At Rome he was lodged in Arundells, and Tichbournes. the palace of the house of Pamfili, on the south of the stately place of Navona. He was early admitted to a private interview with the sovereign pontiff; but the public audience was long delayed. Indeed, Castlemaine's preparations for that great occasion were so sumptuous that, though commenced at Easter, 1686, they were not complete till the following November; and in November the pope had, or pretended to have, an attack of gout, which caused another postponement. In January, 1687, at length, the solemn introduction and homage were performed with unusual pomp. The state coaches, which had been built at Rome for the pageant, were so superb that they were thought worthy to be transmitted to posterity in fine engravings, and to be celebrated by poets in several languages. The front of the embassador's palace was decorated on this great day with absurd allegorical paintings of gigantic size. There was Saint George with his foot on the neck of Titus Oates, and Hercules with his club crushing College, the Protestant joiner, who in vain attempted to defend himself with his flail. After this public appearance, Castlemaine invited all the persons of note then assembled at Rome to a banquet in that gay and splendid gallery which is adorned with paintings of subjects from the Æneid by Peter of Cortona. The whole city crowded to the show, and it was with difficulty that a company of Swiss guards could keep order among the spectators. The *The Professor of Greek in the College De Propaganda Fide expressed his admiration in some detestable hexameters and pentameters, of which the following specimen may suffice: Ῥωγερίου δὴ σκεψόμενος λαμπροῖο θρίαμβον, ὦκα μάλ' ήϊσσεν καὶ θέεν ὄχλος ἅπας· θαυμάζουσα δὲ τὴν πομπὴν, παγχρύσεά τ' αὐτοῦ ἅρματα, τοὺς δ ̓ ἵππους, τοίαδε Ῥώμη ἔφη. The Latin verses are a little better. Nahum Tate responded in English: "His glorious train and passing pomp to view, A pomp that even to Rome itself was new, nobles of the pontifical state, in return, gave costly entertainments to the embassador; and poets and wits were employed to lavish on him and on his master insipid and hyperbolical adulation such as flourishes most when genius and taste are in the deepest decay. Foremost among the flatterers was a crowned head. Thirty years had elapsed since Christina, the daughter of the great Gustavus, had voluntarily descended from the Swedish throne. After long wanderings, in the course of which she had committed many follies and crimes, she had finally taken up her abode at Rome, where she busied herself with astrological calculations and with the intrigues of the conclave, and amused herself with pictures, gems, manuscripts, and medals. She now composed some Italian stanzas in honor of the English prince who, sprung, like herself, from a race of kings heretofore regarded as the champions of the Reformation, had, like herself, been reconciled to the ancient Church. A splendid assembly met in her palace. Her verses, set to music, were sung with universal applause; and one of her literary dependents pronounced an oration on the same subject in a style so florid that it seems to have offended the taste of the English hearers. The Jesuits, hostile to the pope, devoted to the interests of France, and disposed to pay every honor to James, received the English embassy with the utmost pomp in that princely house where the remains of Ignatius Loyola lie enshrined in lazulite and gold. Sculpture, painting, poetry, and eloquence were employed to compliment the strangers; but all these arts had sunk into deep degeneracy. There was a great display of turgid and impure Latinity unworthy of so erudite an order, and some of the inscriptions which adorned the walls had a fault more serious than even a bad style. It was said in one place that James had sent his brother as his messenger to heaven, and in another that James had furnished the wings with which his brother had soared to a higher region. There was a still more unfortunate distich, which at the time attracted little notice, but which, a few months later, was remembered and ma lignantly interpreted. "O king," said the poet, "cease to sigh for a son. Though Nature may refuse your wish, the stars will find a way to grant it." In the midst of these festivities Castlemaine had to suffer cruel mortifications and humiliations. The pope treated him with extreme coldness and reserve. As often as the embassador pressed for an answer to the request which he had been instructed to make in favor of Petre, Innocent was taken with a violent fit of coughing, which put an end to the conversation. The fame of these singular audiences spread over Rome. Pasquin was not silent. All the curious and tattling population of the idlest of cities, the Jesuits and the prelates of the French faction only excepted, laughed at Castlemaine's discomfiture. His temper, naturally unamiable, was soon exasperated to violence, and he circulated a memorial reflecting on the pope. He had now put himself in the wrong. The