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 30,000l.; 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 tribuni 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 feides (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 male 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.]

But the more easy and open nature of James I. endured greater hardships: with the habit of studious men, the king had an utter carelessness of money and a generosity of temper, which Hacket, in his Life of the Lord-Keeper Williams, has described. "The king was wont to give like a king, and for the most part to keep one act of liberality warm with the covering of another." He seemed to have had no distinct notions of total amounts; he was once so shocked at the sight of the money he had granted away, lying in heaps on a table, that he instantly reduced it to half the sum. It appears that Parliament never granted even the ordinary supplies they had given to his predecessors; his chief revenue was drawn from the customs; yet his debts, of which I find an account in the Parliamentary History, after a reign of twenty-one years, did not amount to 200,000l.[A] This monarch could not have been so wasteful of his revenues as it is presumed. James I. was always generous, and left scarcely any debts. He must have lived amidst many self-deprivations; nor was this difficult to practise for this king, for he was a philosopher, indifferent to the common and imaginary wants of the vulgar of royalty. Whenever he threw himself into the arms of his Parliament, they left him without a feeling of his distress. In one of his speeches he says—

"In the last Parliament I laid open the true thoughts of my heart; but I may say, with our Saviour, 'I have piped to you, and you have not danced; I have mourned, and you have not lamented.' I have reigned eighteen years, in which time you have had peace, and I have received far less supply than hath been given to any king since the Conquest."

[Footnote A: "Parliamentary History," vol. v. p. 147.]

Thus James, denied the relief he claimed, was forced on wretched expedients, selling patents for monopolies, craving benevolences, or free gifts, and such expedients; the monopolies had been usual in Elizabeth's reign; yet all our historians agree, that his subjects were never grievously oppressed by such occasional levies; this was even the confession of the contemporaries of this monarch. They were every day becoming wealthier by those acts of peace they despised the monarch for maintaining. "The kingdom, since his reign began, was luxuriant in gold and silver, far above the scant of our fathers who lived before us," are the words of a contemporary.[A] All flourished about the king, except the king himself. James I. discovered how light and hollow was his boasted "prerogative-royal," which, by its power of dissolving the Parliament, could only keep silent those who had already refused their aid.

[Footnote A: Hacket's "Life of Lord-Keeper Williams."]

A wit of the day described the Parliaments of James by this ludicrous distich:

Many faults complained of, few things amended, A subsidy granted, the Parliament ended.

But this was rarely the fact. Sometimes they addressed James I. by what the king called a "stinging petition;" or, when the minister, passing over in silence the motion of the Commons, pressed for supplies, the heads of a party replied, that to grant them were to put an end to Parliament. But they practised expedients and contrivances, which comported as little with the dignity of an English senate, as with the majesty of the sovereign.

At a late hour, when not a third part of the house remained, and those who required a fuller house, amid darkness and confusion, were neither seen nor heard, they made a protest,—of which the king approved as little of the ambiguous matter, as the surreptitious means; and it was then, that, with his own hand, he tore the leaf out of the journal.[A] In the sessions of 1614 the king was still more indignant at their proceedings. He and the Scotch had been vilified by their invectives; and they were menaced by two lawyers, with a "Sicilian vespers, or a Parisian matins." They aimed to reduce the king to beggary, by calling in question a third part of his revenue, contesting his prerogative in levying his customs. On this occasion I find that, publicly in the Banqueting-house at Whitehall, the king tore all their bills before their faces; and, as not a single act was passed, in the phrase of the day this was called an addle Parliament.[B] Such unhappy proceedings indicated the fatal divisions of the succeeding reign. A meeting of a different complexion, once occurred in 1621, late in James's reign. The monopolies were then abolished. The king and the prince shed reciprocal tears in the house; and the prince wept when he brought an affectionate message of thanks from the Commons. The letter-writer says, "It is a day worthy to be kept holiday; some say it shall, but I believe them not." It never was; for even this parliament broke up with the cries of "some tribunitial orators," as James designated the pure and the impure democratic spirits. Smollett remarks in his margin, that the king endeavoured to cajole the Commons. Had he known of the royal tears, he had still heightened the phrase. Hard fate of kings! Should ever their tears attest the warmth of honest feelings, they must be thrown out of the pale of humanity: for Francis Osborne, that cynical republican, declares, that "there are as few abominable princes as tolerable kings; because princes must court the public favour before they attain supreme power, and then change their nature!" Such is the egotism of republicanism!

