His Sowship was driven sometimes to his wits'-end by his trimming between the general dislike of the Catholic religion at home,and his desire to wheedle and flatter it abroad,as his only means of getting a rich princess for his son's wife:a part of whose fortune he might cram into his greasy pockets.Prince Charles-or as his Sowship called him,Baby Charles-being now PRINCE OF WALES,the old project of a marriage with the Spanish King's daughter had been revived for him;and as she could not marry a Protestant without leave from the Pope,his Sowship himself secretly and meanly wrote to his Infallibility,asking for it.The negotiation for this Spanish marriage takes up a larger space in great books,than you can imagine,but the upshot of it all is,that when it had been held off by the Spanish Court for a long time,Baby Charles and Steenie set off in disguise as Mr.Thomas Smith and Mr.John Smith,to see the Spanish Princess;that Baby Charles pretended to be desperately in love with her,and jumped off walls to look at her,and made a considerable fool of himself in a good many ways;that she was called Princess of Wales and that the whole Spanish Court believed Baby Charles to be all but dying for her sake,as he expressly told them he was;that Baby Charles and Steenie came back to England,and were received with as much rapture as if they had been a blessing to it;that Baby Charles had actually fallen in love with HENRIETTA MARIA,the French King's sister,whom he had seen in Paris;that he thought it a wonderfully fine and princely thing to have deceived the Spaniards,all through;and that he openly said,with a chuckle,as soon as he was safe and sound at home again,that the Spaniards were great fools to have believed him.
Like most dishonest men,the Prince and the favourite complained that the people whom they had deluded were dishonest.They made such misrepresentations of the treachery of the Spaniards in this business of the Spanish match,that the English nation became eager for a war with them.Although the gravest Spaniards laughed at the idea of his Sowship in a warlike attitude,the Parliament granted money for the beginning of hostilities,and the treaties with Spain were publicly declared to be at an end.The Spanish ambassador in London-probably with the help of the fallen favourite,the Earl of Somerset-being unable to obtain speech with his Sowship,slipped a paper into his hand,declaring that he was a prisoner in his own house,and was entirely governed by Buckingham and his creatures.The first effect of this letter was that his Sowship began to cry and whine,and took Baby Charles away from Steenie,and went down to Windsor,gabbling all sorts of nonsense.The end of it was that his Sowship hugged his dog and slave,and said he was quite satisfied.
He had given the Prince and the favourite almost unlimited power to settle anything with the Pope as to the Spanish marriage;and he now,with a view to the French one,signed a treaty that all Roman Catholics in England should exercise their religion freely,and should never be required to take any oath contrary thereto.In return for this,and for other concessions much less to be defended,Henrietta Maria was to become the Prince's wife,and was to bring him a fortune of eight hundred thousand crowns.
His Sowship's eyes were getting red with eagerly looking for the money,when the end of a gluttonous life came upon him;and,after a fortnight's illness,on Sunday the twenty-seventh of March,one thousand six hundred and twenty-five,he died.He had reigned twenty-two years,and was fifty-nine years old.I know of nothing more abominable in history than the adulation that was lavished on this King,and the vice and corruption that such a barefaced habit of lying produced in his court.It is much to be doubted whether one man of honour,and not utterly self-disgraced,kept his place near James the First.Lord Bacon,that able and wise philosopher,as the First Judge in the Kingdom in this reign,became a public spectacle of dishonesty and corruption;and in his base flattery of his Sowship,and in his crawling servility to his dog and slave,disgraced himself even more.But,a creature like his Sowship set upon a throne is like the Plague,and everybody receives infection from him.
