JAMES I.—1603 to 1625.
How the King of Scotland became King of England also; how he and
the Queen behaved very unwisely; how he ill-treated the Papists and
the Puritans; how the Papists intended to destroy the King and the
Parliament, but were prevented; how Prince Charles and the Duke of
Buckingham visited France and Spain: how King James did many foolish
things, and left his subjects discontented.
James Stuart, the first King James of England, but the sixth of
Scotland, was one of the most foolish and the most mischievous kings
we ever had in England. He was the son of the unhappy Mary Queen of
Scots, and after she was put in prison the first time, the Scotch
lords made James king, though he was quite an infant. The lords gave
him the best masters they could find to teach him, and he learned
what was in books very well, but nobody could ever teach him how to
behave wisely.
When Queen Elizabeth died, James, king of Scotland, became king
of England, because he was Elizabeth’s cousin, and from that time
England and Scotland have been under one king, and are called Great
Britain.
As soon as James heard the queen was dead, he set out from Scotland
to come to London; for as Scotland was then a very poor country, he
and a great number of Scotchmen who came with him thought they had
nothing to do but to come to England, and get all the money they
could by all sorts of ways. Then he made so many lords and knights
that people began to laugh at him and his new nobles. But, worst
of all, he fancied that parliaments had no business to prevent
kings from doing whatever they pleased, and taking money from their
subjects whenever they liked.
You may think how vexed the English were when they found that they
had a king so unfit for them, after their wise Queen Elizabeth.
The queen of James was Anne, the daughter of the King of Denmark. She
was very extravagant, and loved feasts and balls, and acted plays
herself, and filled the court with rioting, instead of the ladylike
music and dancing, and poetry and needlework, that Queen Elizabeth
and her ladies loved.
Instead of riding about among the people, and depending on their love
and good will, James was always hiding himself; the only thing he
seemed to love was hunting, and for the sake of that he neglected his
people and his business.
The favourites he had were far from being useful, or wise, or brave.
He chose them for their good looks and rosy cheeks, without inquiring
anything about their behaviour.
He dealt severely with the Roman Catholics, whom he put in prison,
and from whom he took a great deal of money. Then he disliked those
Protestants who did not wish to have bishops as well as parish
clergymen, and who are mostly called Presbyterians; but some were
then named Puritans, and he would not let them alter the Prayer-book.
The Roman Catholics being tired of the ill usage they got from King
James, some of them thought that, if they could kill him, they might
take one of his young children to bring up themselves, and have a
Roman Catholic king or queen, and get all England and Scotland for
themselves. They thought besides, that they had better kill all the
lords and all the gentlemen of the House of Commons too, and so get
rid of the whole Protestant parliament.
From thinking wickedly they went on to do wickedly. They found there
were some cellars under the houses of parliament, and they filled
these cellars with gunpowder; and as they expected the parliament
would meet in the house all together, with the king, on the fifth day
of November, they hired a man called Guy Fawkes to set fire to the
gunpowder, and so to blow it up, and kill everybody there at once.
Now, it happened that one of the lords, whose name was Mounteagle,
had a friend among the Roman Catholics, and that friend wrote him
a letter, without signing his name, to beg him not to go to the
parliament that day, for that a sudden blow would be struck which
would destroy them all. Lord Mounteagle took this letter to the
king’s council. Some of the councillors laughed at it, and said it
was only sent to frighten Lord Mounteagle. But the king took it, and
after thinking a little, he said, the sudden blow must mean something
to be done with gunpowder, and he set people to watch who went in and
out of the vaults under the parliament-house; till at last, on the
very night before the Roman Catholics hoped to kill the king and all
those belonging to parliament, they caught Guy Fawkes with his dark
lantern, waiting till the time should come for him to set fire to the
gunpowder.
The king was very proud of having found out what the letter meant,
and used to boast of it as long as he lived; but the truth is that
the king’s clever minister, Sir Robert Cecil, had found out all about
the plot, and managed to let James have all the credit.
So far I have only told you of the foolish behaviour of King James. I
must now write about his mischievous actions.
His eldest son, Prince Henry, died very young; he was a sensible lad,
and the people were sorry when he died, especially as his brother
Charles was a sickly little boy.
Now, little Charles was a clever child, and had very good
dispositions; and if he had been properly brought up, he would have
been a good king, and a happy man. Instead of that, you will read
that he was a bad king, and I daresay you will cry when you find how
very unhappy he was at last.
