It was in these times that James I., a learned prince, applied to

polemical studies; properly understood, these were in fact political

ones. Lord Bolingbroke says, "He affected more learning than became

a king, which he broached on every occasion in such a manner as would

have misbecome a schoolmaster." Would the politician then require a

half-learned king, or a king without any learning at all? Our eloquent

sophist appears not to have recollected that polemical studies had long

with us been considered as royal ones; and that from a slender volume of

the sort our sovereigns still derive the regal distinction of "Defenders

of the Faith." The pacific government of James I. required that the King

himself should be a master of these controversies to be enabled to balance

the conflicting parties; and none but a learned king could have exerted

the industry or attained to the skill. In the famous conference at

Hampton Court, which the King held with the heads of the Nonconformists,

we see his majesty conversing sometimes with great learning and sense,

but oftener more with the earnestness of a man, than some have imagined

comported with the dignity of a crowned head. The truth is, James,

like a true student, indulged, even to his dress, an utter carelessness

of parade, and there was in his character a constitutional warmth

of heart and a jocundity of temper which did not always adapt it to

state-occasions; he threw out his feelings, and sometimes his jests.

James, who had passed his youth in a royal bondage, felt that these

Nonconformists, while they were debating small points, were reserving for

hereafter their great ones; were cloaking their republicanism by their

theology, and, like all other politicians, that their ostensible were not

their real motives.[A] Harris and Neale, the organs of the Nonconformists,

inveigh against James; even Hume, with the philosophy of the eighteenth

century, has pronounced that the king was censurable "for entering

zealously into these frivolous disputes of theology." Lord Bolingbroke

declares that the king held this conference "in haste to show his parts."

Thus a man of genius substitutes suggestion and assertion for accuracy of

knowledge. In the present instance, it was an attempt of the Puritans to

try the king on his arrival in England; they presented a petition for a

conference, called "The Millenary Petition,"[B] from a thousand persons

supposed to have signed it; the king would not refuse it; but so far from

being "in haste to show his parts," that when he discovered their

pretended grievances were so futile, "he complained that he had been

troubled with such importunities, when some more private course might have

been taken for their satisfaction."

[Footnote A: In political history we usually find that the heads of a

party are much wiser than the party themselves, so that, whatever they

intend to acquire, their first demands are small; but the honest souls who

are only stirred by their own innocent zeal, are sure to complain that

their business is done negligently. Should the party at first succeed,

then the bolder spirit, which they have disguised or suppressed through

policy, is left to itself; it starts unbridled and at full gallop. All

this occurred in the case of the Puritans. We find that some of the rigid

Nonconformists did confess in a pamphlet, "The Christian's modest offer of

the Silenced Ministers," 1606, that those who were appointed to speak for

them at Hampton Court were _not of their nomination or judgment_; they

insisted that these delegates should declare at once against the whole

church establishment, &c., and model the government to each particular

man's notions! But these delegates prudently refused to acquaint the king

with the conflicting opinions of their constituents.--_Lansdowne MSS_.

1056, 51.

This confession of the Nonconformists is also acknowledged by their

historian Neale, vol. ii. p. 419, 4to edit.]

[Footnote B: The petition is given at length in Collier's "Eccles. Hist.,"

vol. ii. p. 672. At this time also the Lay Catholics of England printed

at Donay, "A Petition Apologetical," to James I. Their language is

remarkable; they complained they were excluded "that supreme court of

parliament first founded by and for Catholike men, was furnished with

Catholike prelates, peeres, and personages; and so continued till the

times of _Edward VI._ a _childe_, and Queen Elizabeth a _woman_."--Dodd's

"Church History."]

The narrative of this once celebrated conference, notwithstanding the

absurdity of the topics, becomes in the hands of the entertaining Fuller a

picturesque and dramatic composition, where the dialogue and the manners

of the speakers are after the life.

In the course of this conference we obtain a familiar intercourse with the

king; we may admire the capacity of the monarch whose genius was versatile

with the subjects; sliding from theme to theme with the ease which only

mature studies could obtain; entering into the graver parts of these

discussions; discovering a ready knowledge of biblical learning, which

would sometimes throw itself out with his natural humour, in apt and

familiar illustrations, throughout indulging his own personal feelings

with an unparalleled _naïveté_.

The king opened the conference with dignity; he said "he was happier than

his predecessors, who had to alter what they found established, but he

only to confirm what was well settled." One of the party made a notable

discovery, that the surplice was a kind of garment used by the priests of

Isis. The king observed that he had no notion of this antiquity, since he

had always heard from them that it was "a rag of popery." "Dr. Reynolds,"

said the king, with an air of pleasantry, "they used to wear hose and

shoes in times of popery; have you therefore a mind to go bare-foot?"

Reynolds objected to the words used in matrimony, "with my body I thee

worship." The king said the phrase was an usual English term, as a

_gentleman of worship_, &c., and turning to the doctor, smiling, said,

"Many a man speaks of Robin Hood, who never shot in his bow; if you had a

good wife yourself, you would think all the honour and worship you could

do to her were well bestowed." Reynolds was not satisfied on the 37th

article, declaring that "the Bishop of Rome hath no authority in this

land," and desired it should be added, "nor ought to have any." In

Barlow's narrative we find that on this his majesty heartily laughed--a

laugh easily caught up by the lords; but the king nevertheless

condescended to reply sensibly to the weak objection.

"What speak you of the pope's authority here? _Habemus jure quod habemus_;

and therefore inasmuch as it is said he hath not, it is plain enough that

he ought not to have." It was on this occasion that some "pleasant

discourse passed," in which "a Puritan" was defined to be "a Protestant

frightened out of his wits." The king is more particularly vivacious when

he alludes to the occurrences of his own reign, or suspects the Puritans

of republican notions. On one occasion, to cut the gordian-knot, the king

royally decided--"I will not argue that point with you, but answer as

kings in parliament, _Le Roy s'avisera"_

When they hinted at a Scottish Presbytery the king was somewhat stirred,

yet what is admirable in him (says Barlow) without a show of passion. The

king had lived among the republican saints, and had been, as he said, "A

king without state, without honour, without order, where beardless boys

would brave us to our face; and, like the Saviour of the world, though he

lived among them, he was not of them." On this occasion, although the king

may not have "shown his passion," he broke out, however, with a _naïve_

effusion, remarkable for painting after the home-life a republican

government. It must have struck Hume forcibly, for he has preserved part

of it in the body of his history. Hume only consulted Fuller. I give the

copious explosion from Barlow:--

"If you aim at a Scottish Presbytery, it agreeth as well with monarchy as

God and the devil. Then Jack, and Tom, and Will, and Dick, shall meet, and

at their pleasure censure me and my council, and all our proceedings; then

Will shall stand up and say, It must be thus; then Dick shall reply, Nay,

marry, but we will have it thus. And therefore here I must once more

reiterate my former speech, _Le Roy s'avisera._ Stay, I pray you, for one

seven years before you demand that of me, and if then you find me pursy

and fat, I may hearken to you; for let that government once be up, I am

sure I shall be kept in breath; then shall we all of us have work enough:

but, Dr. Reynolds, till you find that I grow lazy, let that alone."

The king added,

"I will tell you a tale:--Knox flattered the queen-regent of Scotland that

she was supreme head of all the church, if she suppressed the popish

prelates. But how long, trow ye, did this continue? Even so long, till, by

her authority, the popish bishops were repressed, and he himself, and his

adherents, were brought in and well settled. Then, lo! they began to make

small account of her authority, and took the cause into their own hands."

This was a pointed political tale, appropriately told in the person of a

monarch.

The king was never deficient in the force and quickness of his arguments.

Even Neale, the great historian of the Puritans, complaining that

Dean Barlow has cut off some of the king's speeches, is reluctantly

compelled to tax himself with a high commendation of the monarch, who, he

acknowledges, on one of the days of this conference, spoke against the

corruptions of the church, and the practices of the prelates, insomuch

that Dr. Andrews, then dean of the chapel, said that his majesty did that

day wonderfully play the Puritan.[A] The king, indeed, was seriously

inclined to an union of parties. More than once he silenced the angry

tongue of Bancroft, and tempered the zeal of others; and even commended

when he could Dr. Reynolds, the chief of the Puritans; the king consented

to the only two important articles that side suggested; a new catechism

adapted to the people--"Let the weak be informed and the wilful be

punished," said the king; and that new translation of the Bible which

forms our present version. "But," added the king, "it must be without

marginal notes, for the Geneva Bible is the worst for them, full of

seditious conceits; Asa is censured for _only deposing_ his mother for

idolatry, and not _killing_ her." Thus early the dark spirit of Machiavel

had lighted on that of the ruthless Calvin. The grievances of our first

dissenters were futile--their innovations interminable; and we discover

the king's notions, at the close of a proclamation issued after this

conference: "Such is the desultory levity of some people, that they are

always languishing after change and novelty, insomuch that were they

humoured in their inconstancy, they would expose the public management,

and make the administration ridiculous." Such is the vigorous style of

James the First in his proclamations; and such is the political truth,

which will not die away with the conference at Hampton Court.

[Footnote A: The bishops of James I. were, as Fuller calls one of them,

"potent courtiers," and too worldly-minded men. Bancroft was a man of

vehement zeal, but of the most grasping avarice, as appears by an

epigrammatic epitaph on his death in Arthur Wilson--

"Here lies his grace, in cold earth clad,

Who died with want of what he had."

We find a characteristic trait of this Bishop of London in this

conference. When Ellesmere, Lord Chancellor, observed that "livings rather

want learned men, than learned men livings, many in the universities

pining for want of places. I wish therefore some may have _single coats_

(one living) before others have _doublets_ (pluralities), and this method

I have observed in bestowing the king's benefices." Bancroft replied, "I

commend your memorable _care_ that way; but a _doublet_ is necessary in

cold weather." Thus an avaricious bishop could turn off, with a miserable

jest, the open avowal of his love of pluralities. Another, Neile, Bishop

of Lincoln, when any one preached who was remarkable for his piety,

desirous of withdrawing the king's attention from truths he did not wish

to have his majesty reminded of, would in the sermon-time entertain the

king with a merry tale, which the king would laugh at, and tell those near

him, that he could not hear the preacher for the old--bishop;

prefixing an epithet explicit of the character of these merry tales.

