly, therefore, it was Cranborne’s syndicate that was awarded the farm for seven years in December.167 Illustrations of Brit. Hist. iii. 104; CSP Ven. 1603-7, p. 192; A.P. Newton, ‘Establishment of the Great Farm of the English Customs’, TRHS, 4th ser. i. 149. Cranborne was now set to receive a ‘wonderful revenue, more than ever he had’. However, shortly thereafter, mindful perhaps that continued association with the farmers would compromise his ability to regulate their activities, he sold his interest in the syndicate for £6,000.168 Letters of Philip Gawdy, 150; Stone, Fam. and Fortune, 14-15; CSP Ven. 1603-7, p. 198. This was not the first time he put the king’s interests ahead of his own private profit, for in November 1603 he returned to the king half a dozen manors that he had acquired from the crown only the previous year.169 E214/1629. On the 1602 purchase of these properties, see Stone, Fam. and Fortune, 35-6.

Cranborne’s chief preoccupation over the autumn of 1604 was with the Union. Although both the Commons and the judges had rejected the king’s proposal to replace England and Scotland with a new entity known as Great Britain, James had not abandoned his scheme to unite his two kingdoms. On the contrary, he had agreed to appoint commissioners from the parliaments of both kingdoms, who would establish a framework for the Union that would be offered to the parliaments of England and Scotland for their approval. Cecil, who approved of this scheme, had been named to the commission the previous May, and had personally forwarded a copy of the act creating the commissioners to the Scottish secretary of state.170 LJ, ii. 296a; ‘Jnl. of Levinus Munck’, 252. In contrast to the anxiety which he had felt ahead of the 1604 session, Cranborne was optimistic that this new approach would succeed. Writing to Shrewsbury in October, he commented favourably on the quality on the newly arrived Scottish commissioners and declared that he hoped that ‘all will fall out well, to his Majesty’s contentment’. He was not at all perturbed by a proclamation announcing that henceforth James would be known as king of Great Britain, since this pronouncement had no power in law to abolish the kingdoms of England and Scotland. Indeed, he was entirely relaxed about the change of royal style, joking that he was now ‘a true South Briton’.171 Illustrations of Brit. Hist. iii. 99, 102.

After a false start, caused by the fact that half the Scottish representatives had not yet arrived, the commission met for the first time in the Painted Chamber at Westminster on 29 Oct., when Cranborne spoke in commendation of the project. It soon became apparent that the English and Scottish commissioners were divided along national lines on the subject of naturalization. Although the English commissioners, supported by the judges, agreed that all Scots born since James ascended the English throne were automatically naturalized Englishmen, the two sides were split on the subject of those Scots born before his accession, the so called ante-nati, who would be able to inherit land and hold office in England if they were regarded as having been naturalized already. The Scots argued that if James himself was automatically naturalized on becoming king of England, so too were all his Scottish subjects, since ‘the accessory doth follow the principal’. They also claimed that if it was reasonable to regard a child born on the day of James’s accession as automatically naturalized, it was ‘a nice difference to exclude those that are but a day older’. In making these arguments, the Scots were replying to a paper drafted by Cranborne that has not survived.172 SP14/10/15. However, they failed to prevail, as James, doubtless guided by Cranborne, was eventually persuaded that enabling legislation would be needed in respect of the ante-nati of both kingdoms. Cranborne was extremely pleased with this outcome, as was James, who declared, somewhat optimistically, that ‘the Union is already made’.173 HMC Hatfield, xvi. 359-60; Letters of King Jas. VI and I, 236. However, when, in late November, the king was sent Cecil’s draft of the preamble to the Instrument of the Union – the document drawn up by the commissioners enshrining their agreement – he was dismayed at its tone, which was insufficiently enthusiastic. Indeed, he declared that he would rather omit the preface entirely than allow it to stand unaltered. After remonstrating with Cranborne by letter, he cut short a hunting trip and returned to London early in December in order to attend to the matter in person.174 HMC Hatfield, xx. 275 (incorrectly calendared 1608); xviii. 373-4 (incorrectly calendared 1606, being the enclosure to the aforementioned letter); Illustrations of Brit. Hist. iii. 111-12; B. Galloway, Union of Eng. and Scotland, 1603-8, pp. 75-6. Not until 6 Dec. was Cranborne able to present the completed Instrument to James on behalf of all the commissioners.175 Add. 26635, f. 23.

On the face of it, the Instrument had been prepared with time to spare, as Parliament was not due to reassemble until 7 February 1605. However, given the hostility the Union had aroused earlier that year, there was a strong argument for postponing the meeting to allow James and Cranborne time in which to win over badly needed support. Proroguing Parliament would also deny a public platform to those puritans who had recently petitioned the king against clerical subscription. For these reasons, the king announced shortly before Christmas that Parliament would not reassemble until early October.176 Winwood’s Memorials, ii. 45; CSP Ven. 1603-7, p. 202; Russell, King Jas. VI and I and his English Parls. 42-3. Although Cranborne and several other members of the upper House gathered in the Lords’ chamber on 7 Feb., this was merely for the sake of formality, as the only business dealt with, aside from the formal introduction of the newly ennobled Lord Denny (Edward Denny^*, later earl of Norwich), was the prorogation.177 LJ, ii. 349a.

The events of the previous year had demonstrated that Cranborne was severely over-stretched and not always well enough for work. Cranborne himself realized that there was an expectation at court that he would seek to reduce his workload, and over the winter of 1604/5 he tried to persuade the former diplomat Sir Thomas Bodley^‡ to assist him as secretary of state. However, Bodley, who had been approached more than once towards the end of Elizabeth’s reign with offers of the secretaryship itself, resisted all of Cranborne’s blandishments.178 HP Commons 1558-1603, i. 454; Illustrations of Brit. Hist. iii. 122; Winwood’s Memorials, ii. 45; Life of Sir Thomas Bodley ed. J. Lane, 13. For Cranborne, Bodley’s refusal was perhaps not unwelcome for, like his father before him, he enjoyed monopolizing power,179 ‘State of Eng. (1600) by Sir Thos. Wilson’ ed. F.J. Fisher, Cam. Misc. XVI (Cam. Soc. 3rd ser. lii), 42. and may have been relieved that he would not have to delegate any of his authority. However, Bodley’s refusal increased the pressure on him to surrender the secretaryship.

It was against this backdrop that on 4 May 1605 Cranborne was elevated to the earldom of Salisbury. On the face of it, this promotion, occasioned by the christening of the king’s new daughter Princess Mary, was simply a final confirmation, if one were needed, that Cecil’s position was secure.180 Oxford DNB, x. 752. However, this was far from being the whole story. Eight days after Cranborne’s installation at Greenwich, Levinus Munck^‡, secretary to the new earl, told the English ambassador to The Hague that there was now a widespread expectation ‘that my lord will shortly resign his office of secretary of state and assume some greater office of state more suitable to his calling’. According to Munck, the offices under consideration were the presidency of the Council, which was largely honorific, and the lord keepership of the privy seal, the duties of which Salisbury already performed.181 Winwood’s Memorials, ii. 59. Taken together, these remarks suggest that Cranborne’s elevation to an earldom formed part of an elaborate plan to ease the chief minister out of the secretaryship by enhancing his standing. The author of this scheme is unknown, but it may be significant that, the day before his installation, Salisbury persuaded his colleagues in Star Chamber, then about to hear a case involving another peer, to order the postponement of the creation of Northampton as a knight of the Garter.182 Les Reportes del Cases in Camera Stellata, 204. This was not the sort of request that a man makes on behalf of his friend, and Northampton, who had yet to attain high office, had begun to hate Cecil.183 For a more detailed study of this episode and the early signs of rivalry with Northampton, see HENRY HOWARD. On Northampton’s hatred of Salisbury, see P. Croft, ‘Reputation of Robert Cecil’, TRHS, 6th ser. i. 62.

The expectation that Salisbury would relinquish the secretaryship soon after his elevation was quickly dashed, as Salisbury had no intention of surrendering his control of domestic and foreign policy. As Munck observed, his doubts about the competence of those tipped to succeed him suggested that he would ‘keep his place longer than the world doth think’.184 Munck appears to have been alluding here to Sir Henry Neville. Over the spring and summer of 1605, he and the Council searched out new or under-exploited sources of revenue and renewed their earlier attempts to persuade the king to curb his extravagant spending. James was not unmindful of this advice, and in April 1605 Salisbury, then still a viscount, took advantage of a rare moment of royal self-control to order the alteration of a grant made out to a Scottish courtier.185 CSP Dom. 1603-10, p. 212. However, in the long term, Salisbury and his fellow councillors were beating their heads against a brick wall. In July 1605 they told the king that the royal finances could not be restored to health ‘when the garden of your Majesty’s treasure shall be made a common pasture for all that are in need, or have unreasonable desires’. They were, they declared, losing the battle ‘to restore the credit of your Exchequer payments and to supply the growing charges which daily will overtake you’. Although hopeful that the commission for assarts would soon bear fruit, they beseeched the king to ‘forbear any more grants or promises whereby your own receipts may be diminished’.186 P. Croft, ‘A Collection of Several Speeches’, Cam. Misc. XXIX (Cam. Soc. 4th ser. xxxiv), 274-8. For the dating of this letter, see ibid. 247. This letter was signed by the whole Council, but the frankness of its tone suggests the penmanship of Salisbury, as no other councillor was ever so forthright with James on financial matters. Moreover, although the whole Council sat over the autumn to retrench royal spending, it was with Salisbury that James corresponded on the subject of his ‘needless and unseasonable profusion of expenses’.187 CSP Dom. 1603-10, p. 236; HMC Hatfield, xvii. 463-4; Letters of King Jas. VI and I, 261, 269-70.

Salisbury appears to have realized that James’s inability to curtail his spending might have serious implications for the forthcoming session of Parliament, which was due to begin on 3 October. One of the main purposes of this meeting was to vote the king supply, for in the aftermath of the 1604 session it had been necessary to compel the king’s subjects to lend money upon privy seals, which now needed to be repaid. However, there was already a widespread feeling in the Commons that now that the country was at peace with Spain, and the king enjoyed the revenues of Scotland, subsidies were not needed.188 CSP Ven. 1603-7, pp. 270, 285. Unless it could be demonstrated that the royal finances were being restored to health, an already difficult task might prove impossible. Time was needed to cut the king’s spending, to see what improvements the new commission for assarts might yield, and to confer privately with some of the leading Members of the Commons ahead of the meeting to remove any obstacles to a vote of supply, such as purveyance, which was more unpopular than ever as James was frequently in the country out hunting. However, such an opportunity would not arise until Michaelmas term began on 9 Oct., by which time Parliament would already have assembled. Sometime during the fourth week of July, probably while James was his guest at Theobalds, Salisbury therefore requested a further prorogation. He also wrote to the rest of the Council setting out his reasons and asking them for their approval.189 HMC Hatfield, xvi. 425-6. The court is known to have been at Theobalds on 22 and 24 July: Stowe 168, f. 76; Winwood’s Memorials, ii. 97-9. Salisbury carefully avoided mentioning the king’s overspending. On the increasing unpopularity of purveyance caused by James’s frequent hunting trips, see CSP Ven. 1603-7, p. 285. This was tactful, for although Salisbury was unquestionably James’s chief minister and took all important decisions, he never laid himself open to the charge that he monopolized the king’s counsel, unlike George Villiers^*, 1st duke of Buckingham two decades later. As he doubtless suspected, his colleagues shared his concerns, and consequently it was decided to delay the opening of Parliament until 5 November.190 For the replies of Ellesmere, Dorset and Shrewsbury, see HMC Hatfield, xvii. 345; Cal. of Talbot Pprs. ed. G Batho (Derbys. Arch. Soc. rec. ser. iv), 243.

In order to secure a pliant Commons, Salisbury not only planned to sound out many of its Members ahead of the meeting but also to increase the number with seats whose support he could count on. Like James, he was painfully aware that he and his fellow councillors had made insufficient efforts in 1604 to obtain seats for their friends, relatives, servants and clients.191 On James’s view, see CSP Ven. 1603-7, p. 268. Indeed, he had helped secure places for only about nine men, a drop in the ocean given the size of the House’s membership, which numbered nearly 480.192 Sir Walter Cope and Sir Thomas Knyvett (Westminster); Robert Barker and Edward Alford (Colchester); Sir Roger Wilbraham (Callington); Sir Henry Goodyer and Sir George Hervey (West Looe); Christopher Parkins and John Hare (Morpeth). Over the summer and autumn of 1605 he therefore sought to fill vacancies that had arisen with men of his own choosing. However, he encountered little success. At Hereford, where a by-election to replace the townsman Walter Hurdman^‡ was held, his letter of nomination was disregarded, even though the local bishop, Robert Bennett^*, laboured hard on his behalf. It was much the same story at Newcastle-under-Lyme and Bere Alston. Only at West Looe, where his client Sir George Harvey^‡ had died, was Salisbury’s candidate returned.193 HP Commons 1604-29, ii. 64, 367-8; HMC Hatfield, xvii. 360, 445.

In the weeks before Parliament finally reassembled, the king was consumed with worry. He urged Salisbury to ‘be earnest in trying and severe in punishing the thievish purveyors’ in the hope that this would moderate the Commons’ anger, and fretted over whether the Commons would start looking into the government of the marches of Wales, ‘for it will be both a great dishonour and inconvenient unto me that the Parliament shall bandy that matter amongst them’. He also instructed Salisbury ‘to take all the pains you can to inform and tune well the Parliament men’.194 Letters of King Jas. VI and I, 265. For his part, Salisbury, like his fellow councillors, feared that recent decisions to farm out the great customs and increase the duties payable would arouse the ire of the lower House.195 CSP Ven. 1603-7, p. 281. Indeed, he dreaded the prospect of another meeting. Less than four weeks before the session began, after setting out the chief objectives of the session to England’s ambassador to Brussels, he confessed that ‘while these things are a-doing you can well guess in what purgatory I shall live’.196 Stowe 168, f. 168.

The Gunpowder Plot and the parliamentary session of 1605-6

In late October, while still preoccupied with preparations for the forthcoming session, Salisbury received an unexpected visit from William Parker^*, 5th Lord Monteagle, a minor Catholic peer. Monteagle revealed that he had been sent an anonymous letter warning him to avoid the opening of Parliament. Salisbury initially treated this letter with scepticism, for there were many Catholic peers and, as he later observed, it was ‘very improbable that only one nobleman should be warned and no more’.197 Winwood’s Memorials, ii. 171. However, he showed it to his Council colleagues, who in turn suggested bringing it to the king’s attention. By 1 Nov. Salisbury was inclined to believe that the letter was the work of ‘some fool or madman’, but James prudently ordered the palace of Westminster to be searched.198 State Trials, ii. 196-8.

The subsequent discovery of a plan to blow up the king and Parliament necessarily threw Salisbury’s carefully laid plans for the parliamentary session into chaos. Now entirely occupied with uncovering the nature and extent of the Plot, Salisbury did not attend Parliament when it assembled on the 5th. He quickly learned that the conspiracy was the handiwork of Catholic extremists, some of whom had links with the Spanish Netherlands. One of the chief plotters, Guy Fawkes, admitted having served eight years as an ensign in the English volunteer forces fighting against the Dutch, and under torture he revealed that the Plot had been supported by the pro-Jesuit intelligencer Hugh Owen, who lived in Flanders.199 P. Croft, ‘Serving the Archduke’, PH, lxiv. 296; Fraser, 189-90; Stowe 168, f. 221r-v. Salisbury also rapidly learned that the Plot owed its origins to the 1604 peace treaty with Spain. Those involved had previously placed their faith in Spain to overthrow the English Protestant state, but shortly after the arrival of Spanish and Flemish peace negotiators in May 1604, they had concluded that the only way to achieve their objective was to take drastic action themselves.200 Fraser, 97-8; Nicholls, 134.

Almost as soon as the Plot was discovered, many Catholics, both at home and abroad, began denying that their co-religionists were its prime instigators. At first, those who accepted that there had been a plot at all alleged that it was the work of puritans, eager to bring about a republic or put an end to James’s lenient treatment of the Catholic community.201 HMC Hatfield, xvii. 508. However, it was subsequently suggested that the Plot was actually concocted by the Privy Council, some of whom had ‘secretly spun the web to entangle these poor gentlemen, as did Secretary Walsingham in other cases’.202 Nicholls, 213. Before long, Salisbury himself was identified as the prime culprit. Indeed, in one libel, circulating in London in January 1606, the king’s chief minister was described as ‘the only match which kindled the king’s displeasure against the Roman Catholics’.203 Diary of Walter Yonge ed. G. Roberts (Cam. Soc. xli), 2-3. Catholic historians have enthusiastically blamed Salisbury for the Gunpowder Plot ever since.

It is hard to believe that Salisbury had any hand in the conspiracy.204 For a persuasive rebuttal of the claim that he did, see Nicholls, 213-21. Some have claimed, both then and since, that Salisbury was motivated by a burning hatred of Catholicism and was eager to end James’s lax enforcement of the penal laws.205 F. Edwards, ‘Still Investigating Gunpowder Plot’, Recusant Hist. xxi. 309. In fact, as has been seen, Salisbury was the most outspoken supporter of leniency on the Council. Though he did not support formal toleration, neither did the crypto-Catholic Northampton. To Salisbury, as to most of his contemporaries, it was inconceivable that England could have more than one established religion. It has also been suggested that the Gunpowder Plot was engineered by Salisbury to provide a pretext for preventing the flow of English recruits to the Spanish Netherlands.206 Ibid. 307. The 1604 peace treaty with Spain had allowed the Spanish Netherlands, like the United Provinces, to raise troops in England, a concession made for the sake of even-handedness, but instead of the trickle of recruits that had been expected, large numbers flocked abroad. Yet while Salisbury feared that these soldiers might form the basis for an invading army, there is no evidence that he had reached this conclusion before October 1605, by which time the Plot was already well advanced.207 Croft, ‘Serving the Archduke’, 294. Even if Salisbury had become aware of his mistake much earlier, the genesis of the conspiracy pre-dated the peace treaty with Spain by three months. Not even Salisbury could have plotted to undermine a treaty that had still to be negotiated.

Salisbury has been accused of inventing much of the evidence against the plotters, but it is far from clear that any of the key documents – including Thomas Wintour’s allegedly suspect confession – were falsified.208 On the suspicions surrounding Wintour’s confession, see Nicholls, 28-9. As S.R. Gardiner observed, it would have been extremely difficult for Salisbury to fabricate evidence, as four other councillors were involved in the interrogation of the surviving conspirators: Thomas Howard^*, 1st earl of Suffolk, Charles Howard, 1st earl of Nottingham, Henry Howard, earl of Northampton, and Edward Somerset^*, 4th earl of Worcester. Skilful though he was in steering the Council, Salisbury could hardly have persuaded his colleagues to connive in such an enterprise, not least because, with the exception of Nottingham, those involved were all Catholic sympathizers.209 S.R. Gardiner, What Gunpowder Plot Was, 24-5. It has been claimed that the Council consisted of men entirely dependent on Salisbury,210 Edwards, 307-8. but only Suffolk can reasonably be described as Salisbury’s sidekick. Worcester and Nottingham enjoyed cordial relations with Salisbury, certainly, but Northampton was now a former ally, who had tried to clip Salisbury’s wings as recently as May 1605. The Spanish ambassador’s claim, in January 1606, that Salisbury ‘manages everything here’, should not be taken too literally.211 A.J. Loomie, ‘Sir Robert Cecil and the Spanish Embassy’, BIHR, xlii. 34.

Not surprisingly, the widely held belief that Salisbury had orchestrated the Gunpowder Plot, only then to betray those involved, placed his life in jeopardy. He received several anonymous death threats, and in May a would-be assassin and the priest who had recruited him were arrested.212 [R. Cecil], An Answere to Certaine Scandalous Papers, scattered abroad under colour of a Catholicke Admonition (1606), sig. B3v; Diary of Walter Yonge, 2-3, 9; HMC Cowper, i. 62; Ambassades de M. de la Boderie, i. 70-1. Salisbury affected to be unconcerned, telling Shrewsbury that these threats ‘do not move any one pulse in my body, for God hath numbered my days already too long’.213 Cal. of Talbot Pprs. 250. More anxious to rebut the charge that he had engineered the Plot, he penned a refutation, which was printed and in circulation by the third week in January.214 An Answere to Certaine Scandalous Papers; Croft, ‘Serving the Archduke’, 297n; T. Birch, Ct. and Times of Jas. I, i. 48.