[Footnote A: "Rushworth," vol. i. p. 54.]

[Footnote B: From a MS. of the times.]

* * * * *

SCANDALOUS CHRONICLES.

The character of James I. has always been taken from certain scandalous chronicles, whose origin requires detection. It is this mud which has darkened and disturbed the clear stream of history. The reigns of Elizabeth and James teemed with libels in church and state from opposite parties: the idleness of the pacific court of James I. hatched a viperous brood of a less hardy, but perhaps of a more malignant nature, than the Martin Mar-prelates of the preceding reign. Those boldly at once wrote treason, and, in some respects, honestly dared the rope which could only silence Penry and his party; but these only reached to scandalum magnatum, and the puny wretches could only have crept into a pillory. In the times of the Commonwealth, when all things were agreeable which vilified our kings, these secret histories were dragged from their lurking holes. The writers are meagre Suetoniuses and Procopiuses; a set of self-elected spies in the court; gossipers, lounging in the same circle; eaves-droppers; pryers into corners; buzzers of reports; and punctual scribes of what the French (so skilful in the profession) technically term les on dit; that is, things that might never have happened, although they are recorded: registered for posterity in many a scandalous chronicle, they have been mistaken for histories; and include so many truths and falsehoods, that it becomes unsafe for the historian either to credit or to disbelieve them.[A]

[Footnote A: Most of these works were meanly printed, and were usually found in a state of filth and rags, and would have perished in their own merited neglect, had they not been recently splendidly reprinted by Sir Walter Scott. Thus the garbage has been cleanly laid on a fashionable epergne, and found quite to the taste of certain lovers of authentic history! Sir Anthony Weldon, clerk of the king's kitchen, in his "Court of King James" has been reproached for gaining much of his scandalous chronicle from the purlieus of the court. For this work and some similar ones, especially "The None-Such Charles," in which it would appear that he had procured materials from the State Paper Office, and for other zealous services to the Parliament, they voted him a grant of 500l. "The Five Years of King James," which passes under the name of Sir Fulk Greville, the dignified friend of the romantic Sir Philip Sidney, and is frequently referred to by grave writers, is certainly a Presbyterian's third day's hash—for there are parts copied from Arthur Wilson's "History of James I.," who was himself the pensioner of a disappointed courtier; yet this writer never attacks the personal character of the king, though charged with having scraped up many tales maliciously false. Osborne is a misanthropical politician, who cuts with the most corroding pen that ever rottened a man's name. James was very negligent in dress; graceful appearances did not come into his studies. Weldon tells us how the king was trussed on horseback, and fixed there like a pedlar's pack or a lump of inanimate matter; the truth is, the king had always an infirmity in his legs. Further, we are told that this ridiculous monarch allowed his hat to remain just as it chanced to be placed on his head. Osborne once saw this unlucky king "in a green hunting-dress, with a feather in his cap, and a horn, instead of a sword, by his side; how suitable to his age, calling, or person, I leave others to judge from his pictures:" and this he bitterly calls "leaving him dressed for posterity!" This is the style which passes for history with some readers. Hume observes that "hunting," which was James's sole recreation, necessary for his health, as a sedentary scholar, "is the cheapest a king can indulge;" and, indeed, the empty coffers of this monarch afforded no other.

These pseudo-histories are alluded to by Arthur Wilson as "monstrous satires against the king's own person, that haunted both court and country," when, in the wantonness of the times, "every little miscarriage, exuberantly branched, so that evil report did often perch on them." Fuller has designated these suspicious scribes as "a generation of the people who, like moths, have lurked under the carpets of the council-table, and even like fleas, have leaped into pillows of the prince's bed-chamber; and, to enhance the reputation of their knowledge, thence derived that of all things which were, or were not, ever done or thought of."—Church History, book x. p. 87.]

Such was the race generated in this court of peace and indolence! And Hacket, in his "Life of the Lord-Keeper Williams," without disguising the fact, tells us that the Lord-Keeper "spared not for cost to purchase the most certain intelligence, by his fee'd pensioners, of every hour's occurrences at court; and was wont to say that no man could be a statesman without a great deal of money."