Kennet has preserved for us the "rank relation," as he calls it; not, he

adds, but "we have had divers hammerings and conflicts within us to leave

it out."--Kennet's "History of England," ii. 729.]

These studies of polemical divinity, like those of the ancient

scholastics, were not to be obtained without a robust intellectual

exercise. James instructed his son Charles,[A] who excelled in them; and

to those studies Whitelocke attributes that aptitude of Charles I. which

made him so skilful a summer-up of arguments, and endowed him with so

clear a perception in giving his decisions.

[Footnote A: That the clergy were somewhat jealous of their sovereign's

interference in these matters may be traced. When James charged the

chaplains, who were to wait on the prince in Spain, to decline, as far as

possible, religious disputes, he added, that "should any happen, my son is

able to moderate in them." The king, observing one of the divines smile,

grew warm, vehemently affirming, "I tell ye, Charles shall manage a point

in controversy with the best studied divine of ye all." What the king

said was afterwards confirmed on an extraordinary occasion, in the

conference Charles I. held with Alexander Henderson, the old champion of

the kirk. Deprived of books, which might furnish the sword and pistol of

controversy, and without a chaplain to stand by him as a second, Charles

I. fought the theological duel; and the old man, cast down, retired with

such a sense of the learning and honour of the king, in maintaining the

order of episcopacy in England, that his death, which soon followed, is

attributed to the deep vexation of this discomfiture. The veteran, who had

succeeded in subverting the hierarchy in Scotland, would not be apt to die

of a fit of conversion; but vexation might be apoplectic in an old and

sturdy disputant. The king's controversy was published; and nearly all the

writers agree he carried the day. Yet some divines appear more jealous

than grateful: Bishop Kennet, touched by the _esprit du corps_, honestly

tells us, that "some thought the king had been better able to _protect_

the Church, if he had not _disputed_ for it." This discovers all the

ardour possible for the _establishment_, and we are to infer that an

English sovereign is only to _fight_ for his churchmen. But there is a

nobler office for a sovereign to perform in ecclesiastical history--to

promote the learned and the excellent, and repress the dissolute and the

intolerant.]

* * * * *

THE WORKS OF JAMES THE FIRST.

We now turn to the writings of James the First. He composed a treatise on

demoniacs and witches; those dramatic personages in courts of law. James

and his council never suspected that those ancient foes to mankind

could be dismissed by a simple _Nolle prosequi_. "A Commentary on the

Revelations," which was a favourite speculation then, and on which greater

geniuses have written since his day. "A Counterblast to Tobacco!" the

title more ludicrous than the design.[A] His majesty terrified "the

tobacconists," as the patriarchs of smoking-clubs were called, and who

were selling their very lands and houses in an epidemical madness for "a

stinking weed," by discovering that "they were making a sooty kitchen in

their inward parts."[B] And the king gained a point with the great

majority of his subjects, when he demonstrated to their satisfaction that

the pope was antichrist. Ridiculous as these topics are to us, the works

themselves were formed on what modern philosophers affect to term the

principle of utility; a principle which, with them indeed, includes

everything they approve of, and nothing they dislike.

[Footnote A: Not long before James composed his treatise on "Dæmonologie,"

the learned Wierus had published an elaborate work on the subject.

"_De præstigiis Dæmonum et incantationibus et Veneficiis_," &c., 1568.

He advanced one step in philosophy by discovering that many of the

supposed cases of incantation originated in the imagination of these

sorcerers--but he advanced no farther, for he acknowledges the real

diabolical presence. The physician, who pretended to cure the disease, was

himself irrecoverably infected. Yet even this single step of Wierus was

strenuously resisted by the learned Bodin, who, in his amusing volume of

"Demonomanie des Sorciers," 1593, refutes Wierus. These are the leading

authors of the times; who were followed by a crowd. Thus James I. neither

wanted authorities to quote nor great minds to sanction his "Dæmonologie,"

first published in 1597. To the honour of England, a single individual,

Reginald Scot, with a genius far advanced beyond his age, denied the very

existence of those witches and demons in the curious volume of his

"Discovery of Witchcraft," 1584. His books were burned! and the author was

himself not quite out of danger; and Voetius, says Bayle, complains that

when the work was translated into Dutch, it raised up a number of

libertines who laughed at all the operations and the apparitions of

devils. Casaubon and Glanvil, who wrote so much later, treat Scot with

profound contempt, assuring us his reasonings are childish, and his

philosophy absurd! Such was the reward of a man of genius combating with

popular prejudices! Even so late as 1687, these popular superstitions were

confirmed by the narrations and the philosophy of Glanvil, Dr. More, &c.

The subject enters into the "Commentaries on the Laws of England." An

edict of Louis XIV, and a statute by George II, made an end of the whole

_Diablerie_. Had James I. adopted the system of Reginald Scot, the king

had probably been branded as an atheist king!]

[Footnote B: Harris, with systematic ingenuity against James I., after

abusing this tract as a wretched performance, though himself probably had

written a meaner one--quotes the curious information the king gives of the

enormous abuse to which the practice of smoking was carried, expressing

his astonishment at it. Yet, that James may not escape bitter censure, he

abuses the king for levying a heavy tax on it to prevent this ruinous

consumption, and his silly policy in discouraging such a branch of our

revenues, and an article so valuable to our plantations, &c. As if James

I. could possibly incur censure for the discoveries of two centuries

after, of the nature of this plant! James saw great families ruined by the

epidemic madness, and sacrificed the revenues which his crown might derive

from it, to assist its suppression. This was patriotism in the monarch.]

It was a prompt honesty of intention to benefit his people, which seems to

have been the urgent motive that induced this monarch to become an author,

more than any literary ambition; for he writes on no prepared or permanent

topic, and even published anonymously, and as he once wrote "post-haste,"

what he composed or designed for practical and immediate use; and even in

that admirable treatise on the duties of a sovereign, which he addressed

to Prince Henry, a great portion is directed to the exigencies of the

times, the parties, and the circumstances of his own court. Of the works

now more particularly noticed, their interest has ceased with the

melancholy follies which at length have passed away; although the

philosophical inquirer will not choose to drop this chapter in the history

of mankind. But one fact in favour of our royal author is testified by the

honest Fuller and the cynical Osborne. On the king's arrival in England,

having discovered the numerous impostures and illusions which he had often

referred to as authorities, he grew suspicious of the whole system

of "Dæmonologie," and at length recanted it entirely. With the same

conscientious zeal James had written the book, the king condemned it; and

the sovereign separated himself from the author, in the cause of truth;

but the clergy and the parliament persisted in making the imaginary crime

felony by the statute, and it is only a recent act of parliament which has

forbidden the appearance of the possessed and the spae-wife.

But this apology for having written these treatises need not rest on this

fact, however honourably it appeals to our candour. Let us place it on

higher ground, and tell those who asperse this monarch for his credulity

and intellectual weakness, that they themselves, had they lived in the

reign of James I., had probably written on the same topics, and felt as

uneasy at the rumour of a witch being a resident in their neighbourhood!

* * * * *

POPULAR SUPERSTITIONS OF THE AGE.

This and the succeeding age were the times of omens and meteors,

prognostics and providences--of "day-fatality," or the superstition of

fortunate and unfortunate days, and the combined powers of astrology and

magic. It was only at the close of the century of James I. that Bayle

wrote a treatise on comets, to prove that they had no influence in the

cabinets of princes; this was, however, done with all the precaution

imaginable. The greatest minds were then sinking under such popular

superstitions: and whoever has read much of the private history of

this age will have smiled at their ludicrous terrors and bewildered

reasonings. The most ordinary events were attributed to an interposition

of Providence. In the unpublished memoirs of that learned antiquary, Sir

Symouds D'Ewes, such frequently occur. When a comet appeared, and D'Ewes,

for exercise at college, had been ringing the great bell, and entangled

himself in the rope, which had nearly strangled him, he resolves not to

ring while the comet is in the heavens. When a fire happened at the Six

Clerks' Office, of whom his father was one, he inquires into the most

prominent sins of the six clerks: these were the love of the world, and

doing business on Sundays: and it seems they thought so themselves; for

after the fire the office-door was fast closed on the Sabbath. When the

Thames had an unusual ebb and flow, it was observed, that it had never

happened in their recollection, but just before the rising of the Earl of

Essex in Elizabeth's reign,--and Sir Symonds became uneasy at the

political aspect of affairs.

All the historians of these times are very particular in marking the

bearded beams of blazing stars; and the first public event that occurs is

always connected with the radiant course. Arthur Wilson describes one

which preceded the death of the simple queen of James I. It was generally

imagined that "this great light in the heaven was sent as a flambeaux to

her funeral;" but the historian discovers, while "this blaze was burning,

the fire of war broke out in Bohemia." It was found difficult to decide

between the two opinions; and Rushworth, who wrote long afterwards,

carefully chronicles both.

The truth is, the greatest geniuses of the age of James I. were as deeply

concerned in these investigations as his Majesty. Had the great Verulam

emancipated himself from all the dreams of his age? He speaks indeed

cautiously of witchcraft, but does not deny its occult agency; and of

astrology he is rather for the improvement than the rejection. The bold

spirit of Rawleigh contended with the superstitions of the times; but how

feeble is the contest where we fear to strike! Even Rawleigh is prodigal

of his praise to James for the king's chapter on magic. The great mind of

Rawleigh perceived how much men are formed and changed by _education;_

but, were this principle admitted to its extent, the _stars_ would

lose their influence! In pleading for the free agency of man, he would

escape from the pernicious tendency of predestination, or the astral

influence, which yet he allows. To extricate himself from the dilemma,

he invents an analogical reasoning of a royal power of dispensing

with the laws in extreme cases; so that, though he does not deny "the

binding of the stars," he declares they are controllable by the will of

the Creator. In this manner, fettered by prevalent opinions, he satisfies

the superstitions of an astrological age, and the penetration of his own

genius. At a much later period Dr Henry More, a writer of genius,

confirmed the ghost and demon creed, by a number of facts, as marvellously

pleasant as any his own poetical fancy could have invented. Other great

authors have not less distinguished themselves. When has there appeared a

single genius who at once could free himself of the traditional prejudices

of his contemporaries--nay, of his own party? Genius, in its advancement

beyond the intelligence of its own age, is but progressive; it is

fancifully said to soar, but it only climbs. Yet the minds of some authors

of this age are often discovered to be superior to their work; because the

mind is impelled by its own inherent powers, but the work usually

originates in the age. James I, once acutely observed, how "the author may

be wise, but the work foolish."