In view of the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot, Parliament was adjourned on 9 Nov. 1605. It did not reassemble until 21 Jan. 1606 when, inevitably, attention turned to the Catholic threat at home rather than to the expected main business of the session - the Union, reform of purveyance and subsidies. Many in the Commons were convinced that the Plot stemmed from the lenient treatment of Catholics, who had been led to expect toleration only to have their hopes dashed.215 Sir George More complained of ‘encouragement to papists’: CJ, i. 257b. For the Catholic expectation of toleration following James’s accession, see for instance Fraser, p. xxxiv. These Members therefore supported a bill to enforce the penal laws, which was rapidly given two readings in the Commons. Although this measure was a distraction from the crown’s intended agenda, it may have been introduced by Salisbury. Following the end of the session, several members of the Council reportedly blamed Salisbury for the bill, and some years later one of the earl’s former secretaries, Sir George Calvert^‡, a well-placed source, confirmed that Salisbury was indeed behind it.216 A.J. Loomie, ‘Sir Robert Cecil and the Spanish Embassy’, BIHR, xlii. 33, 34. Salisbury himself never admitted to having a hand in the bill, and may even have tried to conceal his involvement: when the crypto-Catholic Sir Thomas Lake^‡ asked him the identity of the bill’s author, Salisbury complained to James, who denied having put Lake up to it.217 Letters of King Jas. VI and I, 280. On the bill, see CJ, i. 257b, 258a. Salisbury’s nervousness was understandable, for were he to admit responsibility, he would inevitably lend credence to those Catholic libels which claimed that he had engineered the Gunpowder Plot in order to introduce severe new laws against Catholics.218 An Answere to Certaine Scandalous Papers, sig. C4.

On the face of it, Salisbury, the leading advocate of leniency on the Council, had revealed himself as a Catholic persecutor after all. However, appearances can be deceptive. Whether Salisbury liked it or not, the Gunpowder Plot had dramatically changed political realities. The parliamentary pressure to enforce the penal laws was now irresistible. Unless the anti-Catholic hawks in the lower House were appeased, achieving the king’s main objectives – a grant of supply, reform of purveyance and the Commons’ assent to the Instrument of the Union – was likely to prove extremely difficult. It would be better to deal with this matter at the outset rather than press ahead with the crown’s agenda regardless. None of this meant, however, that Salisbury had now abandoned his view that loyal Catholics should be treated with moderation. On the contrary, following the passage of anti-Catholic legislation, he told the English ambassador to Madrid (in which city he was now vilified as an extreme persecutor of Catholics) that the laws recently passed by Parliament were merely enacted ‘in terrorem’, and that the king’s policy remained one of ‘lenity and moderation’ rather than ‘severity’.219 Winwood’s Memorials, ii. 236; SP9/150, p. 145. This claim was entirely accurate, as the following year a clearly dismayed House of Commons drafted a petition asking the king to enforce the recusancy laws.220 CJ, i. 375a, 384a, 384b; Bowyer Diary, 330-2. The petition, which is discussed in further detail below, was never presented.

The evidence that Salisbury remained committed to a policy of moderation is plentiful. In February 1608 he warned the judges, then about to go on circuit, to avoid executing Catholic priests wherever possible for fear of playing into the hands of the pope, who wished ‘to draw the king to blood, and so the people to greater despair and alienation’.221 Letters and Life of Francis Bacon ed. J. Spedding, iv. 91. Nine months later, he quarrelled at the Council table with the archbishop of Canterbury, Richard Bancroft^*, who demanded that any recusant who paid his fines should be subjected to further penalties.222 Loomie, ‘Cecil and the Spanish Embassy’, 42. In November 1609, Salisbury ordered the arrest of a number of royal pursuivants for violent treatment of recusants in Oxfordshire.223 HMC Rutland, i. 420. Salisbury also remained personally sympathetic to individual Catholics whose loyalty he did not suspect, such as the 4th Lord Vaux (Edward Vaux^*), and maintained a wide circle of Catholic friends.224 P. Croft, ‘Religion of Robert Cecil’, HJ, xxxiv. 784; EDWARD VAUX.

For Salisbury, the recusancy legislation of 1606 was primarily an opportunity for the Commons to let off steam. However, it also served another important purpose. In the aftermath of the Plot, Salisbury was determined to stem the flow of English recruits to the Spanish Netherlands. By 1 Feb. 1606 a clause ‘concerning such as go over as soldiers’ was in the process of being drafted by the Commons’ committee on the recusancy bill.225 Bowyer Diary, 21. There can be little doubt that Salisbury was behind this clause as, one week later, Sir Christopher Parkins^‡ told the Commons that the Englishmen serving in Flanders ‘did not aim at the Low Countries but intended all their purposes against England’. Parkins owed his seat to Salisbury, who informed him as early as December 1605 that his services in the Commons might soon be required. Interestingly, Parkins was seconded by Sir Edwin Sandys, who had acted as one of Salisbury’s spokesmen on wardship in 1604.226 Croft, ‘Serving the Archduke’, 299; Bowyer Diary, 28-9.

These speeches soon found their mark. Four days later Salisbury informed the English ambassador to Brussels that the Commons were trying to prevent Englishmen from serving in the army of Flanders. Significantly, Salisbury omitted to reveal his own role in this matter, which included theatrically producing a paper by the king at a recent meeting between both Houses. In this document, James proposed that henceforward no Englishman should be allowed to undertake military service for a Catholic prince.227 HMC Hatfield, xviii. 50. Salisbury’s coyness about his role in trying to stem the flow of recruits to Flanders is not surprising, as he was then attempting to persuade the rulers of the Spanish Netherlands to extradite Hugh Owen.228 Winwood’s Memorials, ii. 189. Persuading the government in Brussels to hand over Owen would be impossible if they knew the truth.

As well as trying to cut off the supply of soldiers to Flanders, Salisbury was also behind an attempt to prevent the flow of Englishmen to seminaries in Spain, whose priests arguably posed as great a threat as the English soldiers in Flanders. On the first day of the renewed session, a bill to require all young men travelling abroad to take the oath of supremacy made its appearance in the lower House. Introduced by Salisbury’s client Sir Robert Wroth, it was supported by the Commons’ Speaker, who ‘affirmed plainly and confidently that within one year last past more than two thousand youths ... had passed over into Spain’.229 Ibid. 2; CJ, i. 257b, 258a, 259a.

By seeming to make life more difficult for England’s Catholic community, Salisbury secured a measure of control over the Commons in the wake of the Gunpowder Plot. However, towards the end of January Wroth, his chief spokesman in the lower House, suddenly died. To make matters worse, he himself fell ill again, causing him to miss sittings of the Lords on 23 and 25 January.230 SP14/18/67. He was back on his feet by 27 Jan., when he participated in the trial of the surviving Gunpowder plotters, at which he ‘did noticeably answer to those points which concerned the king’.231 Birch, Ct. and Times of Jas. I, i. 47. However, though he resumed his seat in the Lords the following day, he was again absent from the upper House on 1 February.

This combination of illness and Wroth’s untimely death created a window of opportunity for those in the Commons who wished to seize the initiative over purveyance. On 29 Jan., two days after Wroth died, a bill to deprive the crown of the right to set the price of goods bought – one of the main benefits of purveyance to the king - received a first reading in the Commons. Ironically, its author, John Hare^‡, owed his seat in the Commons to Salisbury, who continued to favour composition rather than abolition. Salisbury attempted to head off the bill at its second reading on 30 Jan., employing the services of a client of the earl of Worcester, Sir Robert Johnson^‡, with whom he had privately discussed purveyance during the 1604 session.232 Croft, ‘Purveyance’, 23-4; HMC Hatfield, xviii. 55. However, Hare’s bill, which was predicated on the belief that purveyance was illegal, proved popular in the Commons, as it dispensed with the need for composition.

Hare’s bill put the already ill Salisbury on the back foot, and suggested that there were those in the Commons who were determined to set their own agenda. This was unwelcome news to Salisbury, who quickly realized that if the lower House was preoccupied with purveyance it was unlikely to be willing to turn its attention to the Union or supply. On 6 Feb., at a conference with the Commons on the treatment of recusants, Salisbury reminded the Commons that these two important subjects ‘must not lie longer asleep than mere necessity requires’.233 HMC Hatfield, xviii. 46. However, within a day or two of uttering these words, a looseness of the bowels confined Salisbury to his chamber, where he remained until 12 February.234 Stowe 168, f. 326v. He evidently tried to conceal this latest bout of ill health, for on 10 Feb. Members of the Commons were reported to have remarked disapprovingly of his absence.235 CSP Dom. 1603-10, p. 287. Even the king, who had left London to go hunting, seems to have been kept in the dark. James reminded the chief minister, through the groom of the stole, to apply to the Commons for subsidies rather than become diverted by composition for purveyance, ‘which will be no great matter nor fit relief for his extraordinary debts’. He made no mention of Salisbury’s condition.236 Bowyer Diary, 31.

From his sickbed, Salisbury immediately initiated a subsidy debate in the Commons. He employed for this purpose Sir Thomas Ridgeway^‡, who had cooperated with Lord Stanhope in 1604 over the bill to confirm a grant of property to Sir George Home and who, like Salisbury himself, was a member of the queen consort’s council. The results were initially encouraging, for in the aftermath of the Gunpowder Plot many Members were only too willing to make public demonstration of their loyalty to the king. By the end of the morning the Commons had agreed in principle to vote two subsidies and four fifteenths, and had established a committee to draft the necessary legislation.237 CJ, i. 266a, 266b. However, it soon became clear that the lower House was more eager to debate John Hare’s radical purveyance bill than it was to draft a subsidy bill, the committee for which was deferred ‘to a time uncertain’.238 Ibid. 267a. Salisbury found this preoccupation with purveyance exasperating, not least because the Commons were by now interested solely in abolition rather than reform or composition. At a meeting on the 14th between the representatives of both Houses, at which Hare described purveyors as ‘this wicked seed of the devil’s’, he criticized the lower House for their ‘distrust’, for employing ‘too much sharpness’, and for having ‘not so much as a disposition’ to help remedy the grievances of which they complained. He also criticized Hare personally, saying that ‘the Lords did not expect any to speak as the tribunes of the people’.239 Ibid. 269a; Bowyer Diary, 41, 46. Five days later, at a second conference, he fulminated that Hare’s bill sought ‘not only to take away the abuse but even the use’. Instead of trying to abolish purveyance, he complained, the Commons should focus their attention on supply. He himself would join the lower House ‘in chasing out a purveyor as an hobgoblin’, but the king, whose debts now amounted to £734,000,240 Bowyer Diary, 44. must have subsidies by Easter if he were to subsist. Realizing that many Members were unwilling to vote supply on the grounds that the last three years had been ‘a continual Christmas to the king’, he proposed that James be prevented from laying his hands on the money voted: ‘Let it never come into the Exchequer. Distribute it as you will. Only help his want’. However, this radical suggestion, which foreshadowed an arrangement made in 1624, was ignored by the Commons, some of whom favoured withholding supply until Hare had been exonerated and the matter of purveyance had been settled.241 CJ, i. 271a, 271b, 272a.

No doubt to Salisbury’s dismay, the Commons pressed ahead with Hare’s bill; on 25 Feb. there were calls for it to be engrossed. They also urged composition to be put to a vote, as it was evident that, as things stood, those who still favoured this solution would be easily defeated. The Speaker, Sir Edward Phelips^‡, who considered it his duty to help manage the Commons in the interests of the king, was aghast, and evaded both questions, ‘not without some distaste of some’. Warning that this was not the end of the matter, and that the question of engrossing Hare’s bill would be pursued ‘eagerly’ the following morning, he promised Salisbury that he would ‘follow the direction I received, except otherwise I shall be by your lordship commanded’. Salisbury could not reasonably expect Phelips to resist the call to engross Hare’s bill a second time. Consequently, after conferring with Phelips early the following morning,242 Bowyer Diary, 54, and n. he had the Lords send to the lower House for a further conference the following afternoon. No doubt to the relief of Phelips, the message arrived just as the motion to engross Hare’s bill was being renewed.243 CJ, i. 274b, 275a.

Salisbury took no recorded part in the meeting between the representatives of both Houses on the afternoon of the 27th. Moreover, he seems not to have attended the Lords, either that morning or on the 26th. Whether these absences were occasioned by a renewed bout of illness is unknown. However, he continued to transact business, for on the 27th he wrote to England’s ambassador to Brussels explaining that James was unable to oppose the Commons over Spanish recruitment for fear of jeopardizing his own parliamentary objectives.244 HMC Hatfield, xviii. 62. Not until the afternoon of 3 Mar., at a second conference held to consider Hare’s bill, did Salisbury formally address the Commons’ representatives. His message was uncompromising: ‘the king’s necessity could not admit that this bill should pass’. The Lords would reject the bill out of hand rather than place James, who stood to lose £50,000 a year if it passed, in the embarrassing situation of having to withhold the Royal Assent.245 CJ, i. 277b; SP14/9/27.

Salisbury’s intervention put an end for the time being to Hare’s bill, which had dominated the parliamentary agenda for more than a month. Reluctantly, the Commons were forced to turn their attention to composition. Salisbury naturally kept a close eye on these debates, notes of which, copied from the Commons Journal, are among his papers.246 HMC Hatfield, xviii. 69. However, after two days it was clear that these discussions were getting nowhere. More worrying still was the absence of any sign that the Commons were about to attend to the Union or supply, the most pressing items on the crown’s agenda. Not only had the Commons failed to vote the two subsidies and four fifteenths already promised, they had also not offered enough, as their proposed grant of roughly £260,000 would clear little more than a third of James’s debts. Realizing that it was imperative to initiate a second subsidy debate and seek an addition to the sum previously agreed, Salisbury turned once again to Sir Thomas Ridgeway, who, on 6 Mar., called for there to be ‘some care taken for the king’s wants and necessities’. He was seconded by Sir William Maurice, who proposed, somewhat optimistically, doubling the original offer.247 CJ, i. 278b.

Over the course of the next 12 days, Salisbury and his supporters in the Commons encountered considerable resistance. Some Members, like Sir William Strode^‡, were unwilling to increase their original offer, while others, like the plain-speaking countryman Walter Gawen^‡, questioned the wisdom of trying to replenish the king’s coffers, ‘for if the bottoms be out then can they not be filled’. More than a few, realizing that Salisbury’s desire for additional supply gave them a strong bargaining position, were determined to press ahead with Hare’s bill. On 12 Mar. they obtained an order for it to be engrossed, and on the 17th the Speaker was pressed to put it to the vote. Phelips initially declined to oblige, on the grounds that the bill was still in the process of being transferred to parchment, but he was forced to relent the following morning, when the measure passed its third reading.248 CJ, i. 283b, 286a; CSP Dom. 1603-10, p. 301; Bowyer Diary, 82n.

In the event, the passage of Hare’s bill may have worked to Salisbury’s advantage. There was now no further reason for the Commons to delay voting supply, and many Members who would otherwise have been reluctant to increase the number of subsidies previously agreed were now likely to prove more amenable. On the other hand, the two sides were now so evenly matched that Salisbury could not be sure of success. Indeed, the opposition he faced was so considerable that he won the first of two divisions by only one vote, and the second by just 26.249 Bowyer Diary, 84-5; CJ, i. 286a, 286b; HMC Hatfield, xviii. 94; Croft, ‘Purveyance’, 28.

Although the subsidy bill itself had still to pass through the Commons, there was little doubt that Salisbury had achieved a major success. He had secured not only supply but also a 50 per cent increase in the Commons’ original offer. Not even in 1540, when Henry VIII was voted two subsidies and four fifteenths and tenths,250 SR, iii. 813-14. had the Commons agreed to give such a large sum in peacetime. However, Salisbury could ill afford to rest on his laurels, as he was legally bound, by the act of 1604, to lay the Instrument of the Union before this current session.251 Ibid. iv. 1019. Yet in the immediate aftermath of the Commons’ vote, he omitted to do so. This cannot have been because he was swamped with other parliamentary business; during the second half of March, his recorded parliamentary activity consisted only of nominations to a handful of bill committees. He also warned the absentee William Bourchier^*, 3rd earl of Bath, that legislation hostile to his interests had been laid before the Lords.252 SP14/19/75. For his committee appointments during this period, see LJ, ii. 397b, 399b, 401a, 404b.

The most likely explanation for Salisbury’s failure to act is that, during the second half of March, he was preoccupied with the trial of Henry Garnett, the superior of the Jesuits in England, who was accused of complicity in the Gunpowder Plot. Salisbury’s involvement in this high profile trial, which was held at the Guildhall on 28 Mar., was unavoidable, as convicting Garnett was of paramount importance to the crown. It also afforded Salisbury a unique opportunity to counter publicly the rumour that the Council was behind the anonymous letter sent to Lord Monteagle, and to increase the pressure on the rulers of the Spanish Netherland to extradite the Jesuit Hugh Owen. Salisbury was certainly involved in the preparations for the trial, as he sent instructions to the attorney general on how to conduct the proceedings.253 CSP Dom. 1603-10, p. 306. During the trial itself, Salisbury addressed the court, demolishing Garnett’s claim that he had tried to discourage the plotters.254 State Trials, ii. 244. Although it was held during a brief adjournment of the Lords, the trial undoubtedly interrupted Salisbury’s oversight of parliamentary business, as Salisbury was absent from the upper House on the two days either side of Garnett’s arraignment.

Soon after Garnett’s trial, Salisbury again fell ill. Indeed, sickness kept him from the Lords between 3 and 8 Apr. inclusive.255 CJ, i. 297a; LJ, ii. 409a. He resumed his attendance on the 10th, but by then it was difficult to see how such a complex issue as the Union could be handled before Parliament rose for the summer.256 This was the official reason given for the deferral: SR, iv. 1070. For this reason, on the 11th, one of the London Members, Nicholas Fuller^‡, proposed that the Union be postponed to another session. Fuller was opposed by Salisbury’s first cousin, Sir Robert Wingfield^‡, who moved ‘that it may now pass’, but it was clear that he was speaking for a majority in both Houses. Later that same day, the Commons and Lords agreed to introduce a short bill deferring consideration of the Instrument until the next session.257 CJ, i. 298a; Bowyer Diary, 124; CSP Ven. 1603-7, p. 344. They encountered no objection from the king, who impatiently followed the progress of the deferral bill, which was rushed through Parliament during late April and early May.258 Galloway, 81; LJ, ii. 418a, 419b; CJ, i. 303b, 304a, 304b; HMC Hatfield, xviii. 129; SP9/150, p. 30.

Now that the Union had been shunted to one side, and the Commons had voted to grant the king substantial supply, there was apparently little reason for Parliament to continue sitting. In fact, the subsidy bill took time to complete its passage, as did the bill to attaint the Gunpowder plotters. Moreover, Salisbury and Dorset, at the behest of the king, wanted to try once again to create a royal entail with statutory authority. A new version of the 1604 ‘bill of annexation’ had been presented to Salisbury for his approval as early as mid February by the attorney general, Sir Edward Coke^‡, and on 12 Apr., the day after both Houses agreed to defer consideration of the Union until the next session, it was given a second reading and placed in committee.259 Stuart Royal Proclamations, I: Jas. I, 105-6; HMC Hatfield, xviii. 54; LJ, ii. 413a. However, the new bill threatened the interests of too many peers with historic claims to some of the lands affected, and by the end of the month it was abandoned.260 GILBERT TALBOT.

During this period the Commons, too, had business of their own to transact. Heading the list was Hare’s bill, which Salisbury had reluctantly allowed to be transmitted to the Lords as the price of additional supply. On 10 Apr., the day on which Salisbury resumed his seat, the two Houses agreed to confer the following afternoon. At this meeting, which Salisbury probably attended, the Lords tried to smother the bill with a variety of objections. However, not until four days later, at a second conference, did the lower House finally drop the measure.261 Croft, ‘Purveyance’, 29-30. Whether Salisbury was present at this further meeting is unclear, but he was not in the Lords that morning. The defeat of Hare’s bill cleared the way for the revival of a bill drafted by Sir Robert Johnson who, like Salisbury, favoured composition. However, if Salisbury hoped that he might now persuade the Commons to compound he was to be disappointed, as the proponents of abolition simply reintroduced Hare’s bill in a different guise.262 CJ, i. 299a; Croft, ‘Purveyance’, 30.

It was not only in respect of Hare’s bill that Salisbury tried to deny the wishes of the Commons. Many Members of the lower House were opposed to the king’s ecclesiastical policy, which had seen many nonconforming ministers deprived of their benefices. This led them to complain not only about deprivation, but also about the authority of the court of High Commission, to the annoyance of James, who expected Salisbury to ensure that the matter was stifled.263 HMC Hatfield, xviii. 125. On 1 May representatives of both Houses conferred about these, and other, ecclesiastical matters. Salisbury was present at this meeting, for at one point during the proceedings the lord chief justice spoke quietly to him.264 CJ, i. 303b; Bowyer Diary, 143, 147. He also sent a brief account of the conference to the king, who was again absent on one of his hunting trips. Unfortunately, this account has not survived, as James routinely destroyed letters sent to him whenever he was away from London.265 See for instance, HMC Hatfield, xix. 371. However, it is clear from the reply penned by Sir Thomas Lake that Salisbury- who subsequently wrote a second, fuller account for the king- assured James that the Commons were unlikely to get their way.266 Bowyer Diary, 144-5n; HMC Hatfield, xviii. 129.

At the end of April, Salisbury took the opportunity provided by the postponement of the Union to bring forward a piece of legislation of his own. This was a bill to allow him to purchase from the bishop of Durham a plot of land adjacent to his house in the Strand, which, the previous year, he had started to enlarge. This measure encountered only minor difficulties in the Lords before being rushed through the Commons, who returned it to the upper House on 5 May.267 LJ, ii. 419b, 420b, 422a, 424a, 425a; CJ, i. 305a, 305b; HMC Hatfield, xvii. 359. Thereafter, Salisbury was chiefly preoccupied with the forthcoming Garter ceremony at Windsor, for at Easter the king, doubtless in recognition of his minister’s success in obtaining a generous grant of supply, had announced that he intended to appoint Salisbury to the order.268 CSP Ven. 1603-7, pp. 344, 350.

