Did James the First of England die from the effects of poison, or from natural causes? / by Norman Chevers.

  • Chevers, Norman, 1818-1886.
Date:
1862
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Did James the First of England die from the effects of poison, or from natural causes? / by Norman Chevers. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    made a request to the Lords, which they also recommended to the Commons that they would proceed with all expedition in their reply to this answer, “that so they might go on with business of much higher concern.” We are told that their journals show that the Commons proceeded immediately with the consideration of the Duke’s answer; when, five days later, on the 15th of June 1626, to the astonishment and conster- nation of all, the King thought proper abruptly to dissolve the House.* This most rash and calamitous step was taken in the face of earnest entreaties by the House of Lords to continue that Parliament. According to Sanderson, the King’s words to the Lords, who came to intercede for a longer sitting, were, peremptorily,—■“ No, not a minute !” Rushworth has given a copy of a Declaration from the King containing his reasons for dissolving this and the foregoing Parliaments. Howell remarks, in his notes to the State Trials, that “ Such an intervention on the part of the King to prevent, (and that at the expense of four subsidies and three fifteenths, which the Commons had voted without perfecting bills for them, and of which the King had very great need) an inves- tigation of the matters imputed as crimes to the Duke of Buckingham—one of those matters being the death of the King’s father—was, unquestionably, an act of the greatest in- decency and folly. In taking this course, the King, doubtless, laid his motives open to the most malicious construction: he, however, appears to have been compelled by a strong belief that he, himself, was attacked in the person of his favorite. Hume, after Franklyn,says, that “The King thought # D’Ewes says, “ Infinite almost was the sadness of each man’s heart, and the dejection of his countenance that truly loved the Church or Com- monwealth, at the sudden and abortive breach of the present Parliament, on Thursday the 15th day of this instant June. For the House of Commons having transmitted up George Duke of Buckingham to the Lords as guilty of many great and enormous crimes, and especially because be had given a potion and administered plasters to King James in his last sickness, of which it was doubted he died ; and the Upper House, thereupon, and for some other offences, intending to question the said Duke for his life; all these proceedings received a sudden check and stop by this sudden and fatal dissolution ; which happened not only most unseasonably in respect of the many blessings we missed at home by it, but also because the King had at this time many great and noble designs abroad for the re- storing of God’s oppressed Church and Gospel in foreign parts. All men that truly loved God, their King and country, had just cause to lament so dismal and sad an accident.” Yol 1, page 301.