Thus minds of a higher rank than our royal author had not yet cleared

themselves out of these clouds of popular prejudices. We now proceed to

more decisive results of the superior capacity of this much ill-used

monarch.

* * * * *

THE HABITS OF JAMES THE FIRST THOSE OF A MAN OF LETTERS.

The habits of life of this monarch were those of a man of letters. His

first studies were soothed by none of their enticements. If James loved

literature, it was for itself; for Buchanan did not tinge the rim of the

vase with honey; and the bitterness was tasted not only in the draught,

but also in the rod. In some princes, the harsh discipline James passed

through has raised a strong aversion against literature. The Dauphin, for

whose use was formed the well-known edition of the classics, looked on the

volumes with no eye of love. To free himself of his tutor, Huet, he

eagerly consented to an early marriage. "Now we shall see if Mr. Huet

shall any more keep me to ancient geography!" exclaimed the Dauphin,

rejoicing in the first act of despotism. This ingenuous sally, it is said,

too deeply affected that learned man for many years afterwards. Huet's

zealous gentleness (for how could Huet be too rigid?) wanted the art which

Buchanan disdained to practise. But, in the case of the prince of

Scotland, a constitutional timidity combining with an ardour for study,

and therefore a veneration for his tutor, produced a more remarkable

effect. Such was the terror which the remembrance of this illustrious but

inexorable republican left on the imagination of his royal pupil, that

even so late as when James was seated on the English throne, once the

appearance of his frowning tutor in a dream greatly agitated the king,

who in vain attempted to pacify him in this portentous vision. This

extraordinary fact may be found in a manuscript letter of that day.[A]

[Footnote A: The learned Mede wrote the present letter soon after another,

which had not been acknowledged, to his friend Sir M. Stuteville; and the

writer is uneasy lest the political secrets of the day might bring the

parties into trouble. It seems he was desirous that letter should be read

and then burnt.

"_March 31, 1622._

"I hope my letter miscarried not; if it did I am in a sweet pickle. I

desired to hear from you of the receipt and extinction of it. Though there

is no danger in my letters whilst report is so rife, yet when it is

forgotten they will not be so safe; but your danger is as great as mine--

"Mr. Downham was with we, now come from London. He told me that it was

three years ago since those verses were delivered to the king in a dream,

by his Master Buchanan, who seemed to _check him severely, as he used to

do_; and his Majesty, in his dream, seemed desirous to pacify him, but he,

_turning away with a frowning countenance_, would utter those verses,

which his Majesty, perfectly remembering, repeated the next day, and many

took notice of them. Now, by occasion of the late soreness in his arm, and

the doubtfulness what it would prove; especially having, by mischance,

fallen into the fire with that arm, the remembrance of the verses began to

trouble him."

It appears that these verses were of a threatening nature, since, in a

melancholy fit, they were recalled to recollection after an interval of

three years; the verses are lost to us, with the letter which contained

them.]

James, even by the confession of his bitter satirist, Francis Osborne,

"dedicated rainy weather to his standish, and fair to his hounds." His

life had the uniformity of a student's; but the regulated life of a

learned monarch must have weighed down the gay and dissipated with the

deadliest monotony. Hence one of these courtiers declared that, if he were

to awake after a sleep of seven years' continuance, he would undertake to

enumerate the whole of his Majesty's occupations, and every dish that had

been placed on the table during the interval. But this courtier was not

aware that the monotony which the king occasioned him was not so much in

the king himself as in his own volatile spirit.

The table of James I. was a trial of wits, says a more learned courtier,

who often partook of these prolonged conversations: those genial and

convivial conferences were the recreations of the king, and the means

often of advancing those whose talents had then an opportunity of

discovering themselves. A life so constant in its pursuits was to have

been expected from the temper of him who, at the view of the Bodleian

library, exclaimed, "Were I not a king, I would be an university man; and

if it were so that I must be a prisoner, I would have no other prison than

this library, and be _chained together_ with all these goodly authors."[A]

[Footnote A: In this well-known exclamation of James I., a witty allusion

has been probably overlooked. The king had in his mind the then prevalent

custom of securing books by fastening them to the shelves by _chains_ long

enough to reach to the reading-desks under them.]

Study, indeed, became one of the businesses of life with our contemplative

monarch; and so zealous was James to form his future successor, that he

even seriously engaged in the education of both his sons. James I. offers

the singular spectacle of a father who was at once a preceptor and a

monarch: it was in this spirit the king composed his "Basilicon Doron; or,

His Majesty's Instructions to his dearest Son Henry the Prince," a work of

which something more than the intention is great; and he directed the

studies of the unfortunate Charles. That both these princes were no common

pupils may be fairly attributed to the king himself. Never did the

character of a young prince shoot out with nobler promises than Henry; an

enthusiast for literature and arms, that prince early showed a great and

commanding spirit. Charles was a man of fine taste: he had talents and

virtues, errors and misfortunes; but he was not without a spirit equal to

the days of his trial.

* * * * *

FACILITY AND COPIOUSNESS OF HIS COMPOSITION.

The mind of James I. had at all times the fulness of a student's,

delighting in the facility and copiousness of composition. The king wrote

in one week one hundred folio pages of a monitory address to the European

sovereigns; and, in as short a time, his apology, sent to the pope and

cardinals. These he delivered to the bishops, merely as notes for their

use; but they were declared to form of themselves a complete answer. "_Qua

felicitate_ they were done, let others judge; but _Qua celeritate_, I can

tell," says the courtly bishop who collected the king's works, and who is

here quoted, not for the compliment he would infer, but for the fact he

states. The week's labour of his majesty provoked from Cardinal Perron

about one thousand pages in folio, and replies and rejoinders from the

learned in Europe.[A]

[Footnote A: Mr. Lodge, in his "Illustrations of British History," praises

and abuses James I. for the very same treatises. Mr. Lodge, dropping the

sober character of the antiquary for the smarter one of the critic, tells

us, "James had the good fortune to gain the two points he principally

aimed at in the publication of these _dull treatises_--the reputation of

an acute disputant, and the honour of having Cardinal Bellarmin for an

antagonist." Did Mr. Lodge ever read these "dull treatises?" I declare I

never have; but I believe these treatises are not dull, from the inference

he draws from them: for how any writer can gain the reputation of "an

acute disputant" by writing "dull treatises," Mr. Lodge only can explain.

It is in this manner, and by unphilosophical critics, that the literary

reputation of James has been flourished down by modern pens. It was sure

game to attack James I.!]

* * * * *

HIS ELOQUENCE.

The eloquence of James is another feature in the literary character of

this monarch. Amid the sycophancy of the court of a learned sovereign some

truths will manifest themselves. Bishop Williams, in his funeral eulogy of

James I., has praised with warmth the eloquence of the departed monarch,

whom he intimately knew; and this was an acquisition of James's, so

manifest to all, that the bishop made eloquence essential to the dignity

of a monarch; observing, that "it was the want of it that made Moses, in a

manner, refuse all government, though offered by God."[A] He would

not have hazarded so peculiar an eulogium, had not the monarch been

distinguished by that talent.

[Footnote A: This funeral sermon, by laying such a stress on the

_eloquence_ of James I., it is said, occasioned the disgrace of the

zealous bishop; perhaps, also, by the arts of the new courtiers practising

on the feelings of the young monarch. It appears that Charles betrayed

frequent symptoms of impatience.

This allusion to the _stammering_ of Moses was most unlucky; for Charles

had this defect in his delivery, which he laboured all his life to

correct. In the first speech from the throne, he alludes to it: "Now,

because _I am unfit for much speaking_, I mean to bring up the fashion of

my predecessors, to have my lord-keeper speak for me in most things." And

he closed a speech to the Scottish parliament by saying, that "he does not

offer to endear himself by words, _which, indeed is not my way_." This,

however, proved to be one of those little circumstances which produce a

more important result than is suspected. By this substitution of a

lord-keeper instead of the sovereign, he failed in exciting the personal

affections of his parliament. Even the most gracious speech from the lips

of a lord-keeper is but formally delivered, and coldly received; and

Charles had not yet learned that there are no deputies for our feelings.]

Hume first observed of James I., that "the speaker of the House of Commons

is usually an eminent man; yet the harangue of his Majesty will always be

found much superior to that of the speaker in every parliament during this

reign." His numerous proclamations are evidently wrought by his own hand,

and display the pristine vigour of the state of our age of genius. That

the state-papers were usually composed by himself, a passage in the Life

of the Lord-keeper Williams testifies; and when Sir Edward Conway, who had

been bred a soldier, and was even illiterate, became a viscount, and a

royal secretary, by the appointment of Buckingham, the king, who in fact

wanted no secretary, would often be merry over his imperfect scrawls in

writing, and his hacking of sentences in reading, often breaking out in

laughter, exclaiming, "Stenny has provided me with a secretary who can

neither write nor read, and a groom of my bedchamber who cannot truss my

points,"--this latter person having but one hand! It is evident, since

Lord Conway, the most inefficient secretary ever king had--and I have

myself seen his scrawls--remained many years in office, that James I.

required no secretary, and transacted his affairs with his own mind and

hand. These habits of business and of study prove that James indulged much

less those of indolence, for which he is so gratuitously accused.

* * * * *

HIS WIT.

Amid all the ridicule and contempt in which the intellectual capacity of

James I. is involved, this college-pedant, who is imagined to have given

in to every species of false wit, and never to have reached beyond

quibbles, puns, conceits, and quolibets,--was in truth a great wit; quick

in retort, and happy in illustration; and often delivering opinions with a

sententious force. More wit and wisdom from his lips have descended to us

than from any other of our sovereigns. One of the malicious writers of his

secret history, Sir Anthony Weldon, not only informs us that he was witty,

but describes the manner: "He was very witty, and had as many witty jests

as any man living: at which he would not smile himself, but deliver them

in a grave and serious manner." Thus the king was not only witty, but a

dextrous wit: nor is he one of those who are recorded as having only said

one good thing in their lives; for his vein was not apt to dry.

