the punishment due to
their crime: but the king bestowed a pardon on the principals, Somerset
and the countess. It must be confessed, that James's fortitude had been
highly laudable, had he persisted in his first intention of consigning
over to severe justice all the criminals: but let us still beware of
blaming him too harshly, if, on the approach of the fatal hour, he
scrupled to deliver into the hands of the executioner persons whom he
had once favored with his most tender affections. To soften the rigor
of their fate, after some years' imprisonment, he restored them to their
liberty, and conferred on them a pension, with which they retired, and
languished out old age in infamy and obscurity. Their guilty loves were
turned into the most deadly hatred; and they passed many years together
in the same house, without any intercourse or correspondence with each
other.[***]

Several historians,[****] in relating these events, have insisted much
on the dissimulation of James's behavior, when he delivered Somerset
into the hands of the chief justice; on the insolent menaces of that
criminal; on his peremptory refusal to stand a trial; and on the extreme
anxiety of the king during the whole progress of this affair.

* State Trials, vol. i. p. 230.

** State Trials, vol. i. p. 242.

*** Kennet, p. 699.

**** Coke, Weldon, etc.

Allowing all these circumstances to be true, of which some are
suspicious, if not palpably false,[*] the great remains of tenderness
which James still felt for Somerset, may, perhaps, be sufficient to
account for them. That favorite was high-spirited, and resolute rather
to perish than live under the infamy to which he was exposed. James was
sensible, that the pardoning of so great a criminal, which was of itself
invidious, would become still more unpopular, if his obstinate and
stubborn behavior on his trial should augment the public hatred against
him.[**] At least, the unreserved confidence in which the king had
indulged his favorite for several years, might render Somerset master of
so many secrets, that it is impossible, without further light, to assign
the particular reason of that superiority which, it is said, he appeared
so much to assume.

The fall of Somerset, and his banishment from court, opened the way for
Villiers to mount up at once to the full height of favor, of honors,
and of riches. Had James's passion been governed by common rules of
prudence, the office