Salisbury set out for Windsor in great pomp on 20 May, one week before the prorogation. The procession was reportedly so magnificent that it ‘surpassed the very king’s coronation’.269 Ibid. 354. He was attended by as many ‘lords, knights, gentlemen and officers of the court’ as had accompanied the king two years earlier, when James rode in state through the capital.270 Annales, 883. This public display of support was perhaps surprising, given the considerable opposition Salisbury had encountered in the Commons over purveyance. Moreover, only a few years ago, Salisbury had been widely demonized for his role in the fall of Essex. However, for the time being at least, Essex’s fate was forgotten.271 Secret Hist. of Ct. of Jas. I ed. W. Scott, i. 322. This collective amnesia did not last: Autobiog. of Sir Simonds D’Ewes ed. J.O. Halliwell, i. 51. Instead, as Sir Henry Neville^‡ observed, Salisbury had ‘gotten much love and honour this Parliament by his constant dealing in matters of religion’.272 Winwood’s Memorials, ii. 216. The chief minister’s decision to harness rather than oppose anti-Catholic feeling in the Commons in the wake of the Gunpowder Plot had clearly been well judged.

The third session and the Union, 1606-7

Salisbury had never been more popular than he was in the summer of 1606, nor would he ever be held in such widespread esteem again. Not only was James delighted with him for obtaining supply, he was also the darling of the Commons for encouraging Parliament to enact a raft of anti-Catholic legislation. However, Salisbury was painfully aware that by securing a generous vote of subsidies he had not solved the king’s financial problems but had merely obtained for James a badly needed breathing space. In early June he sent Lord Treasurer Dorset paperwork setting out the gloomy financial situation in detail. Dorset admitted that these documents anatomized ‘many miseries for lack of money’, but claimed that matters were now ‘at the worst’ and would soon grow better.273 HMC Hatfield, xviii. 163. This assessment was unduly optimistic for, over the summer, the newly appointed chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Julius Caesar^‡, discovered that the annual deficit on the ordinary account was more than £51,000.274 BL, RP1176(2).

Under these circumstances, it was vital to protect the crown’s existing sources of revenue. This included the income from an impost of 5s. 6d. laid upon every hundredweight of currants, a duty previously levied by the Levant Company upon foreign merchants, but which the crown had recently assumed the right to collect from all importers of currants. Not surprisingly, the merchants of the Levant Company objected to this impost, and in February 1606 they had laid a bill before the Commons.275 CJ, i. 274a. However, not until the following April, when goods belonging to the Levant merchant John Bate were impounded for refusal to pay, had matters come to a head. The Commons rapidly concluded that impositions were a grievance, whereas the Council, after taking legal advice, brought an action against Bate in the Exchequer.276 Bowyer Diary, 120; ‘Wilbraham Jnl.’, 86-7; P. Croft, ‘Fresh Light on Bate’s Case’, HJ, xxx. 535. Salisbury was anxious that the crown should win this case, which began the day after Parliament rose for the summer, a piece of timing that is surely no accident.277 E124/4, f. 8. On the morning before final arguments were heard, Dorset held a meeting with the lord chief baron of the Exchequer at Salisbury’s request. This letter no longer survives, but it is clear from Dorset’s reply that Salisbury pressed the lord treasurer to suppress the arguments of the crown’s opponents. To his credit, Dorset declined to do so, on the grounds that such behaviour would ‘leave the world nothing well satisfied’ and lead to the belief that judgement had been given against Bate ‘only to please the king’s Majesty’.278 HMC Hatfield, xviii. 396; Croft, ‘Fresh Light’, 535.

Salisbury’s attempt to put pressure on the Exchequer Court was disreputable, but there was more at stake here than merely protection of a valuable source of royal revenue. The right to collect the imposition paid by the Levant Company merchants had been farmed out by the crown to Salisbury’s friend and ally on the Council, the earl of Suffolk, who derived an annual income of £3,000 from this source. Salisbury himself shared part of these profits with Suffolk, whose wife was reputedly not only his mistress but also a valuable go-between with the Spanish ambassador.279 THOMAS HOWARD, 1ST EARL OF SUFFOLK. On Salisbury’s derivation of benefit from Suffolk’s grant, see Croft, ‘Fresh Light’, 532; HMC Hatfield, xviii. 16. Self-interest, quite as much as the state of the royal finances, made it imperative that Bate should be prosecuted successfully.

Following the arrival in mid July of the king’s brother-in-law, Christian IV of Denmark, Salisbury lavishly entertained James and his distinguished guest at Theobalds. Over the course of five days (24 – 28 July), and at a cost of more than £1,180, he provided feasts and entertainments that did ‘marvellously please both kings’, although one theatrical performance ended rather badly when the leading lady tripped and fell head first into the Danish king’s lap.280 HMC Hatfield, xviii. 237; J. Harington, Nugae Antiquae (1804), i. 349-50, 352-3. It was while James and Christian were his guests that Salisbury once again succumbed to his old ailment, which he described as ‘accidental to some heat in my kidneys’.281 HMC Hatfield, xviii. 263, 308-9; SP9/150, p. 183. It proved so debilitating that Salisbury had to abandon plans to accompany the king on his summer progress,282 CSP Ven. 1603-7, pp. 394, 395. and for at least 30 days he was unable to write without the aid of a secretary.283 HMC 3rd Rep. 59. This undated letter has been calendared as February 1612, but internal evidence dates it to mid or late August 1606. He had apparently recovered by 27 Aug., but suffered a relapse in early September, which caused him to undergo a purge.284 CSP Ven. 1603-7, pp. 397-8, 401; HMC Hatfield, xviii. 292. Not until mid September was Salisbury fully recovered, at which time he confessed to the Venetian ambassador that he had been far more seriously unwell than reported.285 CSP Ven. 1603-7, p. 404. On his recovery, see also Illustrations of Brit. Hist. iii. 188.

This protracted illness inevitably aroused fresh speculation that Salisbury would soon be forced to delegate some of his workload to deputies.286 Illustrations of Brit. Hist. iii. 189. Salisbury, however, resumed his duties as quickly as possible, attending, on 23 Sept., the latter stages of a conference at Hampton Court involving the king on the one hand and six prominent Scottish ministers, led by Andrew Melville, on the other.287 Hist. Kirk of Scotland by David Calderwood ed. T. Thomson, vi. 572. His mind was inevitably fixed upon Parliament, which was due to reassemble on 18 November. The king had instructed him to prepare for this meeting, and in particular to consider what answer to give the Commons, which had handed him an enormous petition of grievances at the end of the previous session.288 HMC Hatfield, xviii. 246. Salisbury’s advice on this subject remains unknown, but when James addressed both Houses on the opening day of Parliament he barely mentioned the Commons’ grievances. Indeed, ‘the chief and only effect’ of his hour-and-a-half long speech was ‘to persuade the passage of the Act and Instrument of the Union’.289 Bowyer Diary, 185; CJ, i. 314a-15b.

In view of the Union’s importance to the king, Salisbury assiduously attended the Lords over the next few weeks, not missing a single sitting before 5 December. On 24 Nov., the Instrument having now been read in the lower House, he was appointed to discuss this document with the Commons the following afternoon.290 LJ, ii. 452b. Like his fellow spokesman Ellesmere, Salisbury was taken aback to discover that the Commons’ representatives came to this meeting merely to listen rather than confer. Sensing that the Commons remained deeply hostile to the Union, he urged them to avoid ‘base fear’ and ‘prejudice’.291 Bowyer Diary, 191-2, 192n.

Following this unpromising beginning, the two Houses decided to divide up the work between them. The Lords would draft bills on naturalization and the border region, while the Commons would prepare legislation on commerce and the abolition of the hostile laws that had hitherto governed relations with Scotland. It soon became apparent that Salisbury’s worst fears were justified. In the Commons on 4 Dec., Nicholas Fuller argued that abolition of the hostile laws would necessarily involve abolishing escuage, an ancient feudal tenure, also known as scutage, requiring tenants to perform military service against the Scots in time of war. This in turn would do away with wardship, to which escuage was subject. Fuller reasoned that neither James nor Salisbury, as master of the Wards, would press ahead with the Union if it meant sacrificing wardship, the abolition of which Salisbury had previously supported but now opposed. Thomas Wilson^‡, one of Salisbury’s chief dependents in the Commons, was so alarmed that he supplied his employer with a detailed account of Fuller’s speech and the generally favourable response it received.292 Ibid. 197-8, 201-2, 202n. Shortly thereafter, in a debate on the implications for commerce of the proposed Union, Fuller denounced England’s northern neighbours as ‘more like pedlars than merchants’, while John Hare, who had been such a thorn in Salisbury’s flesh earlier that year, referred to ‘beggarly Scots’.293 Carleton to Chamberlain, 94.

The hostile atmosphere in which the Union was being debated in the Commons naturally alarmed Salisbury, and on 10 Dec. the Lords requested a conference with the lower House, which commenced on the afternoon of the 13th. From the outset, the omens were inauspicious. Sir Henry Montagu^* (later 1st earl of Manchester) and Sir Francis Bacon^* (the future Viscount St Alban), the most prominent supporters of the Union in the Commons, were so perturbed by the attitude of the lower House that they tried to avoid serving as spokesmen.294 CJ, i. 330b. Indeed, the meeting, which continued over several days,295 Galloway incorrectly stated that the conference of 13 Dec. was postponed for 4 days: Galloway, 99. See ‘CD 1604-7’, pp. 127, 128; CJ, i. 331a. proved to be disastrous. At first the Lords ‘were very mild’ in their dealings with the Commons. Salisbury and Ellesmere evidently opened the proceedings, with Salisbury declaring that the law of reason ‘did tend for this Union in its full perfection’, and expressing admiration for the Commons for their ‘great authority, so tender respect and so effectual an eloquence’. However, by 17 Dec. the Lords had run out of patience with the lower House, and the conference ended ‘like the month of March, in storm and tempest’.296Carleton to Chamberlain, 94; SP14/27/76. The following day, as Parliament rose for Christmas, the Venetian ambassador reported that there was now little prospect of the Union being carried.297 CSP Ven. 1603-7, p. 450.

In the aftermath of this protracted conference, Salisbury became despondent. Just seven months earlier, he had been fêted on all sides, but now he feared for his position. Conversation with the king did nothing to allay his concern. On the contrary, as he later recalled, it ‘bred in my mind a great anxiety’, especially in view of the fact that his place was ‘continually ... subject to the smart of false report and envy’. James still suspected that Salisbury was secretly working against him over the Union, and told him that many of his most powerful adversaries in the Commons, such as the lawyer Henry Yelverton^‡, ‘depend upon you’. Salisbury denied that this was the case, and pointed out that ‘I have no such interest in Mr Yelverton as to think to lead him, he stands so even on his own grounds’. Indeed, Yelverton was such a powerful advocate that ‘he is liker to draw me than I remove him’. It is unlikely that James found this latter remark reassuring. Salisbury’s anxiety grew after James left London on 9 Jan. 1607. Shortly thereafter, the king sent him a ‘first letter of caution’. Now lost, this missive caused dismay to Salisbury, who was ‘grieved to imagine what could be the new occasion’. A second letter from James, also wanting, left Salisbury feeling ‘confused within myself what I should do’. Not until 23 Jan. did Salisbury receive from James the reassurance he so desperately craved.298 HMC Hatfield, xix. 20-1; Archaeologia, xv. 51. For James’s departure from London on the 9th, see CSP Ven. 1603-7, p. 456.

What had caused James to soften his approach towards Salisbury? The answer to this intriguing question probably lies in a letter written by Salisbury on 23 Jan. 1607 expressing relief at his recovery of the king’s favour. In this document Salisbury mentioned that the queen had sent furniture to ‘her new house at Theobalds’.299 HMC Hatfield, xix. 21. This was a reference to Salisbury’s own pile in Hertfordshire, with which James was much enamoured, both for its splendour and its deer park. The letter suggests that, sometime over the winter of 1606/7, Salisbury promised to give Theobalds to Anne of Denmark. Four month later this was precisely what happened. In return James, who stood to inherit the house on Anne’s death, conveyed to Salisbury several royal manors, among them Hatfield in Hertfordshire, which formed part of the queen’s jointure.300 HEHL, EL1220. Salisbury never admitted publicly that, in parting with Theobalds, he was attempting to placate an angry James. For the sake of his dignity it may have been necessary to adopt the pretence that he was relieved to be rid of Theobalds, which was expensive to maintain. His friend’s wife, the countess of Shrewsbury, certainly implied that the cost of the upkeep was his motive.301 J. Hunter, Hallamshire, 96.

The role of the disastrous Union conference of 13 – 17 Dec. 1606 in bringing about the Theobalds-Hatfield exchange has hitherto been obscured by the fact that contemporary commentators, and many historians, have insisted that the transaction was a clever ruse by Salisbury to cheat the king. The Jacobean administrator Sir Anthony Weldon claimed that Salisbury fleeced James by creaming off the best royal manors in several counties, a deception he described as so cunning that it was ‘hardly to be discerned’.302 Secret Hist. of Court of Jas. I, i. 361-3. More recently, it has been argued that Salisbury had the better end of the deal because he obtained lands worth £780 a year in return for a property worth only £500 p.a.303 D. Thomas, ‘Elizabethan Crown Lands’, Estates of the English Crown 1558-1640 ed. R.W. Hoyle, 83. However, at the time of the exchange, the crown believed the difference in value between the two sets of properties was only about £70 p.a.304 SO3/3, unfol. (May 1607). Moreover, while Salisbury certainly got the better bargain on paper, in practice he fared rather badly, having now lost his principal seat outside London. It is true that Anne appointed him keeper of Theobalds for life soon after she took possession. This office gave Salisbury continued rights of residence with none of the financial disadvantages associated with ownership.305 HMC Hatfield, xix. 226-7. It is also true that Salisbury was granted the royal palace at Hatfield by way of compensation. However, this building was so outdated that it clearly had to be replaced. Over the next four years Salisbury proceeded to do precisely that, at a cost of nearly £39,000.306 Stone, Fam. and Fortune, 91. This outlay amply justified both the slight imbalance in the annual values of the properties exchanged and the remission of the fee-farm rent that Salisbury was granted. All things considered, it is difficult to see how Salisbury gained by the Theobalds-Hatfield exchange, a transaction which was evidently forced upon him by adverse political circumstances.

Although Salisbury was initially confident that he had recovered the king’s favour, he soon began to entertain serious doubts. On 13 Feb. 1607, three days after Parliament reconvened, the newsletter-writer John Chamberlain reported that his rival Northampton was now ‘further in grace than ever, or than any man’.307 Chamberlain Letters, i. 243. This claim appears to be reliable, for in April Northampton admitted that he and Salisbury had quarrelled.308 Bodl., Tanner 75, f. 264r-v. For a more detailed discussion, see HENRY HOWARD. At around the same time, Salisbury’s confidence was further undermined after James reprimanded him for failing to report that Sir Christopher Pigott^‡, one of the knights for Buckinghamshire, had delivered an invective speech against the Scots in the Commons. The rebuke was reportedly so severe that the chief minister was overcome with ‘amazement and concern’.309 T. Birch, Life of Prince Henry, 69. Salisbury now became convinced that James had grown cold towards him and no longer fully trusted him. The king assured him that he was mistaken, and declared that ‘I think as well of you and trust as much in you as of any servant that ever did, does, or shall serve me’.310 Letters of King Jas. VI and I, 289. However, it seems unlikely that James was being entirely truthful. Over the next few months, as his cherished Union project disintegrated before his eyes, he rounded on his Council, complaining bitterly that its members, ‘by representing the Union as an easy affair’, had drawn him into a ‘labyrinth’ in which his honour was involved.311 CSP Ven. 1603-7, p. 485. This criticism was unjust, of course, but since Salisbury was the dominant member of the Council, it is probable that he bore the full brunt of James’s fury.

The rock upon which the Union foundered was naturalization. There had not been time to debate this crucial subject before Christmas, and therefore, four days after Parliament reassembled, the Lords requested a conference with the Commons. After a considerable delay, during which time the Lords were obliged to repeat their earlier request, the two Houses agreed that their representatives would meet on the afternoon of 25 February. However, on the morning before the conference, the Lords sought the legal advice of the judges who, by a margin of ten to one, informed them that those Scots born since James ascended the English throne – the so called post-nati - were automatically naturalized citizens of both kingdoms.312 LJ, ii. 470b, 475a, 476b. If this was correct then, as the Venetian ambassador observed, it would only be a matter of time before all Scots were legally indistinguishable from Englishmen.313 CSP Ven. 1603-7, p. 485. This prospect was not one which appealed to most Members of the Commons, since it would lead to unwelcome competition for property and office. Their chief spokesman was Sir Edwin Sandys, who had led the campaign in the Commons against the adoption of the name ‘Great Britain’ nearly three years earlier, probably with the tacit encouragement of Salisbury himself. However, Sandys was no longer operating with the agreement of Salisbury, who clearly feared that his political future depended upon bringing the Union negotiations to a successful conclusion. At the ensuing conference, Sandys declared that Scots were ‘better than aliens but not equal with natural subjects’. When the judges presented their opinion to the Commons the following afternoon, Sandys was unmoved. Indeed, he subsequently claimed that the matter had not been clearly resolved, because the judges carried less weight ‘when they are but assistants to the Lords in Parliament’ and because one of them ‘dissenteth’.314 LJ, ii. 478a; State Trials, ii. 663; CJ, i. 345b; Bowyer Diary, 218.

At the beginning of March, Salisbury was privately urged to make concessions to the Commons on the subject of naturalization by his cousin Sir Robert Wingfield, who assured him that the lower House was ‘fully bent to give contentment’ to the king.315 HMC Hatfield, xviii. 456-7, miscalendared 1606. The chief minister evidently listened sympathetically to Wingfield’s advice, for at a further conference with the Commons on the 7th he declared that the Lords would allow restrictions on condition that the post-nati were granted ‘more easy terms’ than the ante-nati.316 Bowyer Diary, 224. However, Wingfield had misjudged the mood among his fellow Members, many of whom continued to look to Sandys for leadership. At a conference between the representatives of both Houses on 14 Mar., Sandys seized upon a phrase that had recently been employed by Salisbury and Northampton to describe the king’s wishes in respect of the Union. This phrase was ‘perfect Union’, by which was meant a complete fusion of the kingdoms of England and Scotland, so that they had the same laws and institutions. Sandys observed that such a union, though desirable, was now unachievable, having been ruled out both by the Instrument of the Union (to which Salisbury himself, of course, was a signatory) and by the Scottish Parliament, which had insisted on Scotland’s right to retain its own laws. He also announced that, unless they were permitted to treat all Scots in the same fashion, the Commons would refuse to discuss the matter with the Lords in future. Salisbury was so irritated by this threat that, after quietly consulting the other ‘chief lords’ present, he declared that he and his fellow peers desired to hear the views of others in the Commons, particularly those ‘better able than he that had spoken’.317 Ibid. 238.

Far from earning the censure of his colleagues, Sandys gained a ‘general commendation’ in the Commons for his defiance. Leading Members of the House, like the lawyer Lawrence Hyde^‡, now began to pretend that what they really wanted was a perfect Union, and that only Scottish intransigence stood in the way of achieving this objective.318 HP Commons 1604-29, vi. 172. Not surprisingly, Salisbury was greatly alarmed, for it was quite obvious that a perfect Union was no longer achievable. (He himself had been calling for ‘a perfect Union with restrictions’, which was not at all the same thing).319 Bowyer Diary, 224. In the aftermath of the conference he instructed his servant Thomas Wilson to reconstruct the text of Sandys’s speech with the aid of his friends in the House.320 Ibid. 237n-239n. He did not give a reason, but since he was familiar with the contents of the speech it cannot have been for personal information. The only logical explanation is that he intended to send a copy to the king who, once again, was out hunting. That way, should the Union collapse, the blame would fall squarely upon Sandys rather than Salisbury himself.

Although Salisbury clearly feared the worst, he had not given up. At the same time as Wilson was directed to reconstruct Sandys’s speech, he and his fellow councillors, under pressure from the king, sought to head off an imminent threat to the Union and the judiciary. The Commons were contemplating declaring the judges’ opinion on the status of the post-nati invalid. As Salisbury observed, such a resolution would constitute a considerable affront to the judiciary and threaten the legitimacy of any future legal ruling, ‘the consequence whereof could neither be good for this present time, nor for hereafter’. Fortunately for him, at this very moment (15 Mar.) the Speaker, Sir Edward Phelips, fell ill with a minor ailment. Phelips promised to struggle on if necessary, but Salisbury and the rest of the Council persuaded him to delay his return to the lower House. Phelips was only too happy to oblige, and continued to plead sickness even after he had recovered, thereby paralyzing business in the Commons for seven days. When he did resume his place, on 24 Mar., the lower House again found itself thwarted for, being the anniversary of James’s accession, its Members were required to attend the thanksgiving sermon in Westminster Abbey. The following day was also treated as a holiday.321 Ibid. 241-2, 241n; CJ, i. 353b, 354a, 354b. By the time the Commons reassembled on 26 Mar., so much time had elapsed since the conference on 14 Mar. that tempers had cooled considerably. Indeed, the Lords were now so confident that the Commons would be willing to confer that the following day they invited them to do so. Instead of sending an outright refusal, the Commons replied that they would give their answer once they had considered the matter.322 LJ, ii. 495b, 496a. Salisbury was understandably delighted with Phelips, and showered him with plaudits.323 HMC 1st Rep. 57.