His conversations, like those of most literary men, he loved to prolong at

table. We find them described by one who had partaken of them:

"The reading of some books before him was very frequent, while he was at

his repast; and otherwise he collected knowledge by variety of questions,

which he carved out to the capacity of different persons. Methought his

hunting humour was not off, while the learned stood about him at his

board; he was ever in chase after some disputable doubts, which he would

wind and turn about with the most stabbing objections that ever I heard;

and was as pleasant and fellow-like, in all these discourses, as with his

huntsman in the field. Those who were ripe and weighty in their answers

were ever designed for some place of credit or profit."[A]

[Footnote A: Hacket's curious "Life of the Lord-keeper Williams," p. 38,

Part 11.]

* * * * *

SPECIMENS OF HIS HUMOUR, AND OBSERVATIONS ON HUMAN LIFE.

The relics of witticisms and observations on human life, on state affairs,

in literature and history, are scattered among contemporary writers, and

some are even traditional; I regret that I have not preserved many which

occurred in the course of reading. It has happened, however, that a man of

genius has preserved for posterity some memorials of the wit, the

learning, and the sense of the monarch.[A]

[Footnote A: In the Harl. MSS. 7582, Art. 3, one entitled "Crumms fallen

from King James's Table; or his Table-Talk, taken by Sir Thomas Overbury.

The original being in his own handwriting." This MS. has been, perhaps,

imperfectly printed in "The Prince's Cabala, or Mysteries of State," 1715.

This Collection of Sir Thomas Overbury was shortened by his unhappy fate,

since he perished early in the reign.--Another Harl. MS. contains things

"as they were at sundrie times spoken by James I." I have drawn others

from the Harl. MSS. 6395. We have also printed, "Wittie Observations,

gathered in King James's Ordinary Discourse," 1643; "King James his

Apothegmes or Table-Talk as they were by him delivered occasionally, and

by the publisher, his quondam servant, carefully received, by B.A. gent.

4^to. in eight leaves, 1643." The collector was Ben'n. Agar, who had

gathered them in his youth; "Witty Apothegmes, delivered at several times

by King James, King Charles, the Marquis of Worcester," &c., 1658.

The collection of Apothegms formed by Lord Bacon offers many instances of

the king's wit and sense. See Lord Bacon's Apothegms new and old; they are

numbered to 275 in the edition 1819. Basil Montague, in his edition, has

separated what he distinguishes as the spurious ones.]

In giving some loose specimens of the wit and capacity of a man, if they

are too few, it may be imagined that they are so from their rarity;

and if too many, the page swells into a mere collection. But truth is not

over-nice to obtain her purpose, and even the common labours she inspires

are associated with her pleasures.

Early in life James I. had displayed the talent of apt allusion, and his

classical wit on the Spaniards, that "He expected no other favour from

them than the courtesy of Polyphemus to Ulysses--to be the last devoured,"

delighted Elizabeth, and has even entered into our history. Arthur

Wilson, at the close of his "Life of James I.," has preserved one of his

apothegms, while he censures him for not making timely use of it! "Let

that prince, who would beware of conspiracies, be rather jealous of such

whom his extraordinary favours have advanced, than of those whom his

displeasure have discontented. _These_ want means to execute their

pleasures, but _those_ have means at pleasure to execute their desires."

--Wilson himself ably develops this important state-observation, by

adding, that "Ambition to rule is more vehement than malice to revenge." A

pointed reflection, which rivals a maxim of Rochefoucault.

The king observed that, "Very wise men and very fools do little harm; it

is the mediocrity of wisdom that troubleth all the world."--He described,

by a lively image, the differences which rise in argument: "Men, in

arguing, are often carried by the force of words farther asunder than

their question was at first; like two ships going out of the same haven,

their landing is many times whole countries distant."

One of the great national grievances, as it appeared both to the

government and the people, in James's reign, was the perpetual growth of

the metropolis; and the nation, like an hypochondriac, was ludicrously

terrified that their head was too monstrous for their body, and drew

all the moisture of life from the remoter parts. It is amusing to

observe the endless and vain precautions employed to stop all new

buildings, and to force persons out of town to reside at their country

mansions. Proclamations warned and exhorted, but the very interference of

prohibition rendered the crowded town more delightful. One of its

attendant calamities was the prevalent one of that day, the plague; and

one of those state libels, which were early suppressed, or never printed,

entitled, "Balaam's Ass," has this passage: "In this deluge of new

buildings, we shall be all poisoned with breathing in one another's faces;

and your Majesty has most truly said, England will shortly be London, and

London, England." It was the popular wish, that country gentlemen should

reside more on their estates, and it was on this occasion the king made

that admirable allusion, which has been in our days repeated in the House

of Commons: "Gentlemen resident on their estates were like ships in port

--their value and magnitude were felt and acknowledged; but, when at

a distance, as their size seemed insignificant, so their worth and

importance were not duly estimated." The king abounded with similar

observations; for he drew from life more than even from books.

James is reproached for being deficient in political sagacity;

notwithstanding that he somewhat prided himself on what he denominated

"king's-craft." This is the fate of a pacific and domestic prince!

"A king," said James, "ought to be a preserver of his people, as well of

their fortunes as lives, and not a destroyer of his subjects. Were I to

make such a war as the King of France doth, with such tyranny on his own

subjects--with Protestants on one side, and his soldiers drawn to

slaughter on the other,--I would put myself in a monastery all my days

after, and repent me that I had brought my subjects to such misery."

That James was an adept in his "king's-craft," by which term he meant

the science of politics, but which has been so often misinterpreted in an

ill sense, even the confession of such a writer as Sir Anthony Weldon

testifies; who acknowledges that "no prince living knew how to make use of

men better than King James." He certainly foresaw the spirit of the

Commons, and predicted to the prince and Buckingham, events which occurred

after his death. When Cranfield, Earl of Middlesex, whom James considered

a useful servant, Buckingham sacrificed, as it would appear, to the

clamours of a party, James said, "You are making a rod for your own back;"

and when Prince Charles was encouraging the frequent petitions of

the Commons, James told him, "You will live to have your bellyful of

petitions." The following anecdote may serve to prove his political

sagacity:--When the Emperor of Germany, instigated by the Pope and his own

state-interests, projected a crusade against the Turks, he solicited from

James the aid of three thousand Englishmen; the wise and pacific monarch,

in return, advised the emperor's ambassador to apply to France and Spain,

as being more nearly concerned in this project: but the ambassador very

ingeniously argued, that, James being a more remote prince, would more

effectually alarm the Turks, from a notion of a general armament of

the Christian princes against them. James got rid of the importunate

ambassador by observing, that "three thousand Englishmen would do no more

hurt to the Turks than fleas to their skins: great attempts may do good by

a destruction, but little ones only stir up anger to hurt themselves."

His vein of familiar humour flowed at all times, and his facetiousness

was sometimes indulged at the cost of his royalty. In those unhappy

differences between him and his parliament, one day mounting his horse,

which, though usually sober and quiet, began to bound and

prance,--"Sirrah!" exclaimed the king, who seemed to fancy that his

favourite prerogative was somewhat resisted on this occasion, "if you be

not quiet, I'll send you to the five hundred kings in the lower house:

they'll quickly tame you." When one of the Lumleys was pushing on his

lineal ascent beyond the patience of the hearers, the king, to cut short

the tedious descendant of the Lumleys, cried out, "Stop mon! thou needst

no more: now I learn that Adam's surname was Lumley!" When Colonel Gray,

a military adventurer of that day, just returned from Germany, seemed

vain of his accoutrements, on which he had spent his all,--the king,

staring at this buckled, belted, sworded, and pistolled, but ruined,

martinet, observed, that "this town was so well fortified, that, were it

victualled, it might be impregnable."

* * * * *

EVIDENCES OF HIS SAGACITY IN THE DISCOVERY OF TRUTH.

Possessing the talent of eloquence, the quickness of wit, and the

diversified knowledge which produced his "Table-talk," we find also many

evidences of his sagacity in the discovery of truth, with that patient

zeal so honourable to a monarch. When the shipwrights, jealous of Pett,

our great naval architect, formed a party against him, the king would

judge with his own eyes. Having examined the materials depreciated by

Pett's accusers, he declared that "the cross-grain was in the men, not in

the timber." The king, on historical evidence, and by what he said

in his own works, claims the honour of discovering the gunpowder plot, by

the sagacity and reflection with which he solved the enigmatical and

ungrammatical letter sent on that occasion. The train of his thoughts has

even been preserved to us; and, although a loose passage, in a private

letter of the Earl of Salisbury, contradicted by another passage in the

same letter, would indicate that the earl was the man; yet even Mrs.

Macaulay acknowledges the propriety of attributing the discovery to the

king's sagacity. Several proofs of his zeal and reflection in the

detection of imposture might be adduced; and the reader may, perhaps, be

amused at these.

There existed a conspiracy against the Countess of Exeter by Lady Lake,

and her daughter, Lady Ross. They had contrived to forge a letter in the

Countess's name, in which she confessed all the heavy crimes they accused

her of, which were incest, witchcraft, &c.;[A] and, to confirm its

authenticity, as the king was curious respecting the place, the time, and

the occasion, when the letter was written, their maid swore it was at the

countess's house at Wimbledon, and that she had written it at the window,

near the upper end of the great chamber; and that she (the maid) was hid

beneath the tapestry, where she heard the countess read over the letter

after writing. The king appeared satisfied with this new testimony; but,

unexpectedly, he visited the great chamber at Wimbledon, observed the

distance of the window, placed himself behind the hangings, and made the

lords in their turn: not one could distinctly hear the voice of a person

placed at the window. The king further observed, that the tapestry was two

feet short of the ground, and that any one standing behind it must

inevitably be discovered. "Oaths cannot confound my sight," exclaimed the

king. Having also effectuated other discoveries with a confession of one

of the parties, and Sir Thomas Lake being a faithful servant of James, as

he had been of Elizabeth, the king, who valued him, desired he would not

stand the trial with his wife and daughter; but the old man pleaded that

he was a husband and a father, and must fall with them. "It is a fall!"

said the king: "your wife is the serpent; your daughter is Eve; and you,

poor man, are Adam!"[B]

[Footnote A: Camden's "Annals of James I., Kennet II., 652."]