sagacious Italian had got the advantage, and took care to keep it. He positively declared that the rule which excluded Jesuits from ecclesiastical preferment should not be relaxed in favor of Father Petre. Castlemaine, much provoked, threatened to leave Rome. Innocent replied, with a meek impertinence, which was the more provoking because it could scarcely be distinguished from simplicity, that his excellency might go if he liked. "But, if we must lose him," added the venerable pontiff, "I hope that he will take care of his health on the road. English people do not know how dangerous it is in this country to travel in the heat of the day. The best way is to start before dawn, and to take some rest at noon." With this salutary advice and with a string of beads, the unfortunate embassador was dismissed. In a few months appeared, both in the Italian and in the English tongue, a pompous history of the mission, magnificently printed in folio, and illustrated with plates. The frontispiece, to the great scandal of all Protestants, represented Castlemaine in the robes of a peer, with his coronet in his hand, kissing the toe of Innocent.* # Correspondence of James and Innocent, in the British Museum; Bur CHAPTER VIII. THE marked discourtesy of the pope might well have ir ritated the meekest of princes. But the only effect which it produced on James was to make him more lavish of caresses and compliments. While Castlemaine, his whole soul festered with angry passions, was on his road back to England, the nuncio was loaded with honors which his own judgment would have led him to reject. He had, by a fiction often used in the Church of Rome, been lately raised to the episcopal dignity without having the charge of any see. He was called Archbishop of Amasia, the birthplace of Mithridates, an ancient city of which all trace had long disappeared. James insisted that the ceremony of consecration should be performed in the chapel of Saint James's Palace. The vicar apostolic Leyburn and two Irish prelates officiated. The doors were thrown open to the public; and it was remarked that some of those Puritans who had recently turned courtiers were among the spectators. In the evening, Adda, wearing the robes of his new office, joined the circle in the queen's apartments. James fell on his knees in the presence of the whole court and implored a blessing. In spite of the restraints imposed by etiquette, the astonishment and disgust of the by-standers could not be concealed.* It was long, indeed, since an English sovereign had knelt to mortal man, and those who saw the strange sight could not but think of that day of shame when John did homage for his crown between the hands of Pandolph. In a short time a still more ostentatious pageant was net, i., 703-705; Welwood's Memoirs; Commons' Journals, Oct. 28, 1689; An Account of his Excellency Roger Earl of Castlemaine's Embassy, by Michael Wright, chief steward of his Excellency's house at Rome, 1688. * Barillon, May, 1687 performed in honor of the Holy See. It was determined that the nuncio should go to court in solemn procession. Some persons on whose obedience the king had counted showed, on this occasion, for the first time, signs of a mutinous spirit. Among these the most conspicuous was the second temporal peer of the realm, Charles Seymour, commonly called the proud Duke of Somerset. He was, in truth, a man in whom the pride of birth and rank amounted almost to a disease. The fortune which he had inherited was not adequate to the high place which he held among the English aristocracy; but he had become possessed of the greatest estate in England by his marriage with the daughter and heiress of the last Percy who wore the ancient coronet of Northumberland. Somerset was only in his twenty-fifth year, and was very little known to the public. He was a lord of the king's bed-chamber, and colonel of one of the regiments which had been raised at the time of the western insurrection. He had not scrupled to carry the sword of state into the royal chapel on days of festival, but he now resolutely refused to swell the pomp of the nuncio. Some members of his family implored him not to draw on himself the royal displeasure, but their entreaties produced no effect. The king himself expostulated. "I thought, my lord," said he, "that I was doing you a great honor in appointing you to escort the minister of the first of all crowned heads." "Sir," said the duke, "I am advised that I can not obey your majesty without breaking the law." "I will make you fear me as well as the law," answered the king, insolently. "Do you not know that I am above the law?" "Your majesty may be above the law," replied Somerset, "but I am not; and, while I obey the law, I fear nothing." The king turned away in high displeasure, and Somerset was instantly dismissed from his posts in the household and in the army.* * Memoirs of the Duke of Somerset; Citters. July, 1687; Eachard's History of the Revolution; Clarke's Life of James the Second, ii., 116, 117, 118; Lord Lonsdale's Memoirs. |