James taught him that no power on earth had any right to find fault
with the king, that the king’s power was given to him by God, and
that it was a great sin to say that anything the king did was wrong.
Thus he taught him to think that the people were made for nothing
but to obey kings, and to labour and get money for kings to spend
as they pleased, and that even the nobles were nothing but servants
for kings; in short, he filled his poor little son’s mind with wrong
thoughts, and never taught him that it was a king’s duty to do all
the good he could, and to set an example of what is right.
Yet Charles had many good qualities, as you will read by-and-by. He
was a good scholar, and loved books and clever men, and music, and
pictures; and if he had only been taught his duty as a king properly,
he would have done a great deal of good to England.
[Illustration: King James I. with Steenie and Baby Charles.]
I have told you that James used to make favourites of people, without
caring much about their goodness. One of his greatest favourites
was George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, and he gave his son Charles
to the Duke to take care of, just when he was grown up. The silly
king used to call Buckingham, Steenie, and the prince, Baby Charles,
although he was almost as big and as old as a man.
When the prince was old enough to be married, his father wished him
to marry the Infanta of Spain. (In Spain the princes are called
Infants, and the princesses Infantas.) Now the Duke of Buckingham
wanted very much to go abroad, and show himself to all the princes
and nobles in France and Spain, for he was very vain of his beauty
and his fine clothes; so he put it into the prince’s head, to tell
his father he would not marry, unless he would let him go to Spain
with the Duke of Buckingham, and see the Infanta before he married
her.
The poor foolish king began crying like a child, and begged his dear
Steenie and Baby Charles not to go and leave him; but they laughed
at him, and went and borrowed all his fine diamonds and pearls, to
wear in their hats and round their necks, and took all the money they
could get, and set off to go to Spain. They called themselves John
Smith and Thomas Smith, and first they went to France.
Prince Charles found the ladies in the French court very pleasant and
entertaining. It is true that several of them were not very good, but
then they amused Charles, and he was particularly pleased with the
Princess Henrietta Maria, who was pretty and merry, and appeared to
like Charles very much.
They quickly pursued their journey through France to go to Spain,
and when Charles and Buckingham first got there everything seemed
very pleasant. The Infanta was handsome, but very different from
Henrietta Maria, for she was very grave and steady, and seemed as if
she would be a fit wife for the prince, who was naturally grave and
steady too.
But the Duke of Buckingham quarrelled with some of the great men of
the court, and was so much affronted at not being treated rather
like a king than only a plain English nobleman, that he made the
prince believe that the King of Spain meant to offend him, and did
not really intend his daughter to marry him; and, in short, he
contrived to make Charles so angry, that he left Spain in a rage, and
afterwards married that very French princess, Henrietta Maria, whom
he had seen at Paris.
The bad education King James gave his son Charles, though it was the
most mischievous of all his bad acts, was not the only one.
The King of Spain had taken a dislike to Sir Walter Raleigh, who had
been so great a favourite of Queen Elizabeth, because Raleigh had
beaten his sailors at sea, and his soldiers ashore. But Sir Walter’s
men happened to kill some Spaniards when they were looking for a
gold mine in South America; so the King of Spain demanded that James
should put Raleigh to death, and James shamefully yielded to Spain,
and ordered that great and wise man’s head to be cut off.
As to Scotland, King James’s own country, he behaved as ill in all
things belonging to it as he did in England. But the thing that
turned out worst for the country and his poor son Charles was his
insisting on the Scotch people kneeling at the communion, keeping
certain holy days, and having bishops, although the Scotch religion
is presbyterian. This vexed the Scotch people very much indeed. And
the Irish were not better pleased, because the Roman Catholics were
ill-treated by James, and most of the Irish were Roman Catholics.
When James died, all the three kingdoms of England, Scotland, and
Ireland were discontented. Poor Ireland was even worse off than
ever. Scotland had been neglected, and the people affronted about
their religion; and, in England, James had taken money unlawfully,
and behaved so ill, both to parliament and people, that everybody
disliked him as a king, and he was so silly in his private behaviour,
that everybody laughed at him as a gentleman.
In short, I can praise him for nothing but a little book-learning;
but as he made no good use of it, he might as well have been without
it. He reigned twenty-two years in England, during which there was no
great war. But James had begun one against the Emperor of Germany and
the King of Spain, just before his death.
I must tell you of one very great man who lived in his reign: Lord
Bacon. He was one of the wisest men that ever lived, though not
without his faults; but when you grow up you will read his books if
you wish to be truly wise.