[Footnote B: The suit cost Sir Thomas Lake 30,000_l_.; the fines in the

star-chamber were always heavy in all reigns. Harris refers to this cause

as an evidence of the tyrannic conduct of James I., as if the king was

always influenced by personal dislike; but he does not give the story.]

The sullen Osborne reluctantly says, "I must confess he was the promptest

man living in detecting an imposture." There was a singular impostor in

his reign, of whom no one denies the king the merit of detecting the

deception--so far was James I. from being credulous, as he is generally

supposed to have been. Ridiculous as the affair may appear to us, it had

perfectly succeeded with the learned fellows of New College, Oxford, and

afterwards with heads as deep; and it required some exertion of the king's

philosophical reasoning to pronounce on the deception.

One Haddock, who was desirous of becoming a preacher, but had a stuttering

and slowness of utterance, which he could not get rid of, took to

the study of physic; but recollecting that, when at Winchester, his

schoolfellows had told him that he spoke fluently in his sleep, he tried,

affecting to be asleep, to form a discourse on physic. Finding that he

succeeded, he continued the practice: he then tried divinity, and spoke a

good sermon. Having prepared one for the purpose, he sat up in his bed and

delivered it so loudly that it attracted attention in the next chamber. It

was soon reported that Haddock preached in his sleep; and nothing was

heard but inquiries after the _sleeping preacher_, who soon found it his

interest to keep up the delusion. He was now considered as a man truly

inspired; and he did not in his own mind rate his talents at less worth

than the first vacant bishopric. He was brought to court, where the

greatest personages anxiously sat up through the night by his bedside.

They tried all the maliciousness of Puck to pinch and to stir him: he was

without hearing or feeling; but they never departed without an orderly

text and sermon; at the close of which, groaning and stretching himself,

he pretended to awake, declaring he was unconscious of what had passed.

"The king," says Wilson, no flatterer of James, "privately handled him so

like a chirurgeon, that he found out the sore." The king was present at

one of these sermons, and forbade them; and his reasonings, on this

occasion, brought the sleeping preacher on his knees. The king observed,

that things studied in the day-time may be dreamed of in the night, but

always irregularly, without order; not, as these sermons were, good and

learned: as particularly the one preached before his Majesty in his sleep

--which he first treated physically, then theologically; "and I observed,"

said the king, "that he always preaches best when he has the most crowded

audience." "Were he allowed to proceed, all slander and treason might pass

under colour of being asleep," added the king, who, notwithstanding his

pretended inspiration, awoke the sleeping preacher for ever afterwards.

* * * * *

BASILICON DORON.

That treatise of James I., entitled "Basilicon Doron; or, His Majesty's

Instructions to his dearest Son Henry the Prince," was composed by the

king in Scotland, in the freshness of his studious days; a work, addressed

to a prince by a monarch which, in some respects, could only have come

from the hands of such a workman. The morality and the politics often

retain their curiosity and their value. Our royal author has drawn his

principles of government from the classical volumes of antiquity; for then

politicians quoted Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero. His waters had, indeed,

flowed over those beds of ore;[A] but the growth and vigour of the work

comes from the mind of the king himself: he writes for the Prince of

Scotland, and about the Scottish people. On its first appearance Camden

has recorded the strong sensation it excited: it was not only admired, but

it entered into and won the hearts of men. Harris, forced to acknowledge,

in his mean style and with his frigid temper, that "this book contains

some tolerable things," omits not to hint that "it might not be his own:"

but the claims of James I. are evident from the peculiarity of the style;

the period at which it was composed; and by those particular passages

stamped with all the individuality of the king himself. The style is

remarkable for its profuse sprinkling of Scottish and French words, where

the Doric plainness of the one, and the intelligent expression of the

other, offer curious instances of the influence of manners over language;

the diction of the royal author is a striking evidence of the intermixture

of the two nations, and of a court which had marked its divided interests

by its own chequered language.

[Footnote A: James, early in life, was a fine scholar, and a lover of

the ancient historians, as appears from an accidental expression of

Buchanan's, in his dedication to James of his "Baptistes;" referring to

Sallust, he adds, _apud_ TUUM _Salustium_.]

This royal manual still interests a philosophical mind; like one of those

antique and curious pictures we sometimes discover in a cabinet,--studied

for the costume; yet where the touches of nature are true, although the

colouring is brown and faded; but there is a force, and sometimes even a

charm, in the ancient simplicity, to which even the delicacy of taste may

return, not without pleasure. The king tells his son:--

"Sith all people are naturally inclined to follow their prince's example,

in your own person make your wordes and deedes to fight together; and let

your own life be a law-book and a mirror to your people, that therein they

may read the practice of their own lawes, and see by your image what life

they should lead.

"But vnto one faulte is all the common people of this kingdome subject, as

well burgh as land; which is, to judge and speak rashly of their prince,

setting the commonweale vpon foure props, as wee call it; euer wearying of

the present estate, and desirous of nouelties." The remedy the king

suggests, "besides the execution of laws that are to be vsed against

vnreuerent speakers," is so to rule, as that "the subjects may not only

live in suretie and wealth, but be stirred up to open their mouthes in

your iust praise."

* * * * *

JAMES THE FIRST'S IDEA OF A TYRANT AND A KING.

The royal author distinguishes a king from a tyrant on their first

entrance into the government:--

"A tyrant will enter like a saint, till he find himself fast under foot,

and then will suffer his unruly affections to burst forth." He advises the

prince to act contrary to Nero, who, at first, "with his tender-hearted

wish, _vellem nescire literas_," appeared to lament that he was to execute

the laws. He, on the contrary, would have the prince early show "the

severitie of justice, which will settle the country, and make them know

that ye can strike: this would be but for a time. If otherwise ye kyth

(show) your clemencie at the first the offences would soon come to such

heapes, and the contempt of you grow so great, that when ye would fall to

punish the number to be punished would exceed the innocent; and ye would,

against your nature, be compelled then to wracke manie, whom the

chastisement of few in the beginning might have preserved. In this my own

dear-bought experience may serve you for a different lesson. For I

confess, where I thought (by being gracious at the beginning) to gain all

men's heart to a loving and willing obedience, I by the contrarie found

the disorder of the countrie, and the loss of my thanks, to be all my

reward."

James, in the course of the work, often instructs the prince by his own

errors and misfortunes; and certainly one of these was an excess of the

kinder impulses in granting favours; there was nothing selfish in his

happiness; James seemed to wish that every one around him should

participate in the fulness of his own enjoyment. His hand was always open

to scatter about him honours and wealth, and not always on unworthy

favourites, but often on learned men whose talents he knew well to

appreciate. There was a warmth in the king's temper which once he himself

well described; he did not like those who pride themselves on their tepid

dispositions. "I love not one that will never be angry, for as he that is

without sorrow is without gladness, so he that is without anger is without

love. Give me the heart of a man, and out of that all his actions shall be

acceptable." The king thus addresses the prince:--

_On the Choice of Servants and Associates_.

"Be not moved with importunities; for the which cause, as also for

augmenting your Maiestie, be not so facile of access-giving at all times,

as I have been."--In his minority, the choice of his servants had been

made by others, "recommending servants unto me, more for serving, in

effect, their friends that put them in, than their maister that admitted

them, and used them well, at the first rebellion raised against me. Chuse

you your own servantes for your own vse, and not for the vse of others;

and, since ye must be _communis parens_ to all your people, chuse

indifferentlie out of all quarters; not respecting other men's appetites,

but their own qualities. For as you must command all, so reason would ye

should be served of all.--Be a daily watchman over your own servants, that

they obey your laws precisely: for how can your laws be kept in the

country, if they be broken at your eare!--Bee homelie or strange with

them, as ye think their behaviour deserveth and their nature may bear

ill.--Employ every man as ye think him qualified, but use not one in all

things, lest he wax proud, and be envied by his fellows.--As for the other

sort of your companie and servants, they ought to be of perfect age, see

they be of a good fame; otherwise what can the people think but that ye

have chosen a companion unto you according to your own humour, and so have

preferred those men for the love of their vices and crimes, that ye knew

them to be guiltie of. For the people, that see you not within, cannot

judge of you but according to the outward appearance of your actions and

company, which only is subject to their sight."

* * * * *

THE REVOLUTIONISTS OF THAT AGE.

James I. has painted, with vivid touches, the Anti-Monarchists,

or revolutionists, of his time.

He describes "their imagined democracie, where they fed themselves with

the hope to become _tribunî plebi_; and so, in a popular government, by

leading the people by the nose, to bear the sway of all the rule.--Every

faction," he adds, "always joined them. I was ofttimes calumniated in

their popular sermons, not for any evill or vice in me,[A] but because I

was a king, which they thought the highest evill; and, because they were

ashamed to professe this quarrel, they were busie to look narrowly in all

my actions, pretending to distinguish the lawfulness of the office from

the vice of the person; yet some of them would snapper out well grossly

with the trewth of their intentions, informing the people that all kings

and princes were naturally enemies to the liberties of the Church; whereby

the ignorant were emboldened (as bayards),[B] to cry the learned and

modest out of it: but their parity is the mother of confusion, and enemie

to vnitie, which is the mother of order." And it is not without eloquence

his Majesty describes these factious Anti-Monarchists, as "Men, whom no

deserts can oblige, neither oaths nor promises bind; breathing nothing but

sedition and calumnies, aspiring without measure, railing without reason,

and making their own imaginations the square of their conscience. I

protest, before the great God, and, since I am here as vpon my testament,

it is no place for me to lie in, that ye shall never find with any

Hie-land, or Border theeves, greater ingratitude, and more lies and vile

perjuries: ye may keep them for trying your patience, as Socrates did an

evill wife."

[Footnote A: The conduct of James I. in Scotland has even extorted praise

from one of his bitterest calumniators; for Mrs. Macaulay has said--"His

conduct, when King of Scotland, was in many points unexceptionable."]

[Footnote B: An old French word, expressing, "A man that gapes or gazes

earnestly at a thing; a fly-catcher; a greedy and unmannerly beholder."--

COTGRAVE.]

* * * * *

OF THE NOBILITY OF SCOTLAND.

The king makes three great divisions of the Scottish people: the church,

the nobility, and the burghers.