It was almost certainly on the advice of Salisbury that on 31 Mar. the king addressed the Commons at Whitehall. Calling for a Union ‘in such imperfect sort as by the Lords was proposed’,324 Bowyer Diary, 252. James tried to put an end to the charade in the Commons. However, James and Salisbury had met their match in Sandys who, shortly after Easter, brilliantly delivered the coup de grace. Hitherto Sandys had claimed that the Commons could not proceed with the perfect Union because of Scottish intransigence; now he argued that it was actually far easier to accomplish than previously imagined. All that was needed was for the king to create a single legislature. Parliament would then pass a law uniting the two realms. At a stroke all outstanding difficulties – such as the status of the ante- and post-nati – would be resolved. Initially, Sandys’s listeners were stunned, since on the face of it Sandys was saying that he now favoured the Union after all. Their surprise was all the greater since Sandys had not warned them in advance of the contents of his speech, presumably for fear that Salisbury would discover what he was planning. However, his allies in the lower House quickly rallied round once they realized that Sandys was, in effect, advocating both the abolition of the Scottish Parliament and Scotland’s institutions of government. By the beginning of May it was clear that, aside from a bill to abolish the hostile laws, no further progress on the Union would be possible for the remainder of the session.325 HP Commons 1604-29, vi. 172.

Salisbury’s fear that he would be blamed for the collapse of the Union proved to be groundless. As the chief minister had hoped, James reserved his full fury for individual Members of the Commons like Sandys and the lawyer Henry Yelverton. Salisbury nevertheless remained committed to the exchange of Theobalds for Hatfield, which now occupied much of his attention. Over Easter he visited Hatfield to locate a suitable site for his new house, and around the same time he also approached the 7th earl of Shrewsbury and Lord Lumley (John Lumley^*) for ideas regarding designs. Shrewsbury in turn sought the advice of his close friend Sir Charles Cavendish^‡ who, by early May, had drafted a plan for a house capable of lodging both king and queen.326 HMC Hatfield, xix. 120-1. It was not until 18 May, however, that the bill to exchange Theobalds for Hatfield received a first reading in the Lords, a delay that was probably occasioned by an outbreak of plague at Salisbury’s London house. By then the king and queen were impatient to take formal possession of their new palace. Even before the bill cleared the Lords they visited Theobalds, where they were handsomely feasted and entertained by Salisbury (22-24 May).327 Ibid. 131, 136, 138; LJ, ii. 510a, 511a; CSP Ven. 1607-10, p. 2. Shortly thereafter, on 6 June, the bill completed its passage through Parliament, having been shepherded in the Commons by a committee whose members included Salisbury’s clients Sir Walter Cope, Sir Michael Hicks^‡ and Sir Hugh Beeston^‡, and his nephew Sir Richard Cecil^‡.328 CJ, i. 377a, 1050a.

The outbreak of a series of popular disturbances in the Midlands in late May necessarily disrupted Salisbury’s attendance of the Lords (he was absent between 29 May and 6 June inclusive). He nevertheless resumed his seat on Monday 8 June, when he was appointed to the committee for the bill to abolish the hostile laws between England and Scotland.329 LJ, ii. 520b. In mid June the Commons complained to the Lords that English merchants trading with Spain had been maltreated. Salisbury might have been expected to sympathize with this complaint, as Spain’s behaviour was clearly calculated to provoke a quarrel with the Dutch, who would object if English merchants traded with Flanders as a result of Spanish mistreatment. Indeed, in August 1606 he himself had berated the Spanish ambassador on precisely the same subject.330 Winwood’s Memorials, ii. 252; CSP Ven. 1603-7, pp. 397-8. In fact, Salisbury told the merchants that they were largely the authors of their own misfortune, and that the wrongs suffered were ‘merely in delays and not in unjust judgement’. It was not possible for the king to do more than he had already done on their behalf. James would certainly not issue letters of marque and reprisal, as the Commons demanded.331 Bowyer Diary, 335-9.

Salisbury’s lack of sympathy must have owed something to his anger with the Commons over the Union. He was certainly quick to point out to the Commons that their recent legislation abolishing the revived Spanish Company had compounded the difficulties of the merchants, who were no longer able to act in concert effectively.332 For a detailed examination of this episode, see P. Croft, ‘Free Trade and the House of Commons, 1605-6’, EcHR, 2nd ser. xxviii. 17-27. However, it must also have owed much to the negotiations then underway for a truce between Spain and the United Provinces, which Salisbury had no wish to hinder.333 For Salisbury’s assessment of the state of these negotiations at the beginning of August, see Elphinstone Fam. Bk. ii. 213-16. Admittedly Salisbury told the Spanish ambassador that he was angry with the Dutch for failing to notify James of their intention to seek a ceasefire, as they were contractually obliged to do. He may also have promised to do Spain ‘all the good offices that I can’ in order to be revenged upon them.334 Loomie, ‘Cecil and the Spanish Embassy’, 37. However, Salisbury never seriously wavered in his support for the Dutch. His conversation with the Spanish ambassador was probably an exercise in misinformation, designed to justify the continued payment of his Spanish pension. If so, then the tactic clearly worked, for in January 1608 Philip III ordered that Salisbury be paid 50,000 escudos.335 Loomie, ‘Cecil and the Spanish Embassy’, 39.

During the dying days of the session the Commons, dismayed that the penal laws had not been as rigorously enforced as they had intended in the wake of the Gunpowder Plot, drafted a petition to the king. On learning of the impending approach, James instructed the lower House to desist, on the grounds that ‘it is a matter merely belonging to him’, prompting the Commons to complain of a ‘great wound’ to their liberty of free speech. On 16 June Sir William Bulstrode^‡ pressed the Speaker to allow the petition to be read, but Phelips, pleading precedents from Elizabeth’s reign, refused. However, Phelips realized that it would not be long before the pressure to read the petition became irresistible, and that evening he therefore wrote to Salisbury for guidance. He himself thought that most Members of the Commons, including those ‘best affected to the king’s service’, were not in favour of the petition, and were only determined to press the point of reading as a matter of principle. Once the petition had been read, he felt sure it would be dismissed. Salisbury trusted Phelips’ instincts, for two days later the Commons were given permission to read the petition if they wished. Sure enough, as Phelips had predicted, a majority in the lower House agreed, after it had been read, that the petition should sleep.336 Bowyer Diary, 330n, 331n; CJ, i. 384a-5b.

Financial crisis, 1607-9

The third session of Parliament had been a decidedly bruising experience for Salisbury, but it had not been as disastrous as he had feared. James, despite his earlier suspicions, did not hold him personally responsible for the failure to achieve the Union, and though he had surrendered Theobalds he was otherwise undiminished. However, any sense of relief he may have felt soon turned to anger, as the king, despite repeated requests, continued to undermine the royal finances by his reckless gift-giving. In mid July Salisbury finally lost his temper with James, probably over a grant of land that the king had promised the groom of the stole, Thomas Erskine, Viscount Fentoun [S]. James was greatly abashed, and declined to sign the warrants authorizing Fentoun’s grant until Salisbury had seen them. He also told Sir George Home, now earl of Dunbar [S], how fortunate he was to have such a servant as Salisbury, who became ‘passionate and angry’ in response to spending that James himself described as irresponsible.337 HMC Hatfield, xix. 185, 196-7. Salisbury, however, remained livid for some time. Indeed, he failed to accompany the king when James set out on summer progress, a pointed snub, as he had followed the court in the summer of 1605, and would have done so again in 1606 had not illness intervened.338 For evidence that Salisbury accompanied James on progress in 1605, see HMC Hatfield, xvii. 359, 371-2, 386-7; Winwood’s Memorials, ii. 106-7; Stowe 168, ff. 107v-8. Instead, he stalked off in high dudgeon, complaining that ‘he only bears the burden of businesses and cares’ and scowling that he, like others, would attend to his own private affairs, ‘for his thanks … are not more than if he took less pains’.339 HMC Downshire, ii. 28. Only his musicians went on progress with James.340 R. Charteris, ‘Jacobean Musicians at Hatfield House, 1605-13’, Royal Musical Assoc. Research Chron. xii. 118. On his return to London in early August, a comprehensive list of gifts bestowed by James since his accession was drawn up, almost certainly at Salisbury’s behest.341 Add. 36970, ff. 12-16.

On the face of it, Salisbury’s anger is startling, as it has usually been supposed that Cecil dared not upset James for fear of courting disaster.342 R. Ashton, ‘Deficit Finance in the Reign of Jas. I’, EcHR, n.s. x. 19. In fact, it was extremely well judged. Being a passionate man himself, James did not take offence. If anything, he was rather ashamed at being thus berated, since he knew that Salisbury’s complaints were justified. He also realized that Salisbury’s anger was out of character, for, like Buckingham some years later, Cecil appreciated the importance of charm when dealing with the king. Salisbury understood that James had to be entertained and amused as well as chastised from time to time, and for this reason his dispatches were calculated to make the king laugh just as much as they were intended to inform.343 HMC Hatfield, xxi. 92.

Salisbury did not remain angry for long; by mid August he had rejoined the king, with whom he may have remained until the end of September.344 Ibid. xix. 220, 248. However, his tantrum had clearly served its purpose, at least in the short term, for in October a chastened James asked the Council to alert him whenever someone who had already been well rewarded approached him for a handout. He also expressed reluctance to press Salisbury too hard for regular updates regarding his affairs in general, on the grounds that his chief minister already had more than enough to do.345 Ibid. 277, 284-5. Salisbury, meanwhile, set about trying to rescue the crown’s finances, which, despite the subsidies voted in 1606, were once again spiralling out of control. As well as negotiating with the customs farmers a loan of £120,000, payment of which Levinus Munck hoped ‘would put much oil to our lamp’, he also borrowed from ‘well affected citizens’ and began looking once again for new sources of revenue.346 Ashton, 26; Winwood’s Memorials, ii. 350; HMC Hatfield, xix. 363; Add. 39853, f. 142. His friend, Dunbar, was so impressed with the vigour with which he pursued this latter quest that in February 1608 he provided James with an account of the care with which Salisbury oversaw business, ‘not only in laying of courses to be followed to his Majesty’s best benefit but in holding the rest so hard to the matter till they were brought to perfection’.347 HMC Hatfield, xx. 89.

The crisis in the royal finances undoubtedly prevented Salisbury from giving much thought to Parliament, which was due to reconvene on 16 Nov. 1607. Fortunately for him, however, James decided at the end of September that Parliament should not meet again before he had overcome one of the chief obstacles to the Union identified by the House of Commons earlier that year, namely the different legal systems of England and Scotland. Pleading an outbreak of plague (that perennial excuse), he therefore prorogued the meeting until the following February, by which time he hoped the legal representatives of both nations would have reached agreement. Salisbury, not being a lawyer, played no direct part in these proceedings, but James relied upon him to facilitate contact between the two sides, which took place in December and which ended, unsurprisingly, in failure.348 Galloway, 145-7; HMC Hatfield, xix. 369; Letters of King Jas. VI and I, 296-8. On the Sept. prorogation, see Cal. of Talbot Pprs. 248; CJ, i. 391b.

Following the sudden death of Lord Treasurer Dorset at the Council table on 19 Apr. 1608, Salisbury was widely tipped to take over formal control of the royal finances.349 CSP Ven. 1607-10, pp. 126-7. However, his rival Northampton, who had still not achieved high office, desired the treasurer’s staff for himself. On the face of it, Northampton was the stronger contender for the post, as it was difficult to see how Salisbury could be appointed unless he gave up one of his other senior offices, which hitherto he had resisted. However, James chose Salisbury, who had already acquired considerable responsibility for the royal finances and avoided importunity,350Ibid. 131; J. Gutch, Collectanea Curiosa (1781), i. 128. rather than Northampton. In order to salve the pride of his rival, Salisbury was induced to surrender the privy seal (of which he had the custody) to Northampton, who was thereupon made its lord keeper. Northampton was also given free rein to investigate the Navy, which had become a den of corruption under the aged lord high admiral, Charles Howard^*, 1st earl of Nottingham. These arrangements were made by 27 Apr. at the latest,351 HMC Downshire, ii. 57; CSP Dom. 1603-10, p. 425. The commission establishing the Navy commissioners is dated 30 Apr.: Jacobean Commissions of Enquiry, 1608 and 1618 ed. A.P. McGowan (Navy Recs. Soc. cxvi), 2-4. but James delayed announcing Salisbury’s appointment until 4 May, perhaps to allow time for a summary of the state of the royal finances to be prepared. Certainly, such a document was formally presented to the king by Salisbury at precisely this time.352 L.M. Hill, ‘Sir Julius Caesar’s Jnl. of Salisbury’s First Two Months and Twenty Days as Lord Treasurer: 1608’, BIHR, xlv. 315; Lansd. 164, f. 391.

Salisbury was formally sworn in on 6 May at Westminster Hall and celebrated his appointment by holding a sumptuous feast at Salisbury House for the royal family and the entire court.353 CSP Ven. 1607-10, p. 133; Charteris, 122, 125; Hill, 314. The new lord treasurer faced a formidable task. His predecessor, Dorset, had expected the level of crown debt to fall sharply following the granting of subsidies in 1606, but in fact, as a revenue balance prepared on 24 Apr. demonstrated, the situation remained disappointing. The king still owed more than £597,000, and only about £73,000 of the subsidies voted in 1606 was as yet uncollected. Since James was also saddled with an annual deficit on the ordinary account of more than £78,000, it was inevitable that, unless speedy action was taken, the debt would soon rise far higher.354 Lansd. 164, ff. 389, 390; SP14/32/42. Despite the magnitude of the task before him, Salisbury was eager to demonstrate that James had chosen wisely by preferring him to Northampton. Indeed, he immediately began to apply himself with his customary energy, ordering the officers of the Exchequer to hunt out and pursue unpaid debts to the crown, drawing up orders for the disbursement of money and issuing more than 500 letters requiring composition from those whose titles to their lands were insecure, among them his own half brother.355 Hill, 316, 317, 322.

One way to help restore the royal finances to health was to find a significant source of additional income. In the spring of 1608 perhaps the most promising avenue of inquiry was provided by impositions, the Exchequer Court having ruled in November 1606 that the impost on currants was legal.356 Croft, ‘Fresh Light’, 536. In December 1607 Lord Treasurer Dorset had proposed to extend imposition to other commodities, but the Council had been wary of doing so, perhaps because these duties had already given rise to complaint in Parliament. Instead, they borrowed £70,000 from the City of London. Not until 14 Apr. 1608 – five days before Dorset died – did the Council order that impositions be extended, and even then only to allow English merchants trading with France to pay the cost of challenging a French edict requiring the seizure of defective English cloth.357 Add. 11402, f. 138; SP14/32/62. See also F. Devon, Issues of the Exchequer, 82, for the payment to a messenger for carrying ‘a table of the impositions’ to various customs officials. At the same time the Council actually reduced an existing imposition, on imported sugar.358 CSP Dom. 1603-10, p. 422.

Where impositions were concerned, Salisbury was far more sanguine than his Council colleagues, who were clearly nervous at the prospect of raising additional customs duties without parliamentary approval, perhaps because the Commons had so far conspicuously failed to challenge the verdict in Bate’s Case. However, without a compelling reason, or at least a strong pretext, it was hard to see how he could persuade the Council to order a general extension. It was thus a stroke of good fortune for Salisbury that his appointment as lord treasurer coincided with the outbreak of rebellion in Ireland.

On the face of it, the rising led by Sir Cahir O’Doherty was too small and short-lived to serve Salisbury’s turn. Indeed, it lasted just seven weeks, not counting the mopping-up operation, and involved fewer than 1,000 men.359 800 men served under O’Doherty himself. A further 100 or so men were led by O’Doherty’s brother-in-law, Oghie Oge O’Hanlon: R. Bagwell, Ire. under the Early Stuarts, i. 57; CSP Ire. 1606-8, p. 545. By 19 May at the latest it was clear to Salisbury that it was nothing more than ‘an ordinary Irish perfidy’ and ‘a matter of ... small consequence’.360 Winwood’s Memorials, ii. 403, 403. He also realized that there was little danger of Spanish involvement, since Spain was desperate to retain England’s goodwill while a truce with the Dutch was being negotiated.361 Stowe 169, f. 142r-v; CSP Ven. 1607-10, p. 81. Salisbury could also take comfort in the fact that the money needed to pay for the suppression of the revolt was ready and waiting aboard ship at Chester. The cost of the Irish establishment was bound to increase following the rising, of course, but Salisbury predicted as early as 20 May that Irish expenditure could soon be reduced.362 CSP Ire. 1606-8, p. 528.

Although O’Doherty’s rebellion was only a minor affair, it hardly suited Salisbury to admit this publicly. On the contrary, on 29 June he and the chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Julius Caesar, pressed the 7th Lord Berkeley (Henry Berkeley^*) for payment of a debt ‘in respect of new troubles in Ireland’.363 HMC 4th Rep. i. 367. Seizing his opportunity, he ‘examined the matter of impositions’ on 6 June in order to decide ‘what merchandises might bear imposts [and] which not’. Shortly thereafter, the king and Council agreed to extend impositions on condition that it was done in ‘moderate’ fashion and excluded food staples.364 Hill, 318; Letters and Life of Francis Bacon, iv. 46; Hatfield House, CP 220/6. Armed with this authorization, Salisbury went, on the 11th, to the customs house where, by pre-arrangement, he met about 100 merchants, including two leading members of every company. There he announced that impositions were lawful and that the king’s present necessities, ‘especially for Ireland’, required that they be collected. After ‘some little contradiction’, every man present agreed that impositions should now be levied generally.365 Hill, 319; Gutch, i. 131. Salisbury later recalled that the meeting with the merchants took place at the Guildhall: Procs. 1610 ed. E.R. Foster, i. 131. However, see the statement of Sir Samuel Saltonstall: CSP Dom. 1603-10, p. 439. None of the merchants were informed that the crisis had now passed, and that the additional men and money demanded by Ireland’s lord deputy were in fact not needed at all.366 CSP Ire. 1606-8, pp. 565-6. As a result of this meeting, a revised Book of Rates, which came into force at the end of September, was published on 28 July.367 Croft, ‘A Collection of Several Speeches’, 260; CSP Dom. 1603-10, p. 449.

Although O’Doherty’s rebellion was the answer to a prayer, the new lord treasurer remained deeply pessimistic about the state of the royal finances. Just four days after the Book of Rates was reissued, and little more than two weeks after he and the Council sat morning and afternoon to consider the matter, Salisbury confessed to Caesar that ‘the more I look into our money project ... the worse I like it’. Unless ‘some other means’ could be found, ‘it will go hard with us’.368 Chamberlain Letters, i. 261; CSP Ven. 1607-10, p. 152; Add. 36767, f. 196. These fears were not exaggerated, as the annual deficit had now risen to about £91,000, and the overall debt had now mushroomed to at least £412,000.369 Size of the deficit interpolated from Lansd. 151, ff. 68, 69; F.C. Dietz, English Public Finance, 122. Over the summer Salisbury was so anxious about the weakness of the royal finances that, despite accompanying the king on progress, he had weekly reports sent to him by Caesar, with whom he continued a correspondence over new money-raising ventures.370 CSP Dom. 1603-10, p. 450; Add. 36767, f. 202.

One of the chief causes of the mounting financial crisis was James’s unrestrained beneficence, which had continued unabated despite Salisbury’s explosion of anger the previous summer. James was so often absent from London that Salisbury, chained to his desk at Whitehall, could impose no adequate check on his gift-giving. In September an exasperated lord treasurer grumbled to Caesar that the king expected ‘help from us who have not power without his own absolute resolution to discourage all hopes for a while from all men of taking anything from him until he be in better estate’.371 LS13/280, f. 100. Shortly thereafter, on 20 Sept. 1608, he again confronted the king with the gravity of the situation.372 CSP Dom. 1603-10, p. 467. As before, James was overcome with remorse, and resolved to be parsimonious, even promising to be ‘less adventurous in his bounty when he was farthest off than when he was nearer home’.373 HMC Hatfield, xx. 272. See also CSP Dom. 1603-10, p. 462. Indeed, in November he appointed a number of sub-commissioners to consider all suits presented to him. He also tried to bring household spending under control, on one occasion even teasing Salisbury for complaining about his niggardly housekeeping.374 CSP Dom. 1603-10, pp. 467, 550.

