A new favorite and a peaceful king
Love and diplomacy are treacherous bedfellows. In 1615 James, in his affectionate and cunning way, took a fancy to a handsome, ardent and wealthy young man of twenty, George Villiers, and made him an earl, then a marquis, then Duke of Buckingham. Buckingham's wife, Katherine Manners, outwardly followed the Anglican church but inwardly leaned toward Catholicism, which may have encouraged her friendliness toward Spain.
James himself was a lover of peace and would not let theology or piracy entangle him in European affairs. After his accession he ended England's long war with Spain. When Frederick, the Winter King, ruler of the Palatinate and husband of James's beloved daughter Elizabeth, lost his land and crown at the start of the Thirty Years' War, James hoped that the Spanish king, a Habsburg, might advise the Habsburg emperor Ferdinand II to restore Frederick. Despite English dislike and reluctance, James proposed to Philip IV that his sister Maria marry the heir to the English throne, Charles.
Raleigh's last chance
Raleigh lost his life because of this Spanish policy. In secret he had opposed James's accession and had fought hard against Essex, a backer of James. After James reached London he stripped Raleigh of all his offices. With his usual passion Raleigh joined in some plots to depose the king, and was imprisoned in the Tower. Believing himself innocent, he fell into despair. He was then tried, and on dubious evidence was sentenced to death for treason, with the execution fixed for 13 December 1603. On 9 December he wrote his wife a letter of unusual tenderness and piety. James refused the entreaties of the queen and Prince Henry for a pardon, but he let the prisoner live fifteen more years, always keeping the death sentence hanging over him. Raleigh's wife was allowed to live with him in a small house he built within the prison grounds. Friends brought him books; he made chemical experiments, wrote some fine poems and composed his History of the World.
That book, published in 1614, had a long and tangled preface that showed a troubled and disordered mind. It began with Nineveh, passed to Egypt, Judah, Persia, Chaldea, Greece and Carthage, and ended with the Roman empire. Raleigh did not wish to bring it down to his own time, for, as he said, whoever follows truth too close at the heels in writing history may have his teeth kicked out. His style improved as he went, rose to grandeur in the account of the naval battle of Salamis, and reached perfection in the last passage, an address to mighty and eloquent death.
Yet Raleigh never took well to defeat. In 1616, after gathering 1,500 pounds (the book's figure), he bribed the Duke of Buckingham to plead for him with the king, promising that if released he would go to South America, find what he claimed were the gold deposits of Guiana, and bring back rich booty for the empty royal treasury. James freed him on conditions. He agreed that Raleigh and his men might keep four fifths of any treasure taken from non-Christian peoples (the book's phrase is harsher), but as a guarantee of good conduct the crafty king left the death sentence in force. Count Gondomar, the Spanish ambassador, pointed out that Spain held possessions in Guiana and hoped no one would molest them. James, who wanted peace and a marriage with the Spanish royal house, ordered Raleigh not to meddle with any Christian country, especially Spain, or the sentence would be carried out at once. Raleigh accepted these orders in writing. Since Gondomar still protested, James promised that if Raleigh broke his undertakings the sentence would be executed.
With the help of friends Raleigh fitted out fourteen ships and on 17 March 1617 sailed for the mouth of the Orinoco. A Spanish settlement, Santo Tomas, up the river, stood in the way of the golden mines, which existed only in imagination. Raleigh's men, though not Raleigh himself, who stayed on his ship, landed, attacked the village, burned it and killed its governor. Disheartened by Spanish resistance, the reduced force gave up the hunt for gold and came back empty-handed. Raleigh, crushed by news of his son's death, blamed his lieutenant, who then took his own life. His men no longer trusted him, and the ships deserted one by one. Back in England, learning of the king's anger, he tried to flee to France. He was seized, escaped again as far as Greenwich, and there was caught by a French agent and handed over.
He was sent to the Tower again, and at Gondomar's urging the king ordered the sentence carried out. Weary of life at last and longing for a quick end, Raleigh went to the place of execution with a calm and dignity that made him a hero in the eyes of Spain's enemies. He said to the officials, let us dispatch; at this hour the fever and chill return, and I would not have my enemies think I tremble from fear. He tried the edge of the axe with his thumb and said that it was a sharp medicine that would cure all his ills. His faithful wife claimed his body and buried it in a church, and she later wrote that although the great men had denied her his life they had granted her his dead body, and begged God to give her patience.
New colonies
Raleigh's voyage was one of many ventures that drew James's subjects toward America and far horizons. Farmers hoped for land, adventurers for riches through trade and plunder, criminals for escape from harsh laws, and Puritans for a place to raise their own flag, and all accepted the dangers and hardships of the sea to build new Englands. Virginia was settled in 1606 and 1607, Bermuda in 1609, Newfoundland in 1610. Separatist ministers who would not accept the prayer book and ceremonies of the Anglican church fled with their flocks to Holland in 1607. These pilgrims set out from Delft (July 1620), Southampton and Plymouth (September), crossed the Atlantic and, after three months of hardship, stepped onto Plymouth Rock in New England (21 December).
In Asia the English East India Company, with no more than 30,000 pounds of capital and seventeen ships, vainly tried to wrest trading ports and routes from the Dutch East India Company, which had 540,000 pounds and sixty ships (the book's figures). But in 1615 the mission of Sir Thomas Roe led to trading posts at Ahmadabad, Surat, Agra and elsewhere in India, and Fort St. George was built and fitted out to protect them (1640). So the first step was taken toward a British empire in India.
The Commons' Great Protestation
Despite every effort to advance trade, despite the urging of parliament and the patriotism of the people, James held to his policy of peace for sixteen years. The Commons begged him to join the Thirty Years' War on behalf of the Protestants of Bohemia and Germany, whose position was in danger, and to find a Protestant bride for his only surviving son rather than a Spanish princess. They also criticized his easing of the anti-Catholic laws, asked him to take all Catholic children from their parents and bring them up as Protestants, and warned him that toleration might strengthen the Catholic church, which openly refuses to accept other faiths.
In 1621 the quarrel between parliament and king came near to the one that broke out in 1642 between the Long Parliament and Charles. The Commons, complaining of the court's extravagance and of monopolies that hurt trade, fined and banished the monopolists and refused their claim that newly founded industries should be sheltered from competition. When James rebuked parliament for meddling in executive matters, it issued on 18 December 1621 a historic declaration, the Great Protestation, which restated that the liberties, franchises, privileges and jurisdictions of parliament are the ancient and undoubted birthright of the subjects of England, and that arduous and urgent affairs concerning the king, the state and the defense of the realm are proper subjects for debate in parliament. James tore the page containing the protest from the Commons' journal, dissolved parliament on 8 February 1622, ordered the arrest of four leaders (Southampton, Selden, Coke and Pym, according to the book), and, at Buckingham's urging, boldly pursued the plan of a marriage with the Spanish royal house.
The reckless minister asked the king to let him take Prince Charles to Madrid, to show him to the people, see the Spanish princess and conclude the match. James agreed reluctantly, afraid that Philip might send Charles back to England and make the young man the laughingstock of Europe.