Of the nobility, the king counsels the prince to check

"A fectless arrogant conceit of their greatness and power, drinking in

with their very nourish-milk. Teach your nobilitie to keep your lawes, as

precisely as the meanest; fear not their orping, or being discontented, as

long as ye rule well: for their pretended reformation of princes taketh

never effect, but where evil government proceedeth. Acquaint yourself so

with all the honest men of your barone and gentlemen, giving access so

open and affable, to make their own suites to you themselves, and not to

employ the great lordes, their intercessours; so shall ye bring to a

measure their monstrous backes. And for their barbarous feîdes (feuds),

put the laws to due execution made by mee there-anent; beginning ever

rathest at him that yee love best, and is oblished vnto you, to make him

an example to the rest. Make all your reformations to begin at your elbow,

and so by degrees to the extremities of the land."

He would not, however, that the prince should highly contemn the nobility:

"Remember, howe that error brake the king, my grandfather's heart.

Consider that vertue followeth oftest noble blood: the more frequently

that your court can be garnished with them, as peers and fathers of your

land, thinke it the more your honour."

He impresses on the mind of the prince ever to embrace the quarrel of the

poor and the sufferer, and to remember the honourable title given to his

grandfather, in being called "The poor man's king."

* * * * *

OF COLONISING.

James I. had a project of improving the state of those that dwelt in

the isles, "who are so utterly barbarous," by intermixing some of the

semi-civilised Highlanders, and planting colonies among them of inland

subjects.

"I have already made laws against the over-lords, and the chief of their

clannes, and it would be no difficultie to danton them; so rooting out, or

transporting the barbarous and stubborn sort, and planting civilised in

their rooms."

This was as wise a scheme as any modern philosopher could have suggested,

and, with the conduct he subsequently pursued in Ireland, may be referred

to as splendid proofs of the kingly duties so zealously performed by this

monarch.

* * * * *

OF MERCHANTS.

Of merchants, as this king understood the commercial character, he had no

honourable notion.

He says, "They think the whole commonwealth ordained for raising them up,

and accounting it their lawful gain to enrich themselves upon the losses

of the rest of the people."

We are not to censure James I. for his principles of political economy,

which then had not assumed the dignity of a science; his rude and simple

ideas convey popular truths.

* * * * *

REGULATIONS FOR THE PRINCE'S MANNERS AND HABITS.

The last portion of the "Basilicon Doron" is devoted to domestic

regulations for the prince, respecting his manners and habits; which the

king calls "the indifferent actions of a man."

"A king is set as one on a stage, whose smallest actions and gestures all

the people gazinglie do behold; and, however just in the discharge of his

office, yet, if his behaviour be light or dissolute, in indifferent

actions, the people, who see but the outward part, conceive pre-occupied

conceits of the king's inward intention, which, although with time, the

trier of truth, will evanish by the evidence of the contrarie effect, yet

_interim patitur justus_, and pre-judged conceits will, in the meantime,

breed contempt, the mother of rebellion and disorder. Besides," the king

adds, "the indifferent actions and behaviour of a man have a certain

holding and dependence upon vertue or vice, according as they are used or

ruled."

The prince is not to keep regular hours,

"That any time in the four and twentie hours may be alike to you; thereby

your diet may be accommodated to your affairs, and not your affairs to

your diet."

The prince is to eat in public, "to shew that he loves not to haunt

companie, which is one of the marks of a tyrant, and that he delights not

to eat privatelie, ashamed of his gluttonie." As a curious instance of the

manners of the times, the king advises the prince "to use mostly to eat of

reasonablie-grosse and common-meats; not only for making your bodie strong

for travel, as that ye may be the hartlier received by your meane subiects

in their houses, when their cheere may suffice you, which otherwaies would

be imputed to you for pride, and breed coldness and disdain in them."

I have noticed his counsel against the pedantry or other affectations of

style in speaking.

He adds, "Let it be plaine, natural, comelie, cleane, short, and

sententious."

In his gestures "he is neither to look sillily, like a stupid pedant; nor

unsettledly, with an uncouth morgue, like a new-come-over cavalier; not

over sparing in your courtesies, for that will be imputed to incivilitie

and arrogance; nor yet over prodigal in jowking or nodding at every step,

for that forme of being popular becometh better aspiring Absaloms than

lawful kings; forming ever your gesture according to your present action;

looking gravely, and with a majestie, when ye sit upon judgment, or give

audience to embassadors; homely, when ye are in private with your own

servants; merrily, when ye are at any pastime, or merry discourse; and let

your countenance smell of courage and magnanimity when at the warres. And

remember (I say again) to be plaine and sensible in your language; for

besides, it is the tongue's office to be the messenger of the mind; it may

be thought a point of imbecilitie of spirit in a king to speak obscurely,

much more untrewely, as if he stood in awe of any in uttering his

thoughts."

Should the prince incline to be an author, the king adds--

"If your engine (genius) spur you to write any workes, either in prose or

verse, I cannot but allow you to practise it; but take no longsome works

in hande, for distracting you from your calling."

He reminds the prince with dignity and truth,

"Your writes (writings) will remain as the true picture of your minde, to

all posterities; if yee would write worthelie, chuse subjects worthie of

you." His critical conception of the nature of poetry is its best

definition. "If ye write in verse, remember that it is not the principal

part of a poem to rime right, and flow well with many prettie wordes; but

the chief commendation of a poem is, that when the verse shall bee taken

sundry in prose, it shall be found so ritch in quick inventions and

poetick floures, and in fair and pertinent comparisons, as it shall retain

the lustre of a poem although in prose."

The king proceeds touching many curious points concerning the prince's

bodily exercises and "house-pastimes." A genuine picture of the customs

and manners of the age: our royal author had the eye of an observer, and

the thoughtfulness of a sage.

The king closes with the hope that the prince's "natural inclination will

have a happie simpathie with these precepts; making the wise man's

schoolmaister, which is the example of others, to be your teacher; and not

that overlate repentance by your own experience, which is the

schoolmaister of fools."

Thus have I opened the book, and I believe, the heart of James I. The

volume remains a perpetual witness to posterity of the intellectual

capacity and the noble disposition of the royal author.

But this monarch has been unfairly reproached both by the political and

religious; as far as these aspersions connect themselves with his

character, they enter into our inquiry.

His speeches and his writings are perpetually quoted by democratic

writers, with the furious zeal of those who are doing the work of a party;

they never separate the character of James from his speculative principles

of government; and, such is the odium they have raised against him, that

this sovereign has received the execration, or the ridicule, even of those

who do not belong to their party. James maintained certain abstract

doctrines of the times, and had written on "The Prerogative Royal," and

"The Trew Laws of Free Monarchies," as he had on witches and devils. All

this verbal despotism is artfully converted into so many acts of despotism

itself; and thus they contrive their dramatic exhibition of a blustering

tyrant, in the person of a father of his people, who exercised his power

without an atom of brutal despotism adhering to it.

* * * * *

THE KING'S IDEA OF THE ROYAL PREROGATIVE.

When James asserted that a king is above the laws, he did not understand

this in the popular sense; nor was he the inventor or the reviver of

similar doctrines. In all his mysterious flights on the nature of "The

Prerogative Royal," James only maintained what Elizabeth and all the

Tudors had, as jealously, but more energetically exercised.[A] Elizabeth

left to her successor the royal prerogative strained to its highest pitch,

with no means to support a throne which in the succeeding reign was found

to be baseless. The king employed the style of absolute power, and, as

Harris says, "entertained notions of his prerogative amazingly great, and

bordering on impiety." It never occurred to his calumniators, who are

always writing, without throwing themselves back into the age of their

inquiries, that all the political reveries, the abstract notions, and the

metaphysical fancies of James I. arose from his studious desire of being

an English sovereign, according to the English constitution--for from

thence he derived those very ideas.

[Footnote A: In Sir Symund D'Ewes's "Journals of the Parliament," and in

Townshend's "Historical Collections," we trace in some degree Elizabeth's

arbitrary power concealed in her prerogative, which she always considered

as the dissolving charm in the magical circle of our constitution. But I

possess two letters of the French ambassador to Charles IX., written from

our court in her reign; who, by means of his secret intercourse with those

about her person, details a curious narrative of a royal interview granted

to some deputies of the parliament, at that moment refractory, strongly

depicting the exalted notions this great sovereign entertained of the

prerogative, and which she asserted in stamping her foot.]

* * * * *

THE LAWYERS' IDEA OF THE ROYAL PREROGATIVE.

The truth is, that lawyers, in their anxiety to define, or to defend the

shadowy limits of the royal prerogative, had contrived some strange and

clumsy fictions to describe its powers; their flatteries of the imaginary

being, whom they called the sovereign, are more monstrous than all the

harmless abstractions of James I.

They describe an English sovereign as a mysterious being, invested with

absolute perfection, and a fabulous immortality, whose person was

inviolable by its sacredness. A king of England is not subject to death,

since the sovereign is a corporation, expressed by the awful plural the

OUR and the WE. His majesty is always of full age, though in infancy; and

so unlike mortality, the king can do no wrong. Such his ubiquity, that he

acts at the same moment in different places; and such the force of his

testimony, that whatever the sovereign declares to have passed in his

presence, becomes instantly a perpetual record; he serves for his own

witness, by the simple subscription of _Teste me ipso_; and he is so

absolute in power, beyond the laws, that he quashes them by his negative

voice.[A] Such was the origin of the theoretical prerogative of an ideal

sovereign which James I. had formed: it was a mere curious abstraction of

the schools in the spirit of the age, which was perpetually referring to

the mysteries of state and the secrets of empires, and not a principle he

was practising to the detriment of the subject.

[Footnote A: Such are the descriptions of the British sovereign, to be

found in Cowell's curious book, entitled "The Interpreter." The reader may

further trace the modern genius of Blackstone, with an awful reverence,

dignifying the venerable nonsense--and the commentator on Blackstone

sometimes labouring to explain the explanations of his master; so obscure,

so abstract, and so delicate is the phantom which our ancient lawyers

conjured up, and which the moderns cannot lay.]