Ironically, Salisbury’s latest attempt to impose fiscal discipline on the king coincided with a mounting crisis in his own finances. On becoming lord treasurer earlier that year he had decided to expand the design for his new house at Hatfield, on which work had already begun. At around the same time, he also set about building the New Exchange, a commercial development on the Strand, close to his own London residence, in rivalry to London’s Royal Exchange.375 Chamberlain Letters, i. 259; HMC Hatfield, xx. 213-14. Christened ‘Britain’s Bourse’ by the Union-fixated James, this new shopping centre, conveniently situated next to the court, was opened in April 1609. However, both the New Exchange and Hatfield House proved ruinously expensive. Although the rents from the former were expected to be immense, Salisbury was forced to order economies at Hatfield in March 1609. Not until the spring of 1610 did he feel confident enough to lift these restrictions.376 Stone, Fam. and Fortune, 76, 100; CSP Ven. 1607-10, p. 269. To add to these difficulties, at the beginning of 1609 the king’s eldest son, Prince Henry, irritated at being prevented from enjoying the income of the duchy of Cornwall, which was needed to help pay off the royal debts, tried to acquire Salisbury’s office as master of the Court of Wards. He argued that such a valuable position should not be held by anyone other than a member of the royal family. In order to mollify the prince, Salisbury was obliged to present him with a valuable jewel.377 CSP Ven. 1607-10, p. 227. See also ibid. 451.

Salisbury was not alone in being threatened with the loss of a valuable office at around this time. The inquiry into the Navy, established after Northampton failed to obtain the lord treasurership, had the potential to deprive Nottingham of the admiralty. Salisbury may have secretly welcomed this investigation, as reform of the Navy promised to yield substantial savings to the Exchequer and help reduce the annual deficit. However, he cannot have relished the prospect of his rival Northampton replacing Nottingham, an ally of long standing. That being said, there is probably little truth in the claim made by Sir Anthony Weldon, that Salisbury went down on his knees to defend the treasurer of the Navy, Sir Robert Mansell^‡, perhaps the most corrupt naval administrator of his generation. Weldon, who was writing long after the event, declared that the investigating commissioners found only one piece of evidence that Mansell was corrupt, a claim that is demonstrably untrue.378 Secret Hist. of the Court of Jas. I, i. 334-5.

Following his confrontation with the king in September 1608, Salisbury enjoyed a long period of good humoured relations with James, whom he entertained at Cranborne in August 1609.379 J. Hutchins, Dorset, iii. 380. However, before long the king had reverted to type: in the year ending Michaelmas 1609, the second largest item of extraordinary expenditure, next to the repayment of loans, was James’s spending on gifts.380 CSP Ven. 1607-10, p. 369; Lansd. 164, f. 489r-v. Not surprisingly, therefore, by the autumn of 1609 tension between Salisbury and the king resurfaced. By then, however, Salisbury had concluded that the task of restoring the royal finances to health through his own efforts alone was beyond him. By early 1610 the king still owed more than £362,000.381 BL, RP 1176(2), f. 334v. A revenue balance of 8 Jan. 1610 claimed that less than half this figure was still owed, which conclusion F.C. Dietz rightly described as ‘exceedingly optimistic’. SP14/52/6a; Dietz, 125-6. Only Parliament was capable of providing the sums needed to pay off this debt and eliminate the annual deficit. Besides, the sands of time were running out for Salisbury, whose health had deteriorated once more. Indeed, he was already thinking about the design for his own tomb.382 Stone, Fam. and Fortune, 50-1; E. Auerbach and C. Kingsley-Adams, Paintings and Sculptures at Hatfield House, 112. Unless Parliament met soon, he might never be able to accomplish his goal of rescuing the royal finances. Salisbury therefore penned a lengthy treatise for the king, in which he argued that, as ‘his Majesty’s estate cannot be supported in any proportion without levies from his people’, James should see ‘what may be obtained in Parliament upon divers propositions that may be thought of, wherein I have taken some pains’.383 Croft, ‘A Collection of Several Speeches’, 282, 292. James, though, was reluctant to convene Parliament, having failed to secure agreement over the winter of 1607/8 between the leading lawyers of England and Scotland. He evidently feared further humiliation at the hands of the Commons; certainly he wondered whether all alternative avenues – such as the means recently employed by the duc de Sully to rescue the French royal finances - had yet been fully explored.384 Salisbury’s letter to James of 27 Nov. 1609 points to this conclusion: CSP Dom. 1603-10, p. 563. On 26 Sept. 1609 he ordered a further prorogation of Parliament, which had been due to meet on 9 Nov., on the grounds that plague was once again rife in the capital.385 CJ, i. 392b; Stuart Royal Proclamations, I, 232-3.

Salisbury was by no means unconcerned by the plague, as three weeks earlier he had been unwilling to come closer to London than Kensington for fear of infection.386 CSP Ven. 1607-10, p. 336; HMC Downshire, ii. 125. However, by the time James prorogued Parliament he was convinced that the danger was past. On the very day that the king announced that Parliament’s meeting was to be deferred, he pointedly travelled to Whitehall. Although he returned to Hampton Court the following evening, he went back to Whitehall on 6 Oct.,387 CSP Ven. 1607-10, p. 366; HMC Hatfield, xxi. 135; Add. 36767, f. 266; Winwood’s Memorials, iii. 80. where he remained for the rest of the year. James, by contrast, continued to maintain that London was unsafe as late as 23 October.388 HMC Hatfield, xxi. 148-9.

For Salisbury, it was essential that there should be no further prorogations. Accordingly, he persuaded Lord Chancellor Ellesmere, who shared his view that the threat from plague was minimal, to issue writs authorizing by-elections in those constituencies where vacancies had arisen since 1607. One way to induce James to summon another meeting was to convince him that some of his former opponents in the Commons would prove more amenable in future. In October 1609 an important step in this direction was taken when an approach was made to the lawyer Henry Yelverton, one of the king’s main antagonists in 1607. Yelverton now regretted his role in thwarting the king, as his path to preferment had been blocked. In January 1610, after three months of delicate negotiation, he was reconciled with the king. Although it was the earl of Dunbar who acted as the chief intermediary, Yelverton was in little doubt that it was Dunbar’s friend and ally Salisbury who had ‘wrought secretly and effectually for me’. Salisbury did not deny that he had been involved, and expressed delight at securing the services of such a potentially valuable spokesman, telling Yelverton that he could do the king ‘as good service as any man in the deck’.389 Archaeologia, xv. 50-2. He must also have been pleased to secure seats for five of his friends and allies over the autumn.390 George Calvert (Bossiney); Sir Edward Cecil (Stamford); Clement Edmondes (Carnarvon Boroughs); Sir Arthur Ingram (Stafford); Sir Thomas Vavasour (Boroughbridge). Salisbury may also have been responsible for the return of William Byrd (Oxford University).

Not all of Salisbury’s preparations for the forthcoming Parliament were this successful. In November, Salisbury offered to divide some of his duties as secretary of state between Sir Thomas Lake and Sir Thomas Edmondes. Now that Parliament was about to meet, it was clearly desirable that he should concentrate his efforts on the parliamentary negotiations over the royal finances rather than be distracted by other business, as had happened in 1604. However, Salisbury was forced to abandon the scheme because it was rumoured that these appointments were intended to pave the way for his surrender of the secretaryship.391 HMC Downshire, ii. 177, 307-8. For further details, see HP Commons 1604-29, v. 60.

Towards the end of the year Salisbury drafted a second treatise of advice for James. Significantly, it was signed by the entire Council. In this document, Salisbury urged James to do nothing to jeopardize his chances of securing a generous financial settlement from the Commons. He should bestow no further gifts, or let it appear that the Scots ‘range up and down the fields of your Majesty’s possessions’ or those of his subjects. By satisfying predatory Scots, he argued, James would not only undermine his demand for supply, but also harm his chances of obtaining the Union, ‘for whoso sees not that the harsh effects and ill order of your Majesty’s gifts heretofore hath troubled the passage of this desired Union’. James was also advised to be wary of employing his prerogative to raise money for fear of offending Parliament. This was in stark contrast to the advice contained in the earlier treatise, in which Salisbury had recommended that James consider, ahead of the Parliament, ‘setting further impositions upon commodities abroad and at home’. Once Parliament met, James should make his wants ‘so clear and visible’ that no-one could doubt that they were genuine. However, he should be equally careful not to make ‘the cause thereof’ – James’s own unbridled profligacy – so transparent that the matter was ‘altogether scandalized’.392 Croft, ‘A Collection of Several Speeches’, 293, 302, 310. On Salisbury’s authorship of this treatise, see ibid. 298, 308. For James’s continued enthusiasm for the Union, see CSP Ven. 1607-10, p. 390.

James was unwilling to close off all sources of reward to his servants, and was equally reluctant ‘to come short of the greatness of our progenitors in any circumstances of ancient orders or magnificence’. However, by mid January at the latest, tempted by the glorious prospect of creating Prince Henry prince of Wales in Parliament, he agreed that there was now no alternative to a fresh meeting with his subjects.393 Croft, ‘A Collection of Several Speeches’, 267, 298. Shortly thereafter, on 25 Jan., Edmondes reported that Salisbury and the Council were wracking their brains to think of ways ‘to induce the Parliament to yield to some large contributions for the maintaining of future charges’. Indeed, Salisbury was so busy with this matter that for a time he neglected to attend to his diplomatic correspondence.394 HMC Downshire, ii. 226, 229.

The opening stages of the Great Contract, February – April 1610

Parliament opened on 9 Feb., but as the Lords then adjourned for five days it was not until the 14th that Salisbury addressed the upper House.395 Procs. 1610, i. 4-8. He began by explaining that Parliament had been summoned for two reasons: to relieve the king’s financial wants and to create the prince of Wales. However, it soon became clear that Salisbury was concerned only with the first of these purposes. After setting out a brief history of the royal finances since James’s accession, Salisbury argued the case for supply. It was an accomplished performance, but it was also misleading, as Salisbury avoided telling his audience that Elizabeth had died virtually solvent. Instead, he announced that she had left debts amounting to £400,000 and only £60,000 with which to pay them. Although he admitted that James had inherited around £300,000 in uncollected subsidies, he brushed aside this inconvenient fact, suggesting that the money had been eaten up by the costs associated with the queen’s funeral, James’s journey south through England, and the entertainment of the king of Denmark in 1606. Nowhere did Salisbury mention the financial benefits of the end of the Spanish war, or the fact that James had a Scottish income. He could not, however, entirely avoid mentioning James’s notorious overspending. In an aside laced with charm (‘But by the way, let me tell you’), the lord treasurer admitted that James ‘hath given away very much’. However, he pointed out that ‘for a king not to be bountiful were a fault’, and implied that James had not been reckless since he was still ‘the greatest king of land in Europe’. Both of these observations undoubtedly had some basis in truth, but since Salisbury himself had spent the past six years trying to persuade James to curb his spending they were also somewhat disingenuous.

Salisbury drew attention to the strenuous efforts made to reduce the royal debt since the beginning of the reign. For instance, the subsidies granted in 1606 had yielded around £400,000, while a further £200,000 had been raised by collecting old debts. However, there was now no way to pay off the remaining debt, which Salisbury put at £300,000, ‘unless it be by this present Parliament’, nor could he eliminate the annual deficit which, on the ordinary account, had been reduced to £46,000 or £50,000, without their help.396 Parl. Debates 1610 ed. S. R. Gardiner, 5 gives the lower figure.

Salisbury was well aware that the Commons could not be expected to provide the crown with a valuable addition to its income for nothing, of course. He therefore announced that, in return for a standing revenue provided by Parliament, James would ‘retribute unto his subjects that which they shall think themselves happy’. In effect, he was inviting the Commons to compound for wardship and purveyance, as he had done in May 1604. However, he did not spell this out, as it was imperative, for the sake of the king’s honour, that it should appear that the offer originated with the Commons themselves. James had already suffered several rebuffs at the hands of the lower House, notably over subsidies in 1604 and the Union in 1604 and 1607, and would not take kindly to another affront. Moreover, by failing to specify what he had in mind, Salisbury also enabled James to say, eight months later, that the Great Contract had been the Commons’ idea rather than his.397 HMC Rutland, i. 424.

Salisbury repeated his speech the following afternoon at a conference between the two Houses.398 Procs. 1610, i. 9. It was, by all accounts, a masterly performance, full of grace and energy, lasting two hours.399 Ibid. ii. 28, 29. It nevertheless exhausted Salisbury who, according to the Venetian ambassador, ended prematurely for ‘want of breath and strength’.400 CSP Ven. 1607-10, p. 444. Foster thought that the Venetian ambassador was referring to a speech delivered at a conference with the Commons on 2 March. Since he was writing on 1/11 Mar., this is plainly false: Procs. 1610, i. 26n. One reason Salisbury spoke for so long was that he said more than he had the previous day. This was because he proceeded to deal with a number of objections to his proposals that he thought might be raised in the lower House. In the first place, he was worried, with good reason, that the Commons would reject his demands on the grounds that the subsidies voted in 1606 had been sufficient to deal with the king’s debts. He therefore asserted that these subsidies had not yielded so much ‘that a new desire should seem strange’. He also mentioned the king’s generosity towards the Scots, which he also feared would be used to oppose his request for supply. He did not deny that the Scots had been highly favoured, but he urged his listeners to remember that James was a Scot himself and had been ‘born amongst them’. Another likely objection that Salisbury sought to overcome concerned the unprecedented nature of his demand for an addition to the king’s annual revenue. The lawyers in the Commons highly prized precedent, but Salisbury urged them to set this consideration aside for once.401 Procs. 1610, ii. 14n, 23, 25. The final objection anticipated by Salisbury concerned impositions. In his treatise penned in the autumn of 1609, Salisbury had assured James that, in respect of these duties, the people ‘little ... grudged to be put to charges when they knew the same was intended for public service’. However, he now realized that he might have been mistaken, and therefore shifted his ground. He told his audience that, when it came to imposing, shopkeepers were far worse offenders than James, ‘as where the king hath imposed a penny to his own necessary use, the shopkeeper will raise a shilling, and yet that is less talked of than the penny which is paid to our Caesar’.402 Ibid. 26; Croft, ‘A Collection of Several Speeches’, 286.

Following this speech, one newsletter-writer reported that ‘the grounds and strength’ of Salisbury’s ‘excellent oration’ to the Commons had been ‘so persuasive’ that the lord treasurer had ‘given very good satisfaction, both to the minds and judgements of all the House’.403 Winwood’s Memorials, iii. 123. In fact, the Commons initially demonstrated little enthusiasm for Salisbury’s proposals. Some Members were affronted that the lord treasurer had departed from the convention that required subsidies to be demanded near the end of a session rather than at the beginning. They were also annoyed that the matter had not been raised in the Commons, whose Members did not wish ‘to be ‘deprived of the thanks for it by any motion from the Lords’. Others saw little point in voting money when the king could not control his gift-giving. ‘What purpose is it’, demanded Thomas Wentworth, ‘for us to draw a silver stream out of the country into the royal cistern if it shall daily run out thence by private cocks?’404 Parl. Debates 1610, pp. 9-11; CJ, i. 397a; CSP Ven. 1607-10, p. 444. These criticisms greatly annoyed the chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Julius Caesar, who had been returned to the Commons on Salisbury’s interest in 1607. Angrily, he berated his colleagues for behaving as though they did not care for the king’s great wants. James needed an annual addition to his income of £200,000, he announced, plus a further £600,000 with which to pay off his debts. If the Commons wished to buy out wardship and purveyance, it would cost them a further £100,000.405 Procs. 1610, ii. 358-9; Parl. Debates 1610, p. 12.

Aside from the fact that they were staggering, these figures required explanation. Salisbury had said that the king owed £300,000, whereas Caesar was asking for twice that sum. Salisbury had also stated that the annual deficit was around £50,000, and yet Caesar wanted the Commons to stump up £200,000 p.a. (or £300,000 if purveyance and wardship were also abolished). However, it was not until 24 Feb. that Salisbury elaborated, by which time the lower House had indicated its willingness to bargain for the abolition of purveyance, wardship and the fines imposed on landowners for alienating certain types of property.406 Procs. 1610, ii. 359. The king’s debt did indeed stand at £300,000, he declared, but a further £100,000 was needed to defend the strategically significant duchy of Cleves, which was in danger of being overrun by Catholic forces. An additional £100,000 was required for ‘household furnitures’. Of the remaining £100,000, half was needed for the Navy. The rest, he added, ‘I hope you will let him [James] have’. Salisbury also declared that Caesar’s figure of £200,000 by way of annual support was correct. The annual shortfall of around £50,000 applied only to the ordinary account; the deficit on the extraordinary account was more than £100,000, and had been so every year since James’s accession.407 Ibid. i. 12; CJ, i. 401b.

Despite this detailed explanation, Salisbury’s demands were regarded as ‘high and extraordinary’.408 Winwood’s Memorials, iii. 124. This was not entirely surprising, as it must have been obvious that the lord treasurer had overstated the king’s needs. However, like any good negotiator, Salisbury understood that to get what he wanted he had to ask for more than he needed. ‘Household furnitures’ was one item that was clearly intended to be bargained away. That afternoon, Salisbury told the Commons that he was prepared to be flexible: ‘if our demands be too great, offer what you will, and we will show you our reasons’.409 Procs. 1610, i. 14.

The early stages of the ensuing negotiations over what became known as the Great Contract were not promising. Salisbury, seconded by his fellow peers, wished to know what the Commons were willing to contribute to the king’s coffers, whereas the Commons declared they were not prepared to consider voting money until they knew what feudal duties the king was willing to surrender. Indeed, the Commons said they would only discuss voting money in return for ‘retribution’. This was alarming, as it suggested that the lower House was not prepared to consider paying off the king’s debts. It also indicated that they had either ignored, or failed to grasp, the fact that Salisbury had not been asking merely for a quid pro quo. Salisbury did not want the Commons to buy out wardship and purveyance at their market value; he wanted them to provide him with an annual revenue over and above whatever these feudal duties were worth, or else the king would be no better off. Not surprisingly, the Commons were rebuked by Salisbury and Ellesmere for ‘unrespectful proceeding towards his Majesty’.410 Ibid. 12-14; ii. 34; Winwood’s Memorials, iii. 125. On the Commons’ tendency to think in terms of paying only the value of whatever was surrendered, see L.M. Lindquist, ‘The Failure of the Great Contract’, JMH, lvii. 627, 628.

On 21 Feb. the Commons announced that only wardship and the feudal tenure which gave rise to it, known as knight service, were worth buying out. However, they were also willing to discuss the abolition of purveyance. Three days later they asked the Lords to join them in petitioning the king for permission to negotiate.411 Procs. 1610, ii. 32; i. 15. At a conference held that same afternoon (24 Feb.), Salisbury, who had decided to imitate Sully after all, promised that the Lords would ask the king to abandon purveyance in favour of a system modelled on French practice, whereby the king’s officers bought produce at the court gate. He also offered to allow the Commons to buy out several onerous feudal duties, such as licences of alienation and respite of homage. However, he affected to resent the criticism of the Court of Wards, asserting that the only defect with the system of wardship was that ‘the subjects pay too little and ... the king hath not all’. Instead of offering to allow the Commons to buy out wardship, he suggested an administrative improvement. In future, the purchasers of wardships would be required to declare on oath what they had paid, thereby overcoming the common complaint that not all the purchase price went to the king.412 Procs. 1610, i. 16; CJ, i. 401b. Salisbury nevertheless declared that he was attracted to the idea of allowing the Commons to buy out wardship. Indeed, according to the Venetian ambassador, he said that, if it was decided that it was in the public interest to abolish wardship, he would not hesitate to recommend it, even though he himself would be the principal loser thereby.413 CSP Ven. 1607-10, p. 445. Two days later, Salisbury told the Lords that, in the event of abolition, a court of orphans should be established, modelled on the one that already existed in the City of London.414 Procs. 1610, i. 17.

There was a good reason why Salisbury did not formally offer abolition of wardship to the Commons on 24 Feb.: he was not at all sure that James would agree to it. On the last day of February, the king told a Lords’ delegation led by Salisbury that he did not much like the idea, as ‘there could none be grieved at the Wards unless they would be grieved at the monarchy’.415 Ibid. 19-20; LJ, ii. 558b. James was worried by the demand that he surrender knight service, as this would result in the abolition not only of wardship but also of the right of escheat, a valuable source of land for a monarch who had already sold and granted away so much.416 Russell, King Jas. VI and I and his Eng. Parls. 87. According to Godfrey Goodman^*, later bishop of Gloucester, James was urged by ‘a great peer’, then on his deathbed, ‘not to lose any part of his prerogative, especially the Court of Wards, ... for if he should part with these he should hardly be able to govern’. This story, if it is not apocryphal, points to Salisbury’s friend and ally, Dunbar. James was also under pressure from Prince Henry, who had recently sought the mastership of the Wards for himself, not to surrender a source of income which might be expanded to exceed whatever sum the Commons were prepared to pay to buy it out.417For Goodman’s story, and justifiable doubts about the reliability of its source, see E.M. Lindquist, ‘Last Years of the First Earl of Salisbury, 1610-12’, Albion, xviii. 23-4, 39. On Prince Henry’s opposition, see CSP Ven. 1607-10, pp. 451, 476; Diary of Walter Yonge, 19.

Salisbury was understandably alarmed by the king’s reluctance, which, to one outsider, looked suspiciously like an attempt to enhance the Commons’ price.418 Winwood’s Memorials, iii. 129. He therefore put off informing the Commons, fearing that this knowledge would serve only to derail their debate over the amount they were willing to contribute to the king’s coffers.419 Procs. 1610, i. 21, 183. However, he could not delay indefinitely. On the afternoon of 2 Mar. he told the Commons’ representatives that, while he himself remained willing to offer up wardship ‘as freely as I should a pair of gloves’, the king was reluctant to part with ‘such a flower to the crown’ unless ‘somewhat may appear to posterity’. Not until 12 Mar. did James permit the Commons to negotiate for ‘the fair Helen’.420 Ibid. ii. 54. Even then he remained unsure that he was wise to do so, telling the Commons on 20 Mar. that ‘the matter of the Wards is the greatest thing that hath come in question this many a day’ and that he did not want his heirs to blame him for ‘my evil husbandry’.421 Ibid. i. 44.

