James was unfortunate in his birth. Neither his father, Lord Darnley,
nor his mother had high qualities of character. The murder of Mary's
Italian secretary in her own palace, and almost in her own presence
(S395), gave the Queen a shock which left a fatal inheritance of
cowardice to her son. Throughout his life he could not endure the
sight of a drawn sword. If we can trust common report, his personal
appearance was by no means impressive. He had a feeble, rickety body,
he could not walk straight, his tongue was too large for his mouth,
and he had goggle eyes. Through fear of assassination he habitually
wore thickly padded and quilted clothes, usually green in color. He
was a man of considerable shrewdness, but of a small mind, and of
unbounded conceit. His Scotch tutor had crammed him with much
ill-digested learning, so that he gave the impression of a man
educated beyond his intellect. His favorites used to flatter him by
telling him that he was the "British Solomon"; but the French
ambassador came nearer to the mark when he called him "the wisest fool
in Christendom."
The King wrote on witchcraft, kingcraft, and theology, and composed
numerous commonplace verses. He also wrote a sweeping denunciation of
the new plant called tobacco, which Raleigh (S392) had brought from
America, and whose smoke now began to perfume, or, according to James,
to poison, the air of England. His Majesty had all the superstitions
of the age, and one of his earliest acts was the passage of a statute
punishing witchcraft with death. Under that law many a wretched woman
perished on the scaffold, whose only crime was that she was old, ugly,
and friendless.