James I. while he held for his first principle that a sovereign is only

accountable to God for the sins of his government, an harmless and even a

noble principle in a religious prince, at various times acknowledged that

"a king is ordained for procuring the prosperity of his people." In his

speech, 1603, he says,

"If you be rich I cannot be poor; if you be happy I cannot but be

fortunate. My worldly felicity consists in your prosperity. And that I am

a servant is most true, as I am a head and governour of all the people in

my dominions. If we take the people as one body, then as the head is

ordained for the body and not the body for the head, so must a righteous

king know himself to be ordained for his people, and not his people for

him."

The truth is always concealed by those writers who are cloaking their

antipathy against monarchy, in their declamations against the writings of

James I. Authors, who are so often influenced by the opinions of their

age, have the melancholy privilege of perpetuating them, and of being

cited as authorities for those very opinions, however erroneous.

At this time the true principles of popular liberty, hidden in the

constitution, were yet obscure and contested; involved in contradiction,

in assertion and recantation;[A] and they have been established as much by

the blood as by the ink of our patriots. Some noble spirits in the Commons

were then struggling to fix the vacillating principles of our government;

but often their private passions were infused into their public feelings;

James, who was apt to imagine that these individuals were instigated by a

personal enmity in aiming at his mysterious prerogative, and at the same

time found their rivals with equal weight opposing the novel opinions,

retreated still farther into the depths and arcana of the constitution.

Modern writers have viewed the political fancies of this monarch through

optical instruments not invented in his days.

[Footnote A: Cowell, equally learned and honest, involved himself in

contradictory positions, and was alike prosecuted by the King and the

Commons, on opposite principles. The overbearing Coke seems to have aimed

at his life, which the lenity of James saved. His work is a testimony of

the unsettled principles of liberty at that time; Cowell was compelled to

appeal to one part of his book to save himself from the other.]

When Sir Edward Coke declared that the king's royal prerogative being

unlimited and undefined, "was a great overgrown monster;" and, on one

occasion, when Coke said before the king, that "his Majesty was defended

by the laws,"--James, in anger, told him he spoke foolishly, and he said

he was not defended by the laws, but by God (alluding to his "divine

right"); and sharply reprimanded him for having spoken irreverently of Sir

Thomas Crompton, a civilian; asserting, that Crompton was as good a man as

Coke. The fact is, there then existed a rivalry between the civil and the

common lawyers. Coke declared that the common law of England was in

imminent danger of being perverted; that law which he has enthusiastically

described as the perfection of all sense and experience. Coke was

strenuously opposed by Lord Bacon and by the civilians, and was at length

committed to the Tower (according to a MS. letter of the day, for the

cause is obscure in our history), "charged with speaking so in parliament

as tended to stir up the subjects' hearts against their sovereign."[A] Yet

in all this we must not regard James as the despot he is represented: he

acted as Elizabeth would have acted, for the sacredness of his own person,

and the integrity of the constitution. In the same manuscript letter I

find that, when at Theobalds, the king, with his usual openness, was

discoursing how he designed to govern; and as he would sometimes, like the

wits of all nations and times, compress an argument into a play on

words,--the king said, "I will govern according to the good of the

_common-weal_, but not according to the _common-will!_"

[Footnote A: The following anecdotes of Lord Chief Justice Coke have not

been published. They are extracts from manuscript letters of the times: on

that occasion, at first, the patriot did not conduct himself with the

firmness of a great spirit.

_Nov. 19, 1616._

"The thunderbolt hath fallen on the Lord Coke, which hath overthrown him

from the very roots. The supersedeas was carried to him by Sir George

Coppin, who, at the presenting of it, received it with dejection and

tears. _Tremor et successio non cadunt in fortem et constantem_. I send

you a distich on the Lord Coke--

"Jus condere Cocus potuit, sed condere jure

Non potuit; potuit condere jura cocis."

It happened that the name of Coke, or rather Cook, admitted of being

punned on, both in Latin and in English: for he was lodged in the Tower,

in a room that had once been a kitchen, and as soon as he arrived, one had

written on the door, which he read at his entrance--

"This room has long wanted a Cook."

"The Prince interceding lately for _Edward Coke_, his Majesty answered,

'He knew no such man.' When the Prince interceded by the name of Mr. Coke,

his Majesty still answered, 'He knew none of that name neither; but he

knew there was one Captain Coke, the leader of the faction in

parliament.'"

In another letter, Coke appears with greater dignity. When Lord Arundel

was sent by the king to Coke, a prisoner in the Tower, to inform him that

his Majesty would allow him to consult with eight of the best learned in

the law to advise him for his cause, Coke thanked the king, but he knew

himself to be accounted to have as much skill in the law as any man in

England, and therefore needed no such help, nor feared to be judged by the

law. He knew his Majesty might easily find, in such a one as he, whereby

to take away his head; but for this he feared not what could be said.

"I have heard you affirm," said Lord Arundel, "that by law, he that should

go about to withdraw the subjects' hearts from their king was a traitor."

Sir Edward answered, "That he held him an arch-traitor."

James I. said of Coke, "That he had so many shifts that, throw him where

you would, he still fell upon his legs."

This affair ended with putting Sir Edward Coke on his knees before the

council-table, with an order to retire to a private life, to correct his

book of Reports, and occasionally to consult the king himself. This

part of Coke's history is fully opened in Mr. Alexander Chalmers's

"Biographical Dictionary."]

* * * * *

THE KING'S ELEVATED CONCEPTION OF THE KINGLY CHARACTER.

But what were the real thoughts and feelings of this presumed despot

concerning the duties of a sovereign? His Platonic conceptions inspired

the most exalted feelings; but his gentle nature never led to one act of

unfeeling despotism. His sceptre was wreathed with the roses of his fancy:

the iron of arbitrary power only struck into the heart in the succeeding

reign. James only menaced with an abstract notion; or, in anger, with his

own hand would tear out a protestation from the journals of the Commons:

and, when he considered a man as past forgiveness, he condemned him to a

slight imprisonment; or removed him to a distant employment; or, if an

author, like Coke and Cowell, sent him into retirement to correct his

works.

In a great court of judicature, when the interference of the royal

authority was ardently solicited, the magnanimous monarch replied:--

"Kings ruled by their laws, as God did by the laws of nature; and ought as

rarely to put in use their supreme authority as God does his power of

working miracles."

Notwithstanding his abstract principles, his knowledge and reflection

showed him that there is a crisis in monarchies and a period in empires;

and in discriminating between a king and a tyrant, he tells the prince--

"A tyranne's miserable and infamous life armeth in end his own subjects to

become his burreaux; and although this rebellion be ever unlawful on their

part, yet is the world so wearied of him, that his fall is little meaned

(minded) by the rest of his subjects, and smiled at by his neighbours."

And he desires that the prince, his son, should so perform his royal

duties, that, "In case ye fall in the highway, yet it should be with the

honourable report and just regret of all honest men." In the dedicatory

sonnet to Prince Henry of the "Basilicon Doron," in verses not without

elevation, James admonishes the prince to

Represse the proud, maintaining aye the right;

Walk always so, as ever in his sight,

Who guards the godly, plaguing the prophane.

The poems of James I. are the versifications of a man of learning and

meditation. Such an one could not fail of producing lines which reflect

the mind of their author. I find in a MS. these couplets, which condense

an impressive thought on a favourite subject:--

Crownes have their compasse, length of daies their date,

Triumphs their tombes, Felicitie her fate;

Of more than earth, can earth make none partaker;

But knowledge makes the king most like his Maker.[A]

[Footnote A: "Harl. MSS.," 6824.]

These are among the elevated conceptions the king had formed of the

character of a sovereign, and the feeling was ever present in his mind.

James has preserved an anecdote of Henry VIII., in commenting on it, which

serves our purpose:--

"It was strange," said James I., "to look into the life of Henry VIII.,

how like an epicure he lived! Henry once asked, whether he might be saved?

He was answered, 'That he had no cause to fear, having lived so mighty a

king.' 'But, oh!' said he, 'I have lived too like a king.' He should

rather have said, not like a king--for the office of a king is to do

justice and equity; but he only served his sensuality, like a beast."

Henry VII. was the favourite character of James I.; and it was to gratify

the king that Lord Bacon wrote the life of this wise and prudent monarch.

It is remarkable of James I., that he never mentioned the name of

Elizabeth without some expressive epithet of reverence; such as, "The late

queen of famous memory;" a circumstance not common among kings, who do not

like to remind the world of the reputation of a great predecessor. But it

suited the generous temper of that man to extol the greatness he admired,

whose philosophic toleration was often known to have pardoned the libel on

himself for the redeeming virtue of its epigram. In his forgiving temper,

James I. would call such effusions "the superfluities of idle brains."

* * * * *

"THE BOOK OF SPORTS."

But while the mild government of this monarch has been covered with the

political odium of arbitrary power, he has also incurred a religious one,

from his design of rendering the Sabbath a day for the poor alike of

devotion and enjoyment, hitherto practised in England, as it is still

throughout Europe. Plays were performed on Sundays at court, in

Elizabeth's reign; and yet "the Protestants of Elizabeth" was the

usual expressive phrase to mark those who did most honour to the reformed.

The king, returning from Scotland, found the people in Lancashire

discontented, from the unusual deprivation of their popular recreations on

Sundays and holidays, after the church service. "With our own ears we

heard the general complaint of our people." The Catholic priests were

busily insinuating among the lower orders that the reformed religion was a

sullen deprivation of all mirth and social amusements, and thus "turning

the people's hearts." But while they were denied what the king terms

"lawful recreations,"[A] they had substituted more vicious ones: alehouses

were more frequented--drunkenness more general--tale-mongery and sedition,

the vices of sedentary idleness, prevailed--while a fanatical gloom was

spreading over the country.

[Footnote A: These are enumerated to consist of dancing, archery, leaping,

vaulting, May-games, Whitsun-ales, Morris-dances, and the setting up of

May-poles, and other manly sports.]

The king, whose gaiety of temper instantly sympathised with the multitude,

and perhaps alarmed at this new shape which puritanism was assuming,

published what is called "The Book of Sports," and which soon obtained the

contemptuous term of "The Dancing Book."