While James dithered over whether to allow the Commons to treat for the surrender of wardship, Salisbury’s attention was taken by a matter that had the potential to derail the negotiations before they had begun in earnest. On 27 Feb. the Commons asked the Lords to join them in punishing Dr John Cowell, a Cambridge academic whose recently published legal dictionary, The Interpreter, claimed that the practice of making laws in Parliament was merely a courtesy, the king being entitled to promulgate laws without reference to his subjects. Although he was no lawyer, Salisbury, whose many offices included that of chancellor of Cambridge University, accused the Commons of behaving without regard for due process, since Cowell had been given no chance to defend himself. He also alleged that they were acting ultra vires, as the lower House had jurisdiction only over its own Members. He therefore proposed that the Commons lay their complaints before the upper House, which would examine the case ‘and then punish, if cause be’. This offer was somewhat disingenuous, however, for on 5 Mar. Salisbury stated that he did not see how Cowell could be punished by Parliament at all, since his book had been written ‘out of Parliament’ and impugned no Member of either House.422 Ibid. 18, 27, 180.

As the dispute over The Interpreter gathered momentum, it was not only Cowell whom Salisbury found himself defending. On 2 Mar. the 1st (or 7th) Lord Saye and Sele (Richard Fiennes^*), a peer of decidedly puritan leanings, seized upon the Commons’ complaint to embarrass Archbishop Bancroft, who had defended Cowell, his vicar general, as ‘a very honest man and sufficient scholar’. Saye suggested that Bancroft should not help report the outcome of a conference on Cowell, as Cowell had dedicated his book to the archbishop. Salisbury was no great admirer of Bancroft, with whom he disagreed sharply over the treatment of recusants, but it was ‘very strange’ to assume that the dedication necessarily indicated that Bancroft was privy to the book’s contents. After all, he himself had had 40 ‘foolish books’ dedicated to him within the space of a year. Bancroft, he argued, should only be discharged from serving as a reporter on grounds of illness rather than because he was the dedicatee of Cowell’s book.423 Ibid. 24-5; LJ, ii. 557b.

By the end of the first week in March it was clear that, unless evasive action was taken, the two Houses were headed for a confrontation. This was the last thing that Salisbury can have wanted, and it was therefore probably at his request that the king became involved. On 8 Mar. James, through Salisbury, informed the Commons that he had read the offending passages in Cowell’s book, interrogated their author and decided to order the volume’s suppression on the grounds that Cowell had been ‘too bold with the common law’. This solution, which neatly sidestepped the fraught issue of parliamentary judicature, proved acceptable not only to the Commons but also to Salisbury. Speaking with his chancellor’s hat on, Salisbury declared that if Cowell had received the encouragement of his university to publish, he would ‘like Cambridge the worse’.424 Procs. 1610, i. 30-1, 189-90; CJ, i. 409b.

On 26 Mar., the day after James issued a proclamation banning Cowell’s book, the Commons offered £100,000 for wardship, purveyance and the other feudal incidents mentioned by Salisbury at the conference between the two Houses on 24 February.425 Procs. 1610, i. 54; CSP Dom. 1603-10, p. 594. Surprisingly, perhaps, it soon transpired that neither Salisbury nor his fellow peers had any clear idea of the precise value of what it was they were offering to surrender, nor did they fully understand the legal issues involved. Consequently, they were unable to provide the Commons with an immediate reply. Instead, at Salisbury’s suggestion, they sought advice from the judges.426 Procs. 1610, i. 55, 197-8. This exercise proved to be immensely complex, and by the time the upper House rose for Easter on 2 Apr., the peers were still not ready to debate the matter with the Commons.427 LJ, ii. 576a, 576b. To make matters worse, the Commons also became bogged down in detail. Having offered a price, they had now to reduce all tenures into one form, that of common socage, in order to put an end to feudal incidents. By the end of March, if not sooner, they were lost in ‘a labyrinth of difficulties and stops’.428 HMC Downshire, ii. 86.

Over Easter, James became increasingly anxious. On 17 Apr., the day after Parliament reconvened, the Lords attended the king and Council at Whitehall to debate wardship. No record of this meeting survives, but one newsletter-writer reported that James indicated that he was ‘more averse than he was afore’.429 Procs. 1610, i. 63; HMC Downshire, ii. 279. Clearly Salisbury, who was rumoured to have reached a private agreement with the Commons to surrender the mastership of the Wards in return for a lump sum and a pension, carried less weight with the king than Prince Henry, who remained adamantly opposed to the surrender of wardship.430 CSP Ven. 1607-10, p. 476. When Salisbury was asked, on 20 Apr., whether James was willing to turn all tenures into common socage, he was forced to reply that the king ‘would upon no terms depart with any part of his sovereign prerogative, whereof the tenure in capite of his person ... is no small branch’. James was prepared to sell only the incidents of feudal tenure, not the tenures themselves.431 LJ, ii. 580b.

On the face of it, James’s decision represented a severe blow to Salisbury, who had clearly hoped to grant the Commons both tenures and incidents. However, it may actually have been a blessing in disguise. The Commons, mired in difficulties, now had the excuse they needed to abandon their demand that tenure by knight service be abolished. On 26 Apr. they told the Lords that they were now willing to settle for ‘a sufficient assurance’ that the king would not use his feudal rights to re-establish wardship at some later date. All that remained was to determine whether the Lords would accept their offer of £100,000. Salisbury was clearly relieved at this change of heart, and flattered the lower House for its wisdom. However, he was alarmed that the Commons had failed to understand his earlier demand, that the king should receive from Parliament an annual income over and above the value of whatever he agreed to surrender. Unless the king received £200,000 in addition to ‘whatsoever we defalked from our Contract’, he declared, ‘the Wards will not be had’.432 Procs. 1610, i. 67, 70; Parl. Debates 1610, p. 151.

Impositions and the Great Contract, May – July 1610

The extent to which the Commons were aggrieved at James’s refusal to surrender feudal tenures, rather than merely their incidents, is unclear. However, on 24 Apr., four days after Salisbury informed the lower House of the king’s decision, the Commons’ committee for grievances began to debate impositions.433 CJ, i. 420b, 421b. Salisbury, who had predicted two months earlier that impositions might prove to be a stumbling block in reaching a settlement with the Commons, was incensed. He told the Lords on 26 Apr. that ‘to dispute what the king may do is pernicious’. The Commons should confine themselves to complaining about the rate at which impositions were set, or abuses committed in their collection. However, he wisely decided not to raise the matter at that afternoon’s conference because, as Lord Knollys observed, ‘to take any private knowledge that we hear the lower House taketh exception at the impositions ... will but do hurt, and make them backwarder in this business concerning supply and support’.434 Procs. 1610, i. 67-9.

Following the conference of 26 Apr., there was a real danger that the Commons would abandon the negotiations over wardship. Salisbury’s insistence that the king must have three times what the lower House had offered had ‘very much disturbed’ the Commons, who claimed that the poor economic climate meant that they could go no higher.435 HMC Downshire, ii. 285; Chamberlain Letters, i. 298; CJ, i. 423a, 423b. On 2 May the Commons drafted a statement that they could not increase their offer without upsetting their constituents.436 Procs. 1610, i. 75; Winwood’s Memorials, iii. 153. For Salisbury, the Commons’ loss of enthusiasm for the Contract was alarming, but for the time being there was little he could do. At the end of April and beginning of May he was necessarily distracted by the negotiations for a treaty with France and the German Protestant princes over the defence of the duchy of Cleves.437 LJ, ii. 583a, 585b; Winwood’s Memorials, iii. 152, 153. He reassured James, who had gone hunting, that the Commons would not be so ‘peremptory’ as to break off the discussions. Sir Thomas Lake at least thought that he was whistling in the dark.438 HMC Hatfield, xxi. 216-17.

Salisbury was unable to turn his attention again to the Great Contract until 3 May, when he told the Lords that he was astonished that the Commons thought the king’s demands too great, since he had not yet had a chance to explain them in detail. Just such an opportunity now arose, however, for at that very moment the Commons requested a meeting with the Lords.439 Procs. 1610, i. 74. The conference, which took place the following afternoon, fell far short of the lord treasurer’s expectations. Despite having been asked to debate with them,440 LJ, ii. 587a. the Commons’ spokesmen were forbidden to do more than listen to the Lords and read out a message stating that the Commons could give no more than £100,000 without arousing discontent. Salisbury was furious, and demanded to know ‘what tempest had fallen, that it was become a danger to ask a question’. The Commons’ offer was ‘not answerable’ to the value of those things that the king was prepared to surrender; indeed, wardship and the sale of licences of alienation alone were worth more. If they refused to increase their offer, he warned, he would not hesitate to increase the value of wardship by exploiting the king’s rights to the full. He invited any Member of the Commons who doubted that the royal finances were desperate to see him in private. Before the meeting broke up, Salisbury asked the Commons’ spokesmen to give him the written message they had been instructed to read, but they declined, a refusal which did nothing to improve his humour.441 Procs. 1610, ii. 80-2; i. 237. Four days later, in the aftermath of the news of the assassination of Henri IV, Salisbury tried again to persuade the Commons to improve their offer. However, his argument that the French king’s murder jeopardized the defence of the realm and put James in need of even greater financial assistance was ‘scarce well taken’ by the lower House, which was ‘much distasted already by the king’s excessive demands’.442 Ibid. i. 84; ii. 81; Winwood’s Memorials, iii. 160.

The truth of the matter was that, while Salisbury was still focussed on the Great Contract, the Commons had become increasingly diverted by impositions. In late April the lower House had decided to examine the medieval records in the Tower and the Exchequer to discover whether the king was entitled to impose additional customs duties without the assent of Parliament.443 CJ, i. 422b. James was thoroughly alarmed by this development, and instructed Salisbury to prevent the legality of impositions from being debated. Salisbury replied on the morning of 3 May that he would issue the Speaker with an order to forbid any such discussion ‘as soon as any man offers such an argument’. He himself was dismayed by the violent hostility towards impositions exhibited in the Commons, particularly among ‘town burgesses’, who were convinced ‘that more impositions are coming’.444 Hatfield House, CP128/92. This is Salisbury’s own surviving draft. Its addressee, though unspecified, was then in attendance on the king. It is also undated, but its time of writing can be precisely determined from internal evidence.

In stark contrast to the slow pace which had hitherto characterized the negotiations over the Great Contract, the Commons conducted their search of the records with lightning-like rapidity. Indeed, on 10 May they announced that were ready to interrogate the king’s legal advisers over the precedents they had uncovered. However, the next day, as he had been instructed to do by Salisbury, Speaker Phelips revealed that he had received a message from the king requiring the Commons to refrain from debating the legality of impositions, the matter having already been settled by the Exchequer Court.445 CJ, i. 427a; Procs. 1610, ii. 82. His announcement provoked widespread dismay among Members, who demanded to know how, given that James was out of town hunting, Phelips had come by this message. Phelips was startled by this challenge to his authority, and asked not to be pressed, but after taking the advice of Salisbury’s key spokesmen in the House – Sir Julius Caesar and Sir Walter Cope, both of whom sat near the chair – he reluctantly admitted that the message had come from the Council. This revelation provoked fury; Phelips was reminded that ‘he was our mouth to the king, and not the king’s mouth to us’. It was resolved to proceed as though the House had received no message at all.446 Procs. 1610, ii. 83-4.

Salisbury’s plan to stifle the debate over impositions had clearly backfired. Over the course of the next few weeks, the dispute spiralled out of control. James, angry that his wishes were being flouted, returned to London and instructed the Commons to forbear discussing impositions until they had received permission to do so.447 Ibid. 85-6, 92. When this injunction failed to have the desired effect, he addressed the Commons in person on 21 May. He berated them for spending 14 weeks in doing nothing, and demanded to know whether it was fit that they should seek to deprive him of a source of income worth £70,000 a year when they had been summoned to debate supply and support. Salisbury had been correct to tell them that the death of the French king had made his financial needs even more pressing, as war was looming, ‘and provision after time is like mustard after dinner’. Except in case of urgent necessity, there was no danger of more impositions, because ‘I find it a grievous thing to impose’ and Salisbury had warned him that further levies would result in complaints that merchants had been ruined.448 Ibid. 101-6. The Commons, however, were not reassured. On the contrary, they were so alarmed that, on 22 May, they not only resumed debating the legality of impositions but also resolved to draft a petition defending their right to free speech.

As these events unfolded, Salisbury, who had hitherto occupied centre stage, was temporarily reduced to the status of a spectator. In part this was because James had decided to take the lead himself, but it was also because of the negotiations for an alliance with France and the German princes, which now kept Salisbury from Westminster.449 Salisbury was absent on 10, 12, 14, 15 and 21 May. On the French treaty negotiations, see Salisbury’s dispatch of 14 May in Winwood’s Memorials, iii. 161-3. See also LJ, ii. 596b. Not until 26 May, the day after the Commons presented the king with their petition, did Salisbury attempt to take control of proceedings again. Despite the impending Whitsun holiday, he arranged a meeting between the representatives of both Houses that afternoon to discuss the Great Contract.450 Procs. 1610, i. 90; LJ, ii. 601a. At this meeting, Salisbury expressed frustration at the Commons’ repeated refusal to allow their spokesmen to debate with the Lords. They had nothing to fear, he declared, as there were far more lawyers in the lower House than in the upper, ‘and for eloquence, you are too hard for us’. He wished to revert to the practice that had prevailed only a few years earlier, when everyone had spoken as often as they wished, ‘and thereby well understood one another the better’. So far as his demand for £300,000 by way of support was concerned, he was willing to settle for £240,000 instead, provided that the Commons abandoned composition for purveyance. He did not expect an immediate answer to this offer, but he wished to meet again as quickly as possible. Parliament would soon rise for the summer, and ‘it would be a dishonour unto us all to have sitten so many weeks and to have done nothing’.451 Procs. 1610, i. 92-3, 123. The figures given in different accounts do not always agree with one another.

Despite his customary eloquence, and the fact that he cooperated with the Commons when the latter insisted that recusants be disarmed and barred from the capital,452 LJ, ii. 601a; Procs. 1610, i. 91-2; Stuart Royal Proclamations, I, 245-50. Salisbury found himself ignored. When the lower House reconvened on 30 May, its Members pointedly ‘did little’. Immediately thereafter, all eyes were focussed on the preparations for the forthcoming investiture of Prince Henry as prince of Wales.453 Procs. 1610, i. 125. Salisbury himself was kept by this event from attending Parliament on 1 and 2 June (though he was named to a committee on the 2nd), and at the ceremony itself, which took place on 4 June, he read aloud the charter of creation.454 LJ, ii. 606b; Procs. 1610, ii. 127. Following the prince’s investiture, there was a further delay, as Members of the Commons spent the next two days in taking the oath of allegiance, which they themselves had recently persuaded James to order be administered to all according to law. However, by 7 June they were free to turn their attention once more to the Great Contract. Instead, they spent the morning reading bills.455 CJ, i. 435a, 435b; ‘Paulet 1610’, f. 15. Salisbury was understandably beside himself. On the 8th he told the Lords that Parliament could see for itself how much money had been spent on the creation ceremony. If it did not provide for the king’s wants, ‘there may be a record entered [that] there never was such a Parliament’. He recommended asking the Commons the reason for the delay, ‘or else we may sit here idle’. On receiving this message, the Commons denied having dragged their heels, and claimed that they ‘do still continue in dispute’. When they were ready to confer, they added, the Lords would be informed.456 Procs. 1610, i. 99, 100; ii. 132.

The king was dissatisfied with this response, and demanded that the Commons be ‘wakened again’. Accordingly, on 11 June Salisbury arranged for the two Houses to confer that afternoon. The prospects for a productive meeting must have seemed poor, and were not helped by the fact that immediately beforehand Salisbury joined the bishops in denouncing a bill to prevent the enforcement of any ecclesiastical Canons not confirmed by Parliament. This measure had a significant following in the lower House, but to Salisbury it confirmed an impression, first gained in 1604, that the Commons were seeking to undermine the royal prerogative.457 Ibid. i. 100-1, 103.

At the ensuing conference the Commons began by demanding to know whether the Lords intended to convey a message from the king. In view of their recent dispute with their Speaker they had decided that any such message would contravene their orders. Salisbury replied, somewhat testily, that the Lords had no intention of contending with them over formalities. James had merely given the Lords leave to talk to the Commons if they wished. On hearing this transparent falsehood, the Commons’ representatives, duly abashed, cried ‘Yes, Yes’. Once silence had been restored, Salisbury spelled out the financial realities now facing the king. James had already supplied £6,000 for the payment of military forces to defend Cleves, and a further £30,000 had been promised, yet his debt ‘eats him up like a canker’. Indeed, his borrowings now stood at £400,000 or £500,000, on which he paid interest amounting to £50,000 annually. To make matters even bleaker, James was now £20,000 a year worse off than he had been when the session began. This was because, in view of the Commons’ complaints, he had decided to reduce the imposts on deal boards, clapboards, grain, malt, new drapery wares and Irish yarn. He added that few previous parliaments, when told of the king’s necessities, had failed to vote supply within two months, let alone three. What would the world at large think if, after laying open his wants to his subjects, James received nothing? So far, the negotiations over the Contract had been circular, for although the two Houses had met many times they had never truly conferred, ‘and a better device to keep men in difference can never be found out than never to have a conference’. Rather than spend more time on ‘support’, Salisbury suggested postponing discussions until the next session. This would allow Members the opportunity to consult their constituents, as it was clear that many were nervous about agreeing to create a permanent addition to the crown’s income without first discussing the matter with those who had elected them. In the meantime, the Commons should turn their attention to supply. In return, James promised to levy no more impositions before the next session.458 Ibid. ii. 134-41. For the warrant, dated 26 June, reducing impositions on selected items, see Hatfield House, CP220/5. Letters patent were issued the same day: Lindquist, ‘Failure of the Great Contract’, 640n.

For once, Salisbury’s words had an effect, as the Commons immediately began a two-day long subsidy debate. However, this sudden transformation probably owed as much to declining levels of attendance in the lower House as it did to Salisbury’s powers of persuasion: many Members had not returned after Whitsun, and the start of a new law term on 8 June meant that most of the lawyer-Members were now diverted by their professional affairs.459 For the poor levels of attendance in the Commons at this time, see CJ, i. 436a, 437a, 439b, 440a; Procs. 1610, ii. 379. Any hope that the lower House would now grant subsidies was soon dashed, however, as it quickly became apparent that its remaining Members were so divided that the Speaker dared not put the matter to a vote.460 Procs. 1610, ii. 141-3, 148n; Parl. Debates 1610, p. 57. Instead, on 15 June, the Commons turned once again to the vexed question of support.

Following his speech of 11 June, Salisbury largely absented himself from the Lords. There was little he could do while the Commons were locked in debate, and besides, his duties as secretary of state urgently required his attention.461 See Sir Thomas Edmondes’ revealing comments made on 14 June: HMC Downshire, ii. 308. He did not neglect his own parliamentary interests, though, for in his absence, on 16 June, a bill to assure him possession for the next 80 years of the land on which he had recently built Britain’s Bourse was given a first reading in the Lords. The sudden appearance of this measure took the bishop of Durham (William James^*), whose land had been acquired by Salisbury, by surprise. The following day the bishop wrote to the lord treasurer complaining that the bill was poorly drafted and would need to be committed, something that might have been avoided had he been consulted first.462 LJ, ii. 614a; HMC Hatfield, xxi. 224. In fact the bill, which received its second reading on the 18th, was reported from committee without amendment. Indeed, it sailed through the Lords and also through the Commons, where it was considered by a committee whose members included Caesar, Cope, Beeston and Edward Forsett^‡, who had been returned for Wells on Salisbury’s interest in 1607.463 LJ, ii. 616a, 617b, 619a; CJ, i. 442b, 443a.

The fact that the Britain’s Bourse bill was given a first reading in the Lords on 16 June suggests that Salisbury expected the Commons to spend several days arguing over support. In fact, this assumption proved incorrect, as two days later the Commons requested the Lords to add further items to the list of things to be surrendered by the king and to specify James’s minimum price. They also asked to meet the Lords in debate, something that Salisbury had been insisting upon for some time. A no doubt delighted Salisbury responded the next day (19 June) by proposing that a deputation be sent to Greenwich to put the Commons’ questions to the king in person. The Lords agreed, and Salisbury himself was among those peers appointed to attend the king the same afternoon.464 CJ, i. 441b; Procs. 1610, i. 109; LJ, ii. 618a.

At long last, it appeared that a deal was within reach. All that was needed was for James to agree to the Commons’ additional requests and to specify his bottom line. There might still be some last-minute haggling, but the Commons now seemed eager to bring matters to a speedy conclusion. However, instead of acting decisively, the king proceeded to dither, just as he had done over tenures three months earlier. He protested that he needed time to establish the value of the additional items, and could not immediately hit upon a price. He would let the Commons have his answer by noon on the 26th. Privately, he told Salisbury that he was prepared to lower his demands, but he evidently did not tell the lord treasurer – who had recently offered the Commons £240,000 provided they dropped their demand for the surrender of purveyance – how low he was prepared to go.465 Procs. 1610, i. 114-15.

