JAMES I. A TIDY KING
James I slobbered at the mouth and had favourites; he was thus a Bad
King. He had, however, a very logical and tidy mind, and one of the
first things he did was to have Sir Walter Raleigh executed for being
left over from the previous reign. He also tried to straighten out the
memorable confusion about the Picts, who, as will be remembered, were
originally Irish living in Scotland, and the Scots, originally Picts
living in Ireland. James tried to make things tidier by putting the
Scots in Ulsters and planting them in Ireland, but the plan failed
because the Picts had been lost sight of during the Dark Ages and were
now nowhere to be found.
GUNPOWDER PLOT
There were a great many plots and Parliaments in James I’s reign, and
one of the Parliaments was called the Addled Parliament because the
plots hatched in it were all such rotten ones. One plot, however, was
by far the best plot in History, and the day and month of it (though
not, of course, the year) are well known to be _utterly_ and even
maddeningly MEMORABLE.
The Gunpowder Plot arose in the following way: the King had recently
invented a new table called _Avoirduroi_, which said:
1 New Presbyter = 1 OLD PRIEST.
0 Bishop = 0 King.
James was always repeating, “No Bishop, No King,” to himself, and one
day a certain loyal citizen called Sir Guyfawkes, a very active and
conscientious man, overheard him, and thought it was the slogan of
James’s new policy. So he decided to carry it out at once and made a
very loyal plan to blow up the King and the bishops and everybody else
in Parliament assembled, with gunpowder.[8] Although the plan failed,
attempts are made every year on St. Guyfawkes’ Day to remind the
Parliament that it would have been a _Good Thing_.
PILGRIMS’ PROGRESS
It was at this time that some very pious Englishmen, known as the Early
Fathers, who were being persecuted for not learning _Avoirduroi_,
sailed away to America in a ship called the _Mayfly_; this is generally
referred to as the Pilgrims’ Progress and was one of the chief causes
of America.
FOOTNOTES:
[8] Recently invented by Francis Bacon, author of Shakespeare, etc.