On this subject our recent principles have governed our decisions:

with our habits formed, and our notions finally adjusted, this singular

state-paper has been reprobated by piety; whose zeal, however, is not

sufficiently historical. It was one of the state maxims of this

philosophic monarch, in his advice to his son,

"To allure the common people to a common amitie among themselves; and that

certain daies in the yeere should be appointed for delighting the people

with public spectacles of all honest games and exercise of arms; making

playes and lawful games in Maie, and good cheare at Christmas; as also for

convening of neighbours, for entertaining friendship and heartliness, by

honest feasting and merriness; so that the sabbothes be kept holie, and no

unlawful pastime be used. This form of contenting the people's minds hath

been used in all well-governed republics."

James, therefore, was shocked at the sudden melancholy among the people.

In Europe, even among the reformed themselves, the Sabbath, after

church-service, was a festival-day; and the wise monarch, could discover

no reason why, in his kingdom, it should prove a day of penance and

self-denial: but when once this unlucky "Book of Sports" was thrown among

the nation, they discovered, to their own astonishment, that everything

concerning the nature of the Sabbath was uncertain.

* * * * *

THE SABBATARIAN CONTROVERSY.

And, because they knew nothing, they wrote much. The controversy was

carried to an extremity in the succeeding reign. The proper hour of the

Sabbath was not agreed on: Was it to commence on the Saturday-eve? Others

thought that time, having a circular motion, the point we begin at was not

important, provided the due portion be completed. Another declared, in his

"Sunday no Sabbath," that it was merely an ecclesiastical day which may be

changed at pleasure; as they were about doing it, in the Church of Geneva,

to Thursday,--probably from their antipathy to the Catholic Sunday, as the

early Christians had anciently changed it from the Jewish Saturday. This

had taken place, had the Thursday voters not formed the minority. Another

asserted, that Sunday was a working day, and that Saturday was the

perpetual Sabbath.[A] Some deemed the very name of Sunday profaned the

Christian mouth, as allusive to the Saxon idolatry of that day being

dedicated to the Sun; and hence they sanctified it with the "Lord's-day."

Others were strenuous advocates for closely copying the austerity of the

Jewish Sabbath, in all the rigour of the Levitical law; forbidding meat to

be dressed, houses swept, fires kindled, &c.,--the day of rest was to be a

day of mortification. But this spread an alarm, that "the old rotten

ceremonial law of the Jews, which had been buried in the grave of Jesus,"

was about to be revived. And so prone is man to the reaction of opinion,

that, from observing the Sabbath with a Judaic austerity, some were for

rejecting "Lord's-days" altogether; asserting, they needed not any;

because, in their elevated holiness, all days to them were Lord's-days.[B]

A popular preacher at the Temple, who was disposed to keep alive a

cheerful spirit among the people, yet desirous that the sacred day should

not pass like any other, moderated between the parties. He declared it was

to be observed with strictness only by "persons of quality."[C]

[Footnote A: Collier's "Ecclesiastical History," vol. ii. p. 758.]

[Footnote B: Fuller's "Church History," book xi. p. 149. One of the most

curious books of this class is Heylin's "History of the Sabbath," a work

abounding with uncommon researches; it was written in favour of Charles's

declaration for reviving lawful sports on Sundays. Warton, in the _first_

edition of Milton's "Juvenile Poems," observed in a note on the lady's

speech, in Comus, verse 177, that "it is owing to the Puritans ever since

Cromwell's time that _Sunday_ has been made in England a day of gravity

and severity: and many a staunch observer of the rites of the Church of

England little suspects that he is conforming to the _Calvinism_ of an

_English Sunday_." It is probable this gave unjust offence to grave heads

unfurnished with their own national history, for in the _second edition_

Warton cancelled the note. Truth is thus violated. The Puritans, disgusted

with the levities and excesses of the age of James and Charles, as is

usual on these points, vehemently threw themselves into an opposite

direction; but they perhaps advanced too far in converting the Sabbath-day

into a sullen and gloomy reserve of pharisaical austerity. Adam Smith, and

Paley, in his "Moral and Political Philosophy," vol. ii. p. 73, have taken

more enlightened views on this subject.]

[Footnote C: "Let servants," he says, "whose hands are ever working,

whilst their eyes are waking; let such who all the foregoing week had

their cheeks moistened with sweat, and their hands hardened with labour,

let such have some recreations on the Lord's-day indulged to them; whilst

_persons of quality_, who may be said to keep Sabbath all the week long--I

mean, who rest from hard labour--are concerned in conscience to observe

the Lord's-day with the greater abstinence from recreations."]

One of the chief causes of the civil war is traced to the revival of

this "Book of Sports." Thus it happened that from the circumstance of our

good-tempered monarch discovering the populace in Lancashire discontented,

being debarred from their rustic sports--and, exhorting them, out of his

_bonhomie_ and "fatherly love, which he owed to them all" (as he said), to

recover their cheerful habits--he was innocently involving the country in

divinity, and in civil war. James I. would have started with horror at the

"Book of Sports," could he have presciently contemplated the archbishop,

and the sovereign who persisted to revive it, dragged to the block. What

invisible threads suspend together the most remote events!

The parliament's armies usually chose Sundays for their battles, that the

profanation of the day might be expiated by a field-sacrifice, and that

the Sabbath-breakers should receive a signal punishment. The opinions of

the nature of the Sabbath were, even in the succeeding reign, so opposite

and novel, that plays were performed before Charles on Sundays. James I.,

who knew nothing of such opinions, has been unjustly aspersed by those who

live in more settled times, when such matters have been more wisely

established than ever they were discussed.[A]

[Footnote A: It is remarkable of James I. that he never pressed for the

performance of any of his proclamations; and his facile disposition made

him more tolerant than appears in our history. At this very time, the

conduct of a lord mayor of London has been preserved by Wilson, as a proof

of the city magistrate's piety, and, it may be added, of his wisdom. It is

here adduced as an evidence of the king's usual conduct:--

The king's carriages, removing to Theobalds on the Sabbath, occasioned a

great clatter and noise in the time of divine service. The lord-mayor

commanded them to be stopped, and the officers of the carriages, returning

to the king, made violent complaints. The king, in a rage, swore he

thought there had been no more kings in England than himself; and sent a

warrant to the lord-mayor to let them pass, which he obeyed, observing--

"While it was in my power, I did my duty; but that being taken away by a

higher power, it is my duty to obey." The good sense of the lord-mayor so

highly gratified James, that the king complimented him, and thanked him

for it. Of such gentleness was the arbitrary power of James composed!]

* * * * *

MOTIVES OF THE KING'S AVERSION TO WAR.

The king's aversion to war has been attributed to his pusillanimity--as if

personal was the same thing as political courage, and as if a king placed

himself in a field of battle by a proclamation for war. The idle tale that

James trembled at the mere view of a naked sword, which is produced as an

instance of the effects of sympathy over the infant in the womb from his

mother's terror at the assassination of Rizzio, is probably not true, yet

it serves the purpose of inconsiderate writers to indicate his excessive

pusillanimity; but there is another idle tale of an opposite nature which

is certainly true:--In passing from Berwick into his new kingdom, the

king, with his own hand, "shot out of a cannon so fayre and with so great

judgment" as convinced the cannoniers of the king's skill "in great

artillery," as Stowe records. It is probable, after all, that James I.

was not deficient in personal courage, although this is not of consequence

in his literary and political character. Several instances are recorded

of his intrepidity. But the absurd charge of his pusillanimity and

his pedantry has been carried so far, as to suppose that it affected

his character as a sovereign. The warm and hasty Burnet says at once of

James I.:--"He was despised by all abroad as a pedant without true

judgment, courage, or steadiness." This "pedant," however, had "the true

judgment and steadiness" to obtain his favourite purpose, which was the

preservation of a continued peace. If James I. was sometimes despised by

foreign powers, it was because an insular king, who will not consume the

blood and treasure of his people (and James had neither to spare), may be

little regarded on the Continent; the Machiavels of foreign cabinets will

look with contempt on the domestic blessings a British sovereign would

scatter among his subjects; his presence with the foreigners is only felt

in his armies; and they seek to allure him to fight their battles, and to

involve him in their interests.

James looked with a cold eye on the military adventurer: he said, "No man

gains by war but he that hath not wherewith to live in peace." But there

was also a secret motive, which made the king a lover of peace, and which

he once thus confidentially opened:--

"A king of England had no reason but to seek always to decline a war; for

though the sword was indeed in his hand, the purse was in the people's.

One could not go without the other. Suppose a supply were levied to begin

the fray, what certainty could he have that he should not want sufficient

to make an honourable end? If he called for subsidies, and did not obtain,

he must retreat ingloriously. He must beg an alms, with such conditions as

would break the heart of majesty, through capitulations that _some members

would make, who desire to improve the reputation of their wisdom, by

retrenching the dignity of the crown in popular declamations_, and thus he

must buy the soldier's pay, or fear the danger of a mutiny."[A]

[Footnote A: Hacket's "Life of Lord-Keeper Williams," p. 80. The whole is

distinguished by italics, as the king's own words.]

* * * * *

JAMES ACKNOWLEDGES HIS DEPENDENCE ON THE COMMONS. THEIR CONDUCT.

Thus James I., perpetually accused of exercising arbitrary power,

confesses a humiliating dependence on the Commons; and, on the whole, at a

time when prerogative and privilege were alike indefinite and obscure, the

king received from them hard and rigorous usage. A king of peace claimed

the indulgence, if not the gratitude, of the people; and the sovereign who

was zealous to correct the abuses of his government, was not distinguished

by the Commons from him who insolently would perpetuate them.

When the Commons were not in good humour with Elizabeth, or James, they

contrived three methods of inactivity, running the time to waste--_nihil

agendo_, or _aliud agendo_, or _malè agendo_; doing nothing, doing

something else, or doing evilly.[A] In one of these irksome moments,

waiting for subsidies, Elizabeth anxiously inquired of the Speaker, "What

had passed in the Lower House?" He replied, "If it please your Majesty--

seven weeks." On one of those occasions, when the queen broke into a

passion when they urged her to a settlement of the succession, one

of the deputies of the Commons informed her Majesty, that "the Commons

would never _speak_ about a subsidy, or any other matter whatever; and

that hitherto nothing but the most trivial discussions had passed in

parliament: which was, therefore, a great assembly rendered entirely

useless,--and all were desirous of returning home."[B]

[Footnote A: I find this description in a MS. letter of the times.]

[Footnote B: From a MS. letter of the French ambassador, La Mothe Fenelon,

to Charles IX., then at the court of London, in my possession.]