We catch many glimpses of these times in another branch of the same family. When news-books, as the first newspapers were called, did not yet exist to appease the hungering curiosity of the country, a voluminous correspondence was carried on between residents in the metropolis and their country friends: these letters chiefly remain in their MS. state.[A] Great men then employed a scribe who had a talent this way, and sometimes a confidential friend, to convey to them the secret history of the times; and, on the whole, they are composed by a better sort of writers; for, as they had no other design than to inform their friends of the true state of passing events, they were eager to correct, by subsequent accounts the lies of the day they sometimes sent down. They have preserved some fugitive events useful in historical researches, but their pens are garrulous; and it requires some experience to discover the character of the writers, to be enabled to adopt their opinions and their statements. Little things were, however, great matters to these diurnalists; much time was spent in learning of those at court, who had quarrelled, or were on the point; who were seen to have bit their lips, and looked downcast; who was budding, and whose full-blown flower was drooping: then we have the sudden reconcilement and the anticipated fallings out, with a deal of the pourquoi of the pourquoi.[B]

[Footnote A: Mr. Lodge's "Illustrations of British History" is an eminent and elegant work of the minutiae historicae; as are the more recent volumes of Sir Henry Ellis's valuable collections.]

[Footnote B: Some specimens of this sort of correspondence of the idleness of the times may amuse. The learned Mede, to his friend Sir Martin Stuteville, chronicles a fracas:—"I am told of a great falling out between my Lord Treasurer and my Lord Digby, insomuch that they came to pedlar's blood, and traitor's blood. It was about some money which my Lord Digby should have had, which my Lord Treasurer thought too much for the charge of his employment, and said himself could go in as good a fashion for half the sum. But my Lord Digby replies that he could not peddle so well as his lordship."

A lively genius sports with a fanciful pen in conveying the same kind of intelligence, and so nice in the shades of curiosity, that he can describe a quarrel before it takes place.

"You know the primum mobile of our court (Buckingham), by whose motion all the other spheres must move, or else stand still: the bright sun of our firmament, at whose splendour or glooming all our marygolds of the court open or shut. There are in higher spheres as great as he, but none so glorious. But the king is in progress, and we are far from court. Now to hear certainties. It is told me that my Lord of Pembroke and my Lord of Rochester are so far out, as it is almost come to a quarrel; I know not how true this is, but Sir Thomas Overbury and my Lord of Pembroke have been long jarring, and therefore the other is likely."

Among the numerous MS. letters of this kind, I have often observed the writer uneasy at the scandal he has seasoned his letter with, and concluding earnestly that his letter, after perusal, should be thrown to the flames. A wish which appears to have been rarely complied with; and this may serve as a hint to some to restrain their tattling pens, if they regard their own peace; for, on most occasions of this nature, the letters are rather preserved with peculiar care.]

Such was this race of gossipers in the environs of a court, where, steeped in a supine lethargy of peace, corrupting or corrupted, every man stood for himself through a reckless scene of expedients and of compromises.

* * * * *

A PICTURE OF THE AGE FROM A MS. OF THE TIME.

A long reign of peace, which had produced wealth in that age, engendered the extremes of luxury and want. Money traders practised the art of decoying the gallant youths of the day into their nets, and transforming, in a certain time, the estates of the country gentlemen into skins of parchment,

The wax continuing hard, the acres melting.

MASSINGER.

Projectors and monopolists who had obtained patents for licensing all the inns and alehouses—for being the sole vendors of manufactured articles, such as gold lace, tobacco-pipes, starch, soap, &c., were grinding and cheating the people to an extent which was not at first understood, although the practice had existed in the former reign. The gentry, whose family pride would vie with these nouveaux riches, exhausted themselves in rival profusion; all crowded to "upstart London," deserting their country mansions, which were now left to the care of "a poor alms-woman, or a bed-rid beadsman."

In that day, this abandonment of the ancient country hospitality for the metropolis, and this breaking-up of old family establishments, crowded London with new and distinct races of idlers, or, as they would now be called, unproductive members of society. From a contemporary manuscript, one of those spirited remonstrances addressed to the king, which it was probably thought not prudent to publish, I shall draw some extracts, as a forcible picture of the manners of the age.[A] Masters of ancient families, to maintain a mere exterior of magnificence in dress and equipage in the metropolis, were really at the same time hiding themselves in penury: they thrust themselves into lodgings, and "five or six knights, or justices of peace," with all their retinue, became the inmates of a shopkeeper; yet these gentlemen had once "kept the rusty chimneys of two or three houses smoking, and had been the feeders of twenty or forty serving-men: a single page, with a guarded coat, served their turn now."

[Footnote A: The MS. is entitled "Balaam's Ass, or a True Discoverie touching the Murmurs and Feared Discontents of the Times, directed to King James."—Lansdowne Collection, 209. The writer, throughout, speaks of the king with the highest respect.]