The king’s answer, when it came on the 26th, amounted to a demand for £220,000.466 Ibid. ii. 168. However, if James now expected the negotiations to be brought to a swift conclusion he was in for a shock. The following day the law term ended, and the lawyers who had been absent from the Commons for the last few weeks now came flooding back. Instead of discussing the king’s latest offer, they turned to the legality of impositions, a subject which they debated almost continuously until 3 July. Salisbury, whose strategy of lowering some impositions had clearly failed to eliminate opposition to these levies, signalled his disgust by staying away from Parliament. It was left to Sir Julius Caesar to explain to the Commons that, if the king surrendered impositions, which were worth £100,000 when extraordinary sources were taken into account, they must ‘supply with somewhat else’.467 Ibid. 250. He nevertheless put in an appearance on 2 July, when he reported from committee two bills, one designed to put an end to the common practice of assigning debts to the king in order to evade payment of creditors, the other to prevent the leasing lands to the king with the aim of trying other men’s titles.468 LJ, ii. 632a, 633b.

As a result of the Commons’ lengthy debate on impositions, customs duties not laid by Parliament were included in an extensive petition of grievances presented to an ashen-faced king at Whitehall on 7 July. An angry James now concluded that if the Great Contract collapsed, it would be because Salisbury had extended impositions two years earlier. He demanded an explanation from the lord treasurer for the decision to introduce the new impositions, an explanation that he insisted be given not in private, but before the Members of the Commons at Whitehall. There, on 10 July, James announced to the assembled throng that ‘if I have done wrong, blame the lord treasurer, who told me I might impose’.469 Procs. 1610, ii. 275; i. 133.

Although James had now publicly distanced himself from him, Salisbury retained his composure. He declared that impositions had been extended because of ‘the wars in Ireland’, which was false, and with the consent of the merchant community, which was true. Not all impositions had been raised in value, he observed, for he himself had lowered a number of them shortly after becoming lord treasurer. Impositions had done much good, he claimed, causing the price of lead to fall from £14 to £11 a ton. Every effort had been made by the Council to ensure that the new duties were laid without causing damage to buyers or sellers, both of whom had been consulted. The recent loss of trade was attributable to the war in the Low Countries rather than to these levies. Impositions were not new but ‘very ancient’, having first been levied in the reign of Queen Mary. That said, he would be delighted to be rid of them. Indeed, if the Commons made satisfactory financial provision for the king, there would be no further need for impositions to continue beyond the end of that Parliament.470 Ibid. i. 130-3; HMC Downshire, ii. 333-4.

It was, by all accounts, a sparkling performance – a ‘long and good narration’ one observer called it – which went some way towards answering Salisbury’s critics. Once the lord treasurer had finished speaking, James offered the Commons several concessions, including a promise to remove the impost of 1s. a chaldron on seacoal shipped from Blyth and Sunderland, which fell heavily on the poor. That evening, Salisbury also met several leading Members of the lower House privately at Hyde Park (of which he was keeper) to continue to press his case.471 Birch, Ct. and Times of Jas. I, i. 122-3. However, he failed to win over any converts, and over the course of the following week the Commons gave a bill condemning impositions three readings.472 Procs. 1610, ii. 210; CJ, i. 449b, 450a, 450b. Salisbury was forced to concede further exemptions demanded by the Commons.473 CSP Ven. 1610-13, p. 12. These were authorized by James on 5 Sept., after the session was prorogued. After reciting that he had already lifted the imposts on several items, including deal boards and grain, and after observing that ‘some of those, whom reason cannot satisfy, are apt to continue their complaints for further favour and ease in this matter’, the king agreed to lift the imposts on nearly all exported goods.474 HMC Hatfield, xxi. 230; Hatfield House, CP 220/6; Lindquist, ‘Failure of the Great Contract’, 640n.

Although the Hyde Park meeting failed to prevent the reading of the impositions bill, it seems to have had one significant outcome. The day after it took place, Sir Julius Caesar initiated a subsidy debate, which he probably would not have done unless ordered by Salisbury. Once again the government’s expectations were disappointed, as there was widespread dissatisfaction in the Commons with the king’s limited response to the petition of grievances. The lower House agreed to give just one subsidy and one fifteenth, equivalent to less than £100,000, an amount which Salisbury described as ‘but a drop in a cistern of water’. James, who had not intended his reply to the petition to be regarded as complete, was disgusted, and instructed Salisbury to send him the names of those of his servants who had voted against a larger grant.475 CJ, i. 448a, 448b; CSP Dom. 1603-10, p. 623; Procs. 1610, i. 149; Letters of King Jas. VI and I, 314-15.

Having now secured a modest grant of supply, the government renewed – through Speaker Phelips on 12 July - its demand for support. Salisbury himself was too busy to attend the Lords over the next three days. However, he continued to influence its business, for on the 14th Ellesmere asked whether he wished a bill for the king’s safety to be read in his absence.476 HMC Hatfield, xxi. 227-8. He resumed his seat on the 16th, when he expressed his approval of the bill, but his dislike of the clause which provided for the punishment of offenders’ children.477 Procs. 1610, i. 139-40.

That afternoon, the Commons announced that they had now considered the king’s offer of £220,000. Having inspected the records of the Court of Wards for themselves, they declared that Salisbury had overvalued wardship and were therefore prepared to offer only £180,000.478 Ibid. 141-2. This sum fell far short of the £300,000 that had originally been demanded, but neither Salisbury nor the rest of the Council was prepared to reject it out of hand. That evening the lord treasurer helped relay the Commons’ offer to the king, then at Theobalds. James agreed that £180,000 was too low, and therefore proposed to meet the lower House halfway, at £200,000.479 Ibid. 145; ii. 284-5; LJ, ii. 648a. The following day - 17 July - Salisbury communicated this fresh offer to the Commons. At the same time he drew attention to the sacrifice he was about to make, for by giving up the Court of Wards ‘I am robbed of my right arm, and of the greatest strength I have to merit the love of many’. However, he was also tired of the negotiations, and as Members began to file out of the Painted Chamber he called them back with the warning that, if they decided to reject the proposed compromise, James would immediately dissolve the Parliament ‘and never make the like offer’ again.480 Winwood’s Memorials, iii. 194.

For a brief moment, it seemed that Salisbury was on the brink of securing an agreement. Salisbury himself believed that the sparse attendance in the Commons would work to the king’s advantage, for on the morning of 19 July he announced that the Commons were more likely to reach agreement now ‘than when they are all here’. In fact, this was mistaken, as Members of the Commons had long been averse to taking important decisions in a thin House. That afternoon Sir Edwin Sandys explained that, while there was a general inclination in the lower House to accept the king’s price, the Commons could not be expected to make ‘a final end of the business’ as the lawyer-Members had gone on circuit. Salisbury protested that, as the absentee lawyers would not be required to pay more than their colleagues who remained behind, their absence should not matter. However, he wisely decided not to press the point. Before the conference broke up, Salisbury was praised by Sandys for having dealt ‘very honourably’ with the Commons. Sandys also requested that the Lords join the Commons in petitioning the king to consider the officers of the Wards, ‘especially ... my lord treasurer’, who stood to lose their posts if the Contract were approved. However, Salisbury, though willing to lobby on behalf of his fellow officers, did not think it appropriate that he should be compensated for his losses. ‘His Majesty’s favour is sufficient for me’, he told the Lords two days later, ‘and if my service deserve anything I assure myself his Majesty will be pleased to reward me’.481 Procs. 1610, i. 154-6, 158, 163. His confidence was well founded, for it was probably at around this time that the king agreed to renew his lease of the silk farm for 19 years at the old rent. Since the value of this farm had increased dramatically since he had first acquired it, Salisbury was able to sub-let the lease to merchant contractors in return for an annual net profit of £7,000.482 Stone, Fam. and Fortune, 14.

During what little remained of the session, Salisbury reported the bill for the king’s safety, spoke on the subject of a petition by the London silk-dyers and attended a conference with the Commons on the subject of Sir Stephen Proctor, who had abused his position as sole collector of the fines on recusants.483 LJ, ii. 653a, 655a, 657a; Procs. 1610, i. 165. He also seconded George Abbot*, bishop of London, who pressed the Lords to create a written record of what had been agreed thus far in the Contract negotiations. Indeed, he himself drafted this document after the Commons prepared a similar memorial. Shortly after the prorogation of 23 July, he instructed the clerk of the Parliaments to enter both of these aide memoires in the official records of the upper House.484 Procs. 1610, i. 153, 154, 163n; LJ, ii. 656a-7a.

The collapse of the Great Contract, August – December 1610

Although Salisbury had failed to clinch a deal with the Commons, the session ended on an uncharacteristically optimistic note. ‘The little beagle hath run a true and perfect scent’, declared Sir Roger Aston^‡, one of the knights for Cheshire, for he had ‘brought the rest of the greater hounds to a perfect tune, which was before by their voice much divided’. Indeed, Aston reported that most Members of the Commons favoured accepting the king’s price. Salisbury’s servant, Samuel Calvert, too, was full of admiration for his master, who had ‘much prevailed in his projects by reason of his power’.485 Procs. 1610, ii. 285; HMC Downshire, ii. 328. Salisbury himself, however, was under no illusion that the Contract which had provisionally been agreed was far from satisfactory. ‘We must not take silver for gold, nor mercury for silver’, he told the Lords, four days before the prorogation. Even if the Contract were finally concluded, some means would have to be devised to ensure that Parliament’s annual subvention was ring-fenced. Bitter experience showed that, where fiscal matters were concerned, James was a recidivist, so if ‘out of magnificence’ he spent ‘anything more than he hath’, Salisbury would have to ensure that he did so ‘out of other means’.486 Procs. 1610, i. 154, 158. The threat to the already depleted crown lands was obvious, and perhaps for this reason, over the summer, Salisbury finally seems to have created a ‘great entail’.487 This document remains to be found, but its existence is referred to in LS13/280, ff. 409v-11 and CSP Dom. 1625-6, p. 539.

Following the prorogation, the king set out on his summer progress. Salisbury did not follow; his only daughter, Frances, married Lord Clifford (Henry Clifford^*), heir to the 4th earl of Cumberland (Francis Clifford^*), at Kensington on 25 July, and the distraction of a Parliament had left him with a backlog of work to clear. Besides, he was probably already thinking about the next session. Should the terms of the Contract prove acceptable, he wanted to present the Commons with a plan for raising the money when they reassembled. Before the prorogation he had proposed a levy on land, a suggestion which had met with broad agreement in the Lords and the partial agreement of Sandys, who thought that some of the money at least should be raised from other sources, ‘lest the people should be grieved’.488 Procs. 1610, i. 153, 155. To that end he now drafted a bill to allow the appointment of commissioners to survey England and Wales in preparation for levying a land tax.489 Lindquist, ‘Failure of the Great Contract’, 641, and n. This, and other business, meant that Salisbury did not quit the capital until 9 August. Even then, his purpose was not to seek a well-earned rest but to consult the king, then in Northamptonshire, on matters of foreign policy. He returned to Whitehall less than a week later, having managed to snatch only a couple of days at Burghley House, his half-brother’s palatial Northamptonshire seat.490 Add. 36767, ff. 280, 284.

It was probably during Salisbury’s brief absence that Sir Julius Caesar penned a closely argued paper on the subject of the Great Contract. Dated 17 Aug., its gist was that the terms provisionally agreed by Salisbury were unacceptable, and that the very concept of the Contract was itself flawed. Caesar calculated that the prerogative revenues the crown had agreed to surrender in return for an annual payment of £200,000 were worth about £115,000 p.a., meaning that the king stood to make a yearly profit of £85,000. However, this surplus was nowhere near enough to cover the annual deficit on the ordinary and extraordinary accounts, which amounted to about £150,000. This deficit was soon set to rise to £198,000, mainly because lands worth £20,000 a year had now been settled on the king’s eldest son, and because impositions of a similar value had been surrendered in return for the goodwill of the Commons. Once the king had agreed to the Contract, he would be saddled with an annual shortfall of £113,000. To make matters worse, he would find that he was no longer able to demand subsidies except in time of war, as the Commons would never consent to additional peacetime supply once they had furnished the crown with an annual income. Acceptance of the Contract would make the king financially dependent upon his Parliament, a situation which Caesar described as ‘a ready passage to democracy, which is the deadliest enemy to monarchy’. It would be far better for the king to retain his prerogative powers, as the revenues these yielded were quite capable of producing the £85,000 profit promised by the Contract. Wardship, for instance, could easily be exploited to raise an additional £40,000 a year for the king, without causing widespread discontent.491 Parl. Debates 1610, pp. 164-78.

Caesar’s paper must have made depressing reading for Salisbury. It was clear that the terms he had provisionally agreed with the Commons would not bring the king’s income into balance with his expenditure. Nothing less than the £300,000 the lord treasurer had originally demanded as support was required to eliminate the deficit – and even that sum would not have been quite adequate. The best that could be said about the proposed deal was that it might serve to slow the rate at which the royal finances were haemorrhaging. How Salisbury reacted to Caesar’s paper is unknown, but it was difficult to fault Caesar’s reasoning, and he himself later freely admitted that the Contract was ‘imperfect’.492 Procs. 1610, ii. 299. His sense of foreboding perhaps explains why, at around this time, he attempted to win the support of the queen by presenting her with a costly set of hangings.493 Stone, Fam. and Fortune, 30.

It was not only Caesar who developed misgivings about the Contract over the summer. On returning to their homes, many Members of the Commons found little enthusiasm among their neighbours and constituents for the idea of paying for a permanent addition to the king’s annual income. When Parliament reassembled on 16 Oct., fewer than 100 of them – a mere fifth of the lower House’s total membership - took their seats, and those who did return to Westminster spent their time in reading bills. Although he himself missed the first three days of the session, due to the arrival in England of a German prince, Christian of Anhalt,494 ‘Camden Diary’, 8. Salisbury was shocked by the Commons’ failure to debate the Contract. On 23 Oct. he complained that Parliament had sat for eight days, ‘and in all this time no one word spoken concerning the matter for which the assembly was called’. If the Commons regarded the terms offered as acceptable, ‘I marvel they who represent the people do nothing therein’.495 Procs. 1610, i. 252. At a conference with the lower House two days later, he stated that the king’s debts had risen from £300,000 to £500,000 since the start of the previous session. Furthermore, James’s annual income had fallen by £60,000 as a result of the lowering of impositions demanded by the Commons, so that instead of ‘addition’ there had been ‘subtraction’, a situation which was clearly ‘preposterous’. If Parliament did not now relieve the king, ‘you leave him in great extremity’. Indeed, James would be left with little alternative but to exploit his prerogative powers to raise additional revenue.496 Ibid. ii. 299-301, 304.

The king shared Salisbury’s dismay, and six days later, on 31 Oct., he addressed both Houses in person. He pointed out that in offering retribution he had gone further than any of his predecessors, and that the longer the Commons delayed the greater his wants would be. However, his appeal fell on deaf ears. On 6 Nov. a frustrated James brought matters to a head. He told the Commons that they had still to provide him with £500,000 of the £600,000 that Salisbury had demanded by way of supply. He also refused to compensate the officers of the Court of Wards, arguing that to do so would eat into his profits. Four days later the lower House notified the king that it had decided to break off the negotiations.

Salisbury’s scheme now lay in ruins. Under the circumstances, it would not have been surprising had James ordered an immediate dissolution. However, Salisbury was desperate to retrieve something from the wreck and, on 14 Nov., he seconded a motion to confer with the Commons about relieving the king’s financial necessities. At the ensuing conference that same afternoon, Salisbury began by confessing that he had exposed the king’s finances to greater scrutiny by Parliament ‘than wisdom … will hold fit to be done in any future time’.497 Procs. 1610, ii. 330. However, after repeating his complaint that the Commons, far from improving the king’s annual income, had actually caused it to be reduced, he presented the Commons with fresh proposals. These included a promise that no impositions would be laid in future without the consent of Parliament; the reform of the penal laws; the repeal of all obsolete laws; and a guarantee of security of title for landowners who had held property for more than 60 years to which the king had a claim. Several of the eight items listed were valuable, but the Commons were unimpressed, as wardship was not included. The following day the Worcestershire Member Sir Samuel Sandys^‡ remarked that if ‘we cannot get the fair Helen, we will not woo her foul apron’. On 21 Nov. Sir Robert Harley^‡, Member for New Radnor Boroughs, called for ‘some things to be added’, namely ‘a composition … for the wardship of the bodies of our posterities’.498 Parl. Debates 1610, pp. 132-3, 136, 138. On the value of the article regarding security of title, see Russell, Jas. VI and I and his Eng. Parls. 89-90.

Salisbury was now desperate, and, following Harley’s speech, he cobbled together an alternative, four-point programme, which included ‘wardship of body’. After obtaining the approval of the king, these fresh proposals were presented to the lower House on 23 November.499 HMC Hastings, IV, 228. However, by now James was at the end of his tether. Through Sir Thomas Lake he instructed Salisbury to seek an immediate grant of supply if the Commons took up new complaints, made extravagant demands or failed to applaud the wardship proposal. To this end, the lord treasurer was ordered to prepare men ‘as well as you can’, and to warn those of the king’s servants with seats to attend the lower House.500 SP14/58/31. James’s suspicion that there was little appetite for Salisbury’s latest proposals quickly proved to be well founded, for the next day a supply debate was held in the Commons. The result was disastrous. The puritan Member Nicholas Fuller‡ declared that, unless the Commons’ grievances were addressed, ‘we cannot give much to the supply spoken of’, while John Hoskins^‡, another longstanding thorn in the crown’s side, launched a thinly veiled attack on Scottish courtiers, whom he accused of debating ‘how to draw out of this cistern as fast as we fill it’.501 Parl. Debates 1610, p. 145; Procs. 1610, ii. 410. Unable to make headway against such vocal opposition, the Speaker adjourned the House for five days, the first of a series of adjournments.502 HMC Hastings, IV, 228.

On learning that the supply debate had proved abortive, James was incandescent with rage. Through Lake, he reminded Salisbury and his fellow councillors that ‘he hath now had patience with this assembly these seven years, and from them received more disgraces, censures and ignom[in]ies than ever prince did endure’. The Council had advised him to be patient, ‘hoping for better issue’, but he ‘cannot have asinine patience; he is not made of that metal that is ever to be held in suspense, and to receive nothing but stripes’.503 SP14/58/35. Behind the scenes, Salisbury and his colleagues on the Council frantically sought to overcome the lower House’s aversion to supply.504 Winwood’s Memorials, iii. 235-6. However, these last ditch efforts were derailed in early December, when James heard that the Commons were planning to demand that he send home those Scots ‘who so much consumed their supplies’. Nothing could be more calculated to enrage the king and bring about a speedy dissolution. At first Salisbury himself was identified as the origin of the report but, after the lord treasurer vehemently disclaimed all knowledge of any such petition, Lake claimed that the rumour had actually been spread by the king’s new Scottish favourite, Sir Robert Carr^* (later earl of Somerset) with the aim of undermining Salisbury.505 HMC Hatfield, xxi. 263-5. The accuracy of this claim is difficult to determine, but Carr certainly had reasons to want to sabotage Salisbury’s plans. He had learned that Salisbury was alarmed at the young Scot’s friendliness with his rival Northampton, and had been plotting with the former royal favourite, James Hay^*, Lord Hay (later 1st earl of Carlisle), to topple him.506 CUL, Dd.iii.63, f. 22. He may also have resented Salisbury’s attempts to control the king’s generosity, as Salisbury had intervened with the king to prevent him from receiving £15,000 of a grant of £20,000 bestowed upon him by James.507 Autobiog. of Sir Simonds D’Ewes, ii. 334-5. For a sceptical view of Lake’s claim about Carr, see Lindquist, ‘Last Years’, 29-30, 34.

Carr’s intervention had the desired effect, for on 6 Dec. the Parliament was prorogued, never to meet again. In the immediate aftermath of the Parliament, Salisbury was consumed with a sense of failure. Instead of restoring the royal finances to sound health, he had weakened them still further. Moreover, he had brought down humiliation upon the head of the king, who was still smarting from the rebuffs he had received at the hands of the Commons in 1604 and 1606-7. The fear that he had lost James’s favour, which had first surfaced three years earlier in connection with the Union, now came flooding back. To his credit, James quickly denied that he had given Salisbury any cause to doubt his continued good standing. Writing to the lord treasurer, he declared that he remained convinced of Salisbury’s honesty and integrity. Though he had found it alarming that Salisbury had ‘broken forth in more passionate and strange discourses these two last sessions of Parliament than ever you were wont to do’, he recognized, with some shame, that he himself was largely to blame for having placed Salisbury under such stress. (Salisbury later complained that, for a long time, he had carried ‘a great[er] cross than any Simon of Syrene could bear’). Yet, even while reassuring Salisbury that all was well between them, James could not resist criticizing his demoralized servant. It had been a serious mistake not to dissolve the Parliament some years earlier, he observed. In trying ‘to draw honey out of gall’, Salisbury had committed his ‘greatest error’. He claimed that he himself had favoured an early dissolution, as had most of his advisers, but that the Parliament had been kept in being on the advice of Salisbury, whom he accused of being ‘a little blinded with the self-love of your own counsel’.508 Letters of King Jas. VI and I, 316-17; Bodl., Tanner 74, f. 10.

