g. Bacon spent two thousand pounds in
a wedding masque. The London Companies offered sumptuous gifts. James
himself forced the Lord Mayor to entertain the bride with a banquet in
Merchant Taylors' House, and the gorgeous wedding-train wound in triumph
from Westminster to the City.

[Sidenote: Immorality of the Court.]

The shameless bridal was a fitting close to the shameless divorce, as
both were outrages on the growing sense of morality. But they harmonized
well enough with the profusion and profligacy of the Stuart Court. In
spite of Cecil's economy, the treasury was drained to furnish masques
and revels on a scale of unexampled splendour. While debts remained
unpaid, lands and jewels were lavished on young adventurers whose fair
faces caught the royal fancy. Two years back Carr had been a penniless
fortune-seeker. Now, though his ostensible revenues were not large, he
was able to spend ninety thousand pounds in a single twelvemonth. The
Court was as shameless as it was profuse. If the Court of Elizabeth was
as immoral as that of her successor, its immorality had been shrouded by
a veil of grace and chivalry. But no veil shrouded the degrading
grossness of the Court of James. James was no drunkard, but he was a
hard drinker, and with the people at large his hard drinking passed for
drunkenness. When the Danish king visited England actors in a masque
performed at Court were seen rolling intoxicated at his feet. The suit
of Lady Essex had shown great nobles and officers of state content to
play panders to their kinswoman. A yet more scandalous trial was soon to
show them in league with cheats and astrologers and poisoners. James had
not shrunk from meddling busily in the divorce or from countenancing the
bridal. Before scenes such as these the half-idolatrous reverence with
which the sovereign had been regarded throughout the age of the Tudors
died away into abhorrence and contempt. Court prelates might lavish
their adulation on the virtues and wisdom of the Lord's anointed; but
the players openly mocked at the king on the stage, while Puritans like
Mrs. Hutchinson denounced the orgies of Whitehall in words as fiery as
those with which Elijah denounced the profligacy of Jezebel.

[Sidenote: Parliament of 1614.]

But profligate and prodigal as was the Court, Somerset had to face the
stern fact of an empty Exchequer. The debt was growing steadily. It had
now risen to seven hundred thousand pounds, while, in spite of t