"Every one strives to be a Diogenes in his house and an emperor in the streets; not caring if they sleep in a tub, so they may be hurried in a coach; giving that allowance to horses and mares that formerly maintained houses full of men; pinching many a belly to paint a few backs, and burying all the treasures of the kingdom into a few citizens' coffers.

"There are now," the writer adds, "twenty thousand masterless men turned off, who know not this night where to lodge, where to eat to-morrow, and ready to undertake any desperate course."

Yet there was still a more turbulent and dangerous race of idlers, in

"A number of younger brothers, of ancient houses, who, nursed up in fulness, pampered in their minority, and left in charge to their elder brothers, who were to be fathers to them, followed them in despair to London, where these untimely-born youths are left so bare, that their whole life's allowance was consumed in one year."

The same manuscript exhibits a full and spirited picture of manners in this long period of peace.

"The gentry are like owls, all feathers and no flesh; all show, and no substance; all fashion, and no feeding; and fit for no service but masks and May-games. The citizens have dealt with them as it is said the Indians are dealt with; they have given them counterfeit brooches and bugle-bracelets for gold and silver;[A] pins and peacock feathers for lands and tenements; gilded coaches and outlandish hobby-horses for goodly castles and ancient mansions; their woods are turned into wardrobes, their leases into laces; and their goods and chattels into guarded coats and gaudy toys. Should your Majesty fly to them for relief, you would fare like those birds that peek at painted fruits; all outside." The writer then describes the affected penurious habits of the grave citizens, who were then preying on the country gentlemen:—"When those big swoln leeches, that have thus sucked them, wear rags, eat roots, speak like jugglers that have reeds in their mouths; look like spittle-men, especially when your Majesty hath occasion to use them; their fat lies in their hearts, their substance is buried in their bowels, and he that will have it must first take their lives. Their study is to get, and their chiefest care to conceal; and most from yourself, gracious sir; not a commodity comes from their hand, but you pay a noble in the pound for booking, which they call forbearing[B] They think it lost time if they double not their principal in two years. They have attractive powders to draw these flies into their claws; they will entice men with honey into their hives, and with wax entangle them;[C] they pack the cards, and their confederates, the lords, deal, by which means no other men have ever good game. They have in a few years laid up riches for many, and yet can never be content to say—Soul, take thy rest, or hand receive no more; do no more wrong: but still they labour to join house to house, and land to land. What want they of being kings, but the name? Look into the shires and counties, where, with their purchased lordships and manors, one of their private letters has equal power with your Majesty's privy seal.[D] It is better to be one of their hinds, than your Majesty's gentleman usher; one of their grooms, than your guards. What care they, if it be called tribute or no, so long as it comes in termly: or whether their chamber be called Exchequer, or the dens of cheaters, so that the money be left there."

[Footnote A: Sir Giles Mompesson and Sir James Mitchell had the monopolies of gold lace, which they sold in a counterfeit state; and not only cheated the people, but, by a mixture of copper, the ornaments made of it are said to have rotted the flesh. As soon as the grievance was shown to James, he expressed his abhorrence of the practice, and even declared that no person connected with the villanous fraud should escape punishment. The brother of his favourite, Buckingham, was known to be one, and with Sir Giles Overreach (as Massinger conceals the name of Mompesson), was compelled to fly the country. The style of James, in his speech, is indeed different from kings' speeches in parliament: he speaks as indignantly as any individual who was personally aggrieved: "Three patents at this time have been complained of, and thought great grievances; my purpose is to strike them all dead, and, that time may not be lost, I will have it done presently. Had these things been complained of to me, before the parliament, I could have done the office of a just king, and have punished them; peradventure more than now ye intend to do. No private person whatsoever, were he ever so dear unto me, shall be respected by me by many degrees as the public good; and I hope, my lords, that ye will do me that right to publish to my people this my heart purposes. Proceed judicially; spare none, where ye find just cause to punish: but remember that laws have not their eyes in their necks, but in their foreheads."—Rushworth, vol. i. p. 26.]

[Footnote B: The credit which these knavish traders gave their customers, who could not conveniently pay their money down, was carried to an exorbitant charge; since, even in Elizabeth's reign, it was one of the popular grievances brought into Parliament—it is there called, "A bill against Double Payments of Book Debts." One of the country members, who made a speech consisting entirely of proverbs, said, "Pay the reckoning overnight, and you shall not be troubled in the morning."]