Final years, 1611-12

James’s criticisms were harsh, but they were not entirely unfair. There had never been any realistic prospect of persuading the Commons to vote the king an annual income of £200,000 over and above whatever they agreed to pay in return for the surrender of feudal duties, let alone £300,000, nor, given the fact that the Commons had voted peacetime subsidies on an unprecedented scale only four years earlier, had there been any likelihood that they would pay off the lion’s share of his debts. Moreover, Salisbury had been unwise to disregard the explosive potential of impositions. Despite his best efforts, all that the lord treasurer had accomplished was to humiliate the king in the eyes of his subjects and reinforce his aversion to the English Parliament which, for the next ten years, he did his best to avoid. On the other hand, it is difficult to see what other course of action, aside from a Parliament, had lain open to Salisbury. Having apparently pursued all other options, only a Parliament had seemed capable of providing the funds needed to restore the royal finances to health. The uncomfortable truth of the matter was that the chance of success had always been slender, whichever route Salisbury took.

Salisbury was nevertheless mortified by James’s criticisms, and begged the king to suspend judgement until he could be heard in person.509 HMC Hatfield, xxi. 267. However, he quickly realized that more than mere explanations were needed if he were to regain James’s confidence. Just as he had three years earlier, when he offered up his palace of Theobalds in exchange for lands of equal value, he decided to make a personal sacrifice. Shortly after the end of the Christmas holiday, in January 1611, he assigned to James all his profits as master of the Court of Wards, something Queen Elizabeth had instructed him to do 12 years earlier.510 Instructions and Directions given by His Majestie ... bearing date the 9 day of January 1610, to the Master and Counsell of the Court of Wards and Liveries (1611), 10; Birch, Ct. and Times of Jas. I, i. 132. This was more than a symbolic gesture, as Salisbury expected the king’s annual income from wardship to rise threefold in consequence.511 J. Gutch, Collectanea Curiosa, i. 127. How far Salisbury thereby succeeded in assuaging the king’s anger is unclear. However, soon after the death of the earl of Dunbar on 20 Jan., Salisbury noted that James had assured him that he would ‘make me see the first of my great or little errors’ before allowing ‘any drops to fall and rest’.512 Bodl., Tanner 74, f. 9.

Surrendering his income from the Court of Wards was not the only financial assistance Salisbury gave James in the wake of the collapse of the Great Contract. Instructed by the king to ‘cast your care upon the next best means how to help my state’,513 Letters of King Jas. VI and I, 317. Salisbury immediately set about making fresh plans with his customary energy. By 23 Jan. 1611 he had prepared five papers for James’s inspection. Four demonstrated the nature and extent of the king’s wants, while the fifth, entitled ‘Considerations upon his Majesty’s estate’, proposed remedies. On the face of it, as Pauline Croft has observed, this last mentioned document demonstrated that Salisbury ‘now had little more to offer’.514 Oxford DNB, x. 755. Its author freely admitted to James that he could not ‘recover your estate of out of the hands of those great wants to which your Parliament hath now abandoned you’. However, this confession should not be taken too literally, for in the next breath Salisbury announced that it was necessary ‘to raise a new building’. To this end he recommended that existing revenues be improved and that financial discipline be imposed upon the royal household. He also urged the king, yet again, to refrain from gift-giving, for ‘it is your hand that holdeth that sluice, which, being opened at large, or shut up, will make the stream of all your charges and expenses whatsoever either to keep within the banks or to run over’.515 Croft, ‘A Collection of Several Speeches’, 313-17.

In the event, the only tangible effect of ‘Considerations upon his Majesty’s estate’ was that James finally decided to curb his spending. He authorized Salisbury to publish a set of rules governing the royal bounty that the lord treasurer and Sir Julius Caesar had drafted between them. These rules included the injunction that, in future, no one was to press the king ‘for anything that may either cause diminution of revenue or lay more charge on ordinary expenses’. Moreover, each week Salisbury, together with the king and the masters of requests, would consider which suits to grant and which to deny. Familiarly known as the Book of Bounty, these rules appeared in print in about February 1611. However, as the new year did not formally begin until 25 Mar., they bore the previous year’s date.516 CD 1621, vii. 491-6; P. Davison, ‘King Jas.s’ Bk. of Bounty: from Ms to Print’, The Library, 5th ser. xviii. 26, 39, 50, 52.

It seems likely that, given time, Salisbury would also have overhauled the finances of the royal household and increased the income from existing sources of revenue. In the event, aside from deciding to sell royal lands to help pay off the royal debts,517 CCSP, i. 5. he made only further significant contribution to the king’s coffers before he fell seriously ill. According to his friend and ally Sir Walter Cope, he was responsible for devising, for the purposes of sale, a new, heritable title of honour – the baronetcy.518 Gutch, i. 125; P. Croft, ‘The Catholic Gentry, the Earl of Salisbury and the Bts. of 1611’, Conformity and Orthodoxy in the English Church, c.1560-1660 ed. P. Lake and M.C. Questier, 265. Weldon also ascribed the scheme to Salisbury, but since he also claimed that the lord treasurer burned a cartload ‘of Parliament precedents that spake the subject’s liberty’, it is perhaps unwise to attach much credence to his words: Secret Hist. of the Ct. of Jas. I, i. 324-5. This was not entirely accurate, as the idea actually originated with Northampton’s friend and ally, Sir Robert Cotton^‡, but without Salisbury the scheme would not have been taken up.519 HENRY HOWARD. Each new baronet, who occupied a position on the social scale between the holders of knighthoods on the one hand and the holders of baronies on the other, was required to pay £1,095 for his title (equivalent to £1 per day for three years), the first 18 of which were sold on 22 May 1611. This new honour soon proved highly desirable, not least because James had devalued knighthood by creating so many knights at the beginning of his reign. Indeed, by the end of November no less than 88 titles had been purchased, yielding more than £96,000 for the Exchequer.520 P. Croft, ‘Catholic Gentry’, 266.

Salisbury feasted the queen at Salisbury House in March 1611, and four months later entertained the king at Hatfield House, though the building was not yet complete.521 Stone, Fam. and Fortune, 29. In August he also hosted James, then on progress, at Cranborne, in Dorset.522 Add. 36767, f. 319. He could ill afford the expense of such hospitality, for by July 1611 his debts amounted to almost £53,000,523 Stone, Fam. and Fortune, 25, 47. but his need for political rehabilitation evidently outweighed all considerations of cost. However, the revival in Salisbury’s fortunes coincided with a marked deterioration in his health. A medical examination in July revealed that Salisbury was suffering from an advanced state of scurvy, and had tumours, almost certainly cancerous, in his neck, liver and stomach.524 Ibid. 51; H. Ellis, Orig. Letters of State, 2nd ser. iii. 246. In early August the lord treasurer suffered a sharp fit of ‘ague’, which left him so debilitated that he had to write to Sir Julius Caesar by means of a secretary.525 Add. 36767, ff. 315, 317. Three months later, his right arm and hand proved so painful that he could neither write nor rest.526 Chamberlain Letters, i. 322; HMC Downshire, iii. 199. Under the circumstances, Salisbury had little alternative but to reduce his workload. In late August he informed England’s resident agent in Brussels, William Trumbull^‡, not to expect replies to his letters unless they were urgent, and a few months later he handed over the day-to-day running of the Exchequer to Caesar.527 HMC Downshire, iii. 127; Croft, ‘Catholic Gentry’, 267.

It was obvious that Salisbury was in terminal decline. By October 1611 Sir Robert Carr, now Viscount Rochester, had more suitors knocking at his door than did Salisbury. Rochester was eager to take control of the king’s domestic affairs himself, and that autumn his friend and client Sir Thomas Overbury entered into negotiations with the Berkshire gentleman Sir Henry Neville^‡ to succeed Salisbury as secretary of state. In return, Neville offered to manage a Parliament on behalf of the king, promising that it would yield ‘better effects’ than the last, provided that ‘my lord treasurer would not intermeddle therein’.528 HMC Buccleuch, i. 101-2. It was subsequently widely believed that a Parliament would meet the following spring.529 CSP Ven. 1610-13, pp. 230, 240, 276; S.Adams, ‘The Protestant Cause: Religious Alliance with the W. European Calvinist Communities as a Political Issue in Eng. 1585-1630,’ (Oxford Univ. D.Phil. thesis, 1973), 232.

It seems unlikely that Salisbury approved of the plan to hold another Parliament as, following the dissolution of the previous assembly, he had drafted a paper in which he had advised ‘cleaving for a time the Parliament’.530 Hatfield House, CP140, f. 223. However, while he remained so unwell there was little prospect that it would meet.531 CSP Ven. 1610-13, p. 332; HMC Downshire, iii. 279. Not until mid December did the lord treasurer recover from his long period of illness.532 HMC Downshire, iii. 201; Chamberlain Letters, i. 324. Determined to reassert his authority, he immediately he set to work again, this time putting forward a proposal for reforming the Navy, a project which promised significant savings to the Exchequer.533 CSP Dom. 1611-18, p. 99. There was little danger that this scheme would upset his ally, Nottingham, as James had recently confirmed Nottingham in his place.534 HMC Downshire, iii. 171. The only major political figure likely to be antagonized was Salisbury’s rival Northampton, whose attempt to secure control of the Navy more than two years earlier had ended in failure. However, before Salisbury could make any progress on naval reform, his health again gave way. By late January he had swollen legs, a distended stomach and a red rash. He also experienced breathing difficulties, shoulder pain and intermittent fevers. Despite enduring the treatment of his doctors with great patience, he not surprisingly fell into a deep depression.535 Stone, Fam. and Fortune, 53; Letters from Redgrave Hall ed. D. MacCulloch (Suff. Recs. Soc. l), 92; Winwood’s Memorials, iii. 338. By mid February, the business of government had largely ground to a halt.536 Winwood’s Memorials, iii. 338. Indeed, matters deteriorated so far that, later that month, Salisbury himself urged the appointment of an assistant secretary of state, something he had first advocated in 1605.537 HMC Downshire, iii. 249. However, by March Salisbury seemed to be on the mend again,538 Newsletters from the Archpresbyterate of George Birkhead ed. M.C. Questier (Cam. Soc. 5th ser. xii), 142. obviating the need for such an officer. The king was greatly relieved, and visited his weak and exhausted chief minister on a daily basis to seek his advice.539 CSP Ven. 1610-13, p. 314.

In view of his earlier relapse, Salisbury realized that this respite might only be temporary, and on 3 Mar. he drafted his will.540 E.M. Tenison, Elizabethan Eng. xii. 487. Nevertheless, by 11 Mar. he had recovered his strength sufficiently to take daily walks in his garden, and not long afterwards the Council began holding meetings at his London house.541 Chamberlain Letters, i. 338; HMC Downshire, iii. 266, 271, 279. His mental faculties remained as sharp as ever, and it was not long before he resumed his official duties. One matter that greatly concerned him was a sudden and unexpected fall in receipts from wardship, which had occurred following the issue of the new book of orders the previous year. It soon became clear that the orders themselves were to blame, as Salisbury, mindful of parliamentary criticism, had tried to make it easier for a minor’s next of kin to purchase his wardship in return for a higher sale price. The increased cost of wardship, coupled with a widely held expectation that Parliament would soon meet and abolish the Court of Wards, resulted in widespread concealment. This might not have mattered had payments made at the increased rates outstripped the revenue lost, but in fact, as Sir Julius Caesar subsequently remarked, the king ‘loseth more by the wards that are ... concealed than he gaineth by those that are enhanced’.542 Gutch, i. 127; Add. 11406, f. 282r-v.

Salisbury intended to deal with this problem, but only on his return from Bath, which, by 24 Apr., he had resolved to visit in search of a cure for his many diseases. After the king bade him a tearful farewell, declaring him to be ‘the wisest councillor and best servant that any prince in Christendom could parallel’,543 Secret Hist. of the Court of Jas. I, ii. 156. Salisbury set out with a small entourage of faithful followers and physicians on the 27th. He arrived one week later, not without some distress, for he had neglected to take with him his close stool and he came perilously close to dying en route.544 HMC 10th Rep. IV, 361; CSP Ven. 1610-13, p. 356; Winwood’s Memorials, iii. 367; Chamberlain Letters, i. 346; Desiderata Curiosa (1779) ed. F. Peck, 206. Some accounts indicate that he set out on the 28th. The waters of the nearby hot springs afforded him almost instant relief, as the swellings in his legs, thighs and stomach went down and he soon regained both appetite and ability to sleep.545 HMC Hatfield, xxi. 362; Letters from Redgrave Hall, 92; Winwood’s Memorials, iii. 368; Desiderata Curiosa, 206. News of Salisbury’s apparent improvement soon reached the ears of the king, who dispatched Lord Hay with a diamond ring worth £400 and the message ‘that the favour and affection he bore him was and should be ever as the form and matter of that ring, endless, pure and most perfect’.546 Winwood’s Memorials, iii. 368; Chamberlain Letters, i. 350. However, Salisbury had already begun to prepare for death. Indeed, he told his chaplain that he had made his ‘audit’ before God and that he had been ‘a great and grievous sinner’.547 Desiderata Curiosa, 208. Astonishingly, he continued to attend to official dispatches.548 HMC Hatfield, xxi. 363; CSP Ven. 1610-13, p. 356; LR2/194, f. 244.

Salisbury and his small party left Bath on 21 May. It was rumoured that the lord treasurer dared stay no longer for fear of being undermined in his absence. In fact, he simply wanted to return to London in order to die at home.549 Chamberlain Letters, i. 350-1; HMC Downshire, iii. 306. In the event, he never reached the capital, as he fell gravely ill near Marlborough two days later. Deprived of sleep, unaware of his surroundings and in great pain, he expired in the early hours of the morning on 24 May at the former priory of St Margaret’s.550 R. Naunton, Fragmentia Regalia (1641), 40; HMC Downshire, iii. 305.

Posthumous denigration

Few mourned the death of Salisbury. His funeral, held at Hatfield on 9 June, was a decidedly thin affair, even allowing for the fact that he had asked for there to be no ‘show or spectacle’. Aside from his son William, now 2nd earl of Salisbury, his son-in-law Lord Clifford, and his nephew Lord Burghley (William Cecil^*, later 2nd earl of Exeter), only seven of his fellow peers paid their respects.551 Tenison, xii. 487; Cecil, 344. Most Catholics naturally rejoiced at Salisbury’s passing, as they believed, incorrectly, that the lord treasurer had been ‘their greatest persecutor’ and that the prospects for toleration had now increased.552 Spain and the Jacobean Catholics I: 1603-12, p. 191; Newsletters from the Archpresbyterate of George Birkhead, 185. However, satisfaction was also expressed by many Protestant Englishmen, who not only continued to blame Salisbury for the fall of the popular 2nd earl of Essex, but also accused him of financial oppression. His extension of impositions was widely resented, as was the heavy burden of subsidies voted in 1606.553 Autobiog. of Sir Simonds D’Ewes, i. 50-1; P. Croft, ‘Reputation of Robert Cecil’, 49. Before long, Salisbury was widely denounced as ‘the author of all our miseries’ and for holding too many major offices of state at once,554 Gutch, i. 128. accusations that would later be levelled by the House of Commons against Buckingham, whose funeral in 1628 was also poorly attended.

Considerable pleasure was taken by the public at large in the slow and painful manner of Salisbury’s death, which was widely but incorrectly thought to have been caused by syphilis. A widower since 1597, Salisbury had enjoyed the sexual favours of at least two mistresses, the countess of Suffolk and Lady Walsingham, much to the amusement of the king, who described his first minister in 1604 as ‘wifeless and wanton’.555 Letters of King Jas. VI and I, 234. Salisbury, whose son was married in Lady Walsingham’s lodgings,556 Chamberlain Letters, i. 273. had made no attempt to keep these liaisons secret. On the contrary, it suited his purposes that they should be publicly known, since his mistresses afforded him a valuable unofficial channel of communication with foreign diplomats. The countess of Suffolk in particular acted as a conduit to the Spanish ambassador, relaying intelligence where necessary and receiving payments of Salisbury’s Spanish pension.557 THOMAS HOWARD, 1ST EARL OF SUFFOLK. However, Salisbury’s unconventional sexual relationships clearly outraged many of his contemporaries, who convinced themselves that the lord treasurer had died ‘rotten of rutting’.558 Newsletters from the Archpresbyterate of George Birkhead, 193.

In view of his many years of devoted service to the crown, Salisbury might reasonably have expected James to defend his reputation. However, the king, who had uttered such affectionate tributes to Salisbury both at their parting and through Lord Hay, took no action to stem the torrent of libels against the late lord treasurer that poured forth on an unprecedented scale over the summer, despite the objections of Sir Walter Cope.559 Birch, Ct. and Times of Jas. I, i. 179; CSP Ven. 1610-13, p. 372; Gutch, i. 133. On the contrary, he too cast aspersions on Salisbury. In July 1614 he complained that Salisbury, instead of supplying his wants, had been wont ‘to entertain him with epigrams, fine discourses and learned epistles, and other such tricks and devices, which yet he saw would pay no debts’.560 Chamberlain Letters, i. 365, 548; Birch, Ct. and Times of Jas. I, i. 334-5. In denigrating Salisbury, James was encouraged by Sir Francis Bacon, who reassured the king ahead of the 1614 Parliament ‘that there is none now in the upper House that seeketh his own glory’, and by Northampton, who insinuated that Salisbury was now in hell, along with Queen Elizabeth.561 Letters and Life of Fras. Bacon, v. 28; Croft, ‘Reputation of Robert Cecil’, 62.

It was probably through Northampton, who headed the commission appointed to run the Exchequer following Salisbury’s death, that in November the Privy Council was shown papers that demonstrated that the late lord treasurer had ‘set after the coffers many thousands more’ than his predecessor Dorset.562 HMC Downshire, iii. 398. It was accepted practice that a lord treasurer should cream off – or at least borrow without interest - some of the money that came into the Exchequer, for, aside from £15 a year to pay for his livery, his official salary amounted to just £1 a day.563 HMC Montagu, 54. However, Salisbury appears to have taken this practice to excess, particularly in 1608-9, when he was struggling to pay the costs of building both Hatfield House and Britain’s Bourse. His surviving accounts certainly show that £2,400 was paid into his private accounts by various tellers of the Exchequer.564 Stone, Fam. and Fortune, 20. The revelation that Salisbury had been filling his pockets at the expense of the king at the same time as he had been urging the necessity of a Parliament was deeply damaging. Indeed, it was apparently only Suffolk’s intervention that prevented his lands from being seized in consequence.565 HMC Downshire, iii. 398. However, the sums involved were small beer. The loss to the Exchequer made no real difference to the crown’s overall financial situation. Besides, few lord treasurers worked harder than Salisbury who, aside from ruining his health, had little enough reward for all his labours.

No less uncharitable in her attitude towards Salisbury’s memory was the queen. Like James, Anne had once shown great fondness for Salisbury, from whom she had acquired Theobalds. In 1604 the king had declared himself jealous of Salisbury’s ‘greatness with my wife’, while as recently as August 1611 Anne had informed Salisbury, through an intermediary, that she was so much indebted to him he would never lack lodgings in any of her palaces.566 Letters of King Jas. VI and I, 234; CSP Dom. 1611-18, p. 69. However, Anne was resentful that, when attention had turned in 1611 towards finding a suitable marriage for Prince Henry, Salisbury had favoured a Tuscan bride rather than a Spanish Infanta. Her displeasure is difficult to understand, since the Spanish princess concerned was absurdly young and Spain had insisted that Henry convert to Catholicism as a condition of any marriage.567 Spain and the Jacobean Catholics I: 1603-12, p. 203; R. Strong, Henry, Prince of Wales and England’s Lost Renaissance, 58.

It was left to Salisbury’s servants to defend the reputation of their late master. While his chaplains preached in his defence, Sir Walter Cope penned ‘An Apology for the late Lord Treasurer’. Completed by 1 July, the ‘Apology’ was circulated among Cope’s friends.568 Croft, ‘Reputation of Robert Cecil’, 64; Croft, ‘A Collection of Several Speeches’, 251. One of the most succinct and eloquent defences of Salisbury was written by Sir Roger Wilbraham^‡, who described his former master as the ‘alpha and omega in Council’.569 ‘Wilbraham Jnl.’, 106. However, neither Wilbraham nor Cope ultimately succeeded in retrieving Salisbury’s reputation among the populace at large. On the contrary, Salisbury’s supposed sins appeared to multiply after his death. (In 1622 the French ambassador claimed, absurdly, that Salisbury was responsible for James’s inability to manage his English Parliament and for sowing dissension among the English aristocracy.570 F. von Raumer, Hist. of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, ii. 263-4, 372.) One reason why it proved so difficult to rescue Salisbury’s reputation was that the chief minister’s career had ended in failure. This was due in part to Salisbury’s own political miscalculations, of course, as the lord treasurer had placed too much faith in Parliament in 1610. However, it was also the inevitable consequence of the fact that, all too often, the demands made upon him were unachievable. For this, as for much else, James I should take the blame.