MEMOIRS OF THE COURT OF KING JAMES I. CHAPTER XIV. 1615, 1616. King's visit to Cambridge.-Comedy of Ignoramus.-Declining favor of Somerset.-Rise of Villirs.—Part taken by the archbishop and the queen in his advancement.-Somerset disappointed of obtaining a general pardon.-Efforts of the opposing factions.-Detection of Overbury's murder.-Confession of Weston.-The king's final parting with Somerset.-Trial and conviction of Weston, of Mrs. Turner and other accomplices.-Dilatory mode of proceeding against the earl and countess of Somerset.—Ambiguous conduct of James.-They are found guilty, but finally pardoned.-Reflections. - Death of Shakespeare. — Remarks on his character and works. IT is somewhat remarkable that James, who had visited the university of Oxford as early as the year 1605, had not yet paid a similar compliment to that of Cambridge, though his hunting progress to Royston brought him annually into its neighbourhood. At length however, in March 1615, he announced VOL. II. B his his intention of repairing thither, accompanied by the prince and by a numerous court; and extraordinary preparations were made for his magnificent reception. The earl of Suffolk had been suffered to succeed his more learned kinsman Northampton in the dignity of chancellor of the university, and the house of Howard, elated also by its recent alliance with the favorite, stood foremost on this occasion of display. The chancellor himself was lodged in St. John's college, where he kept his table on so grand a scale of hospitality, that his consumption of wine during the five days of the royal visit was estimated at no less than twenty-five tuns. His lady, with her daughters the countesses of Salisbury and of Somerset, and other near connexions, were accommodated at Magdalen college, and were the only females who graced the festival; perhaps because other ladies might be reluctant to appear in the train of lady Somerset. The king and the prince occupied Trinity college, in the spacious hall of which plays were nightly represented. These exhibitions for the evenings, with sermons and disputations every morning, sufficiently exercised the patience of the monarch, who was less disposed to attend to the oratory of others than to display his own. After listening to a "concio ad clerum" which occupied an hour and a half, he complained aloud, "that care had not been taken to prevent tediosity ;” and on another occasion he is reported to have exclaimed, after nine hours of exhibitions of scholarship, "What do they think I am made of?" One of the perform ances ances however, though in the opinion of a person who was present "more than half marred with extreme length," proved so peculiarly grateful to the taste of his majesty that he expressed the highest delight, and on an after occasion a second representation was commanded. This piece was the Latin comedy of Ignoramus, which, contrary to the common fate of occasional pieces, has held an enduring place in literature, and, besides being several times reprinted, was twice within the last century selected for performance by the Westminster scholars. It is, doubtless, a very amusing drama, full of bustle and incident, and abounding with laughable situations and grotesque characters; but its comic merits were not its only or principal recommendation to the favor of James. The hero of the piece is a practitioner of the common law, so much decried by the courtiers of the day; and the ridicule attached to his cunning, his pedantry, and the barbarous jargon of technical terms and latinized English of which his discourse is compounded, was no less agreeable to the monarch than it proved offensive to the profession of which Ambidexter Ignoramus is the representative. Those other distinguished objects of his majesty's contempt or aversion,-the pope, the jesuits with their doctrine of equivocation, Garnet's straw, and the puritans, all came in for a share of the lashing dealt around by the courtly satirist; and on the repetition of the piece, a new prologue added to the gratification of the royal au ditor. The author was George Ruggle of Clarehall; a person not otherwise distinguished. Notwithstanding the boasted scholarship of James, the latinity of the speech addressed by him to the university is said to have been very indifferent, and much inferior to that of queen Elizabeth's harangue on a similar occasion. That of Nethersole the university orator was also much criticised, on account of his addressing the prince as "Jacobissime Carole." This absurdity among others was ridiculed in a ludicrous ballad composed on the occasion by Richard Corbet of facetious memory, an Oxonian, and afterwards bishop of Norwich. Somerset attended the king on his visit to Cambridge, and was still regarded as a favorite; but it was not difficult to prognosticate his fall. No one could look upon him without perceiving a total change. The graces of his youth had all faded before the withering sense of secret and atrocious guilt; he affected solitude; an air of neglect prevailed over his person, his dress and his manners ; and the king, who ceased to discover in his features the charms which had first caught his eye and his fancy, and who found the gaiety which he loved to cherish among his immediate attendants checked by the moroseness and melancholy of his lord-chamberlain, sought only an excuse for transferring to a new object his capricious fondness. Nor was the choice of this object dubious. Nearly two years before this time, the monarch had been struck by the personal beauty beauty and graceful carriage of a youth named George Villiers, a younger son of a Leicestershire knight, who, having lately returned from France a proficient in the arts of fencing and dancing, had been equipped with handsome clothes and sent by his mother and his friends to push his fortune at court. Almost on his first appearance, the king had marked his predilection by conferring upon him the office of his cup-bearer at large; and soon after, by admitting him to serve in ordinary, had rendered him the attendant of his meals, and given him the opportunity of listening to his conversation and forming himself to his humor. The insolence and rapacity of Somerset, who permitted no suit to pass without an enormous bribe, had rendered him universally odious; and many hands were eagerly stretched forth to thrust down the already tottering favorite, or to support in his ascent the new aspirant. But it seems that James, among other sage rules of conduct, had laid down for himself that of never taking for a professed favorite any one who was not formally recommended to him by his queen; and the great difficulty was to induce this princess to co-operate in an affair to which she evinced a marked repugnance. In this perplexity the Villiers faction cast their eyes upon Abbot, who possessed considerable influence with her majesty; and the primate has thought proper to inform posterity, that it was by his instrumentality that a knot so worthy the interposition of a christian prelate was solved. For some time the queen resisted |