[Footnote C: In the life of a famous usurer of that day, who died worth 400,000l., an amazing sum at that period, we find numberless expedients and contrivances of the money trader, practised on improvident landholders and careless heirs, to entangle them in his nets. He generally contrived to make the wood pay for the land, which he called "making the feathers pay for the goose." He never pressed hard for his loans, but fondly compared his bonds "to infants, which battle best by sleeping;" to battle, is to be nourished—a term still retained in the battle-book of the university. I have elsewhere preserved the character and habits of the money-dealer in the age of James I.—See "Curiosities of Literature," 11th Edit. p. 228.]

[Footnote D: It is observed, in the same life, that his mortgages, and statutes, and his judgments were so numerous, that his papers would have made a good map of England. A view of the chamber of this usurer is preserved by Massinger, who can only be understood by the modern reader in Mr. Gifford's edition:—

Here lay A manor, bound fast in a skin of parchment; Here a sure deed of gift for a market-town, If not redeem'd this day, which is not in The unthrift's purse; there being scarce one shire In Wales or England, where my monies are not Lent out at usury, the certain hook To draw in more.

MASSINGER'S City Madam.]

This crushing usury seemed to them a real calamity; for although in the present extraordinary age of calculations and artificial wealth, we can suffer "a dunghill-breed of men," like Mompesson and his contemptible partner of this reign, to accumulate in a rapid period more than a ducal fortune, without any apparent injury to the public welfare, the result was different then; the legitimate and enlarged principles of commerce were not practised by our citizens in the first era of their prosperity; their absorbing avarice rapidly took in all the exhausting prodigality of the gentry, who were pushed back on the people to prey in their turn on them; those who found their own acres disappearing, became enclosers of commons; this is one of the grievances which Massinger notices, while the writer of the "Five Years of King James" tells us that these discontents between the gentry and the commonalty grew out into a petty rebellion; and it appears by Peyton that "divers of the people were hanged up."

* * * * *

ANECDOTES OF THE MANNERS OF THE AGE.

The minute picture of the domestic manners of this age exhibits the results of those extremes of prodigality and avarice which struck observers in that contracted circle which then constituted society. The king's prodigal dispensations of honours and titles seem at first to have been political; for James was a foreigner, and designed to create a nobility, as likewise an inferior order, who might feel a personal attachment for the new monarch; but the facility by which titles were acquired, was one cause which occasioned so many to crowd to the metropolis to enjoy their airy honour by a substantial ruin; knighthood had become so common, that some of the most infamous and criminal characters of this age we find in that rank.[A] The young females, driven to necessity by the fashionable ostentation of their parents, were brought to the metropolis as to a market; "where," says a contemporary, "they obtained pensions, or sometimes marriages, by their beauty." When Gondomar, the Spanish ambassador, passed to his house, the ladies were at their balconies on the watch, to make themselves known to him; and it appears that every one of those ladies had sold their favours at a dear rate. Among these are some, "who pretending to be wits, as they called them," says Arthur Wilson,[B] "or had handsome nieces or daughters, drew a great resort to their houses." And it appears that Gondomar, to prevent these conversaziones from too freely touching on Spanish politics, sweetened their silence by his presents.[C] The same grossness of manners was among the higher females of the age; when we see that grave statesman, Sir Dudley Carleton, narrating the adventures of a bridal night, and all "the petty sorceries," the romping of the "great ladies, who were made shorter by the skirts," we discover their coarse tastes; but when we find the king going to the bed of the bride in his nightgown, to give a reveille-matin, and remaining a good time in or upon the bed, "Choose which you will believe;" this bride was not more decent than the ladies who publicly, on their balconies, were soliciting the personal notice of Gondomar.

[Footnote A: A statesman may read with advantage Sir Edward Walker on "The inconveniences that have attended the frequent promotions to Titles, since King James came to the crown." Sir Edward appears not to disapprove of these promotions during the first ten years of his reign, but "when alliance to a favourite, riches though gotten in a shop, persons of private estates, and of families whose fathers would have thought themselves highly honoured to have been but knights in Queen Elizabeth's time, were advanced, then the fruits began to appear. The greater nobility were undervalued; the ancient baronage saw inferior families take precedency over them; nobility lost its respect, and a parity in conversation was introduced which in English dispositions begot contempt; the king could not employ them all; some grew envious, some factious, some ingrateful, however obliged, by being once denied."—P. 302.]

[Footnote B: One may conjecture, by this expression, that the term of "wits" was then introduced, in the sense we now use it.]

[Footnote C: Wilson has preserved a characteristic trait of one of the lady wits. When Gondomar one day, in Drury-lane, was passing Lady Jacob's house, she, exposing herself for a salutation from him, he bowed, but in return she only opened her mouth, gaping on him. This was again repeated the following day, when he sent a gentleman to complain of her incivility. She replied, that he had purchased some favours of the ladies at a dear rate, and she had a mouth to be stopped as well as others.]

This coarseness of manners, which still prevailed in the nation, as it had in the court of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth, could not but influence the familiar style of their humour and conversation. James I., in the Edict on Duels, employs the expression of our dearest bedfellow to designate the queen; and there was no indelicacy attached to this singular expression. Much of that silly and obscene correspondence of James with Buckingham, while it adds one more mortifying instance of "the follies of the wise," must be attributed to this cause.[A] Are not most of the dramatic works of that day frequently unreadable from this circumstance? As an historian, it would be my duty to show how incredibly gross were the domestic language and the domestic familiarities of kings, queens, lords, and ladies, which were much like the lowest of our populace. We may felicitate ourselves on having escaped the grossness, without, however, extending too far these self-congratulations.

[Footnote A: Our wonder and surmises have been often raised at the strange subscriptions of Buckingham to the king,—"Your dog," and James as ingenuously calling him "dog Steenie." But this was not peculiar to Buckingham; James also called the grave Cecil his "little beagle." The Earl of Worcester, writing to Cecil, who had succeeded in his search after one Bywater, the earl says, "If the king's beagle can hunt by land as well as he hath done by water, we will leave capping of Jowler, and cap the beagle." The queen, writing to Buckingham to intercede with the king for Rawleigh's life, addresses Buckingham by "My kind Dog." James appears to have been always playing on some whimsical appellative by which he characterised his ministers and favourites, analogous to the notions of a huntsman. Many of our writers, among them Sir Walter Scott, have strangely misconceived these playful appellatives, unconscious of the origin of this familiar humour. The age was used to the coarseness. We did not then excel all Europe, as Addison set the model, in the delicacy of humour; indeed, even so late as Congreve's time, they were discussing its essential distinction from wit.]

The men were dissolved in all the indolence of life and its wantonness; they prided themselves in traducing their own innocence rather than suffer a lady's name to pass unblemished.[B] The marriage-tie lost its sacredness amid these disorders of social life. The luxurious idlers of that day were polluted with infamous vices; and Drayton, in the "Moon-calf," has elaborately drawn full-length pictures of the lady and the gentleman of that day, which seem scarcely to have required the darkening tints of satire to be hideous—in one line the Muse describes "the most prodigious birth"—

He's too much woman and She's too much man.

[Footnote B. The expression of one of these gallants, as preserved by Wilson, cannot be decently given, but is more expressive, p. 147.]

The trades of foppery, in Spanish fashions, suddenly sprung up in this reign, and exhibited new names and new things. Now silk and gold-lace shops first adorned Cheapside, which the continuator of Stowe calls "the beauty of London;" the extraordinary rise in price of these fashionable articles forms a curious contrast with those of the preceding reign. Scarfs, in Elizabeth's time, of thirty shillings value, were now wrought up to as many pounds; and embroidered waistcoats, which in the queen's reign no workman knew how to make worth five pounds, were now so rich and curious as to be cheapened at forty. Stowe has recorded a revolution in shoe-buckles, portentously closing in shoe-roses, which were puffed knots of silk, or of precious embroidery, worn even by men of mean rank, at the cost of more than five pounds, who formerly had worn gilt copper shoe-buckles.

In the new and ruinous excess of the use of tobacco, many consumed three or four hundred pounds a year. James, who perceived the inconveniences of this sudden luxury in the nation, tried to discountenance it, although the purpose went to diminish his own scanty revenue. Nor was this attack on the abuse of tobacco peculiar to his majesty, although he has been so ridiculed for it; a contemporary publication has well described the mania and its consequences: "The smoak of fashion hath quite blown away the smoak of hospitalitie, and turned the chimneys of their forefathers into the noses of their children."[A] The king also reprobated the finical embarrassments of the new fashions, and seldom wore new clothes. When they brought him a Spanish hat, he flung it away with scorn, swearing he never loved them nor their fashions; and when they put roses on his shoes, he swore too, "that they should not make him a ruffe-footed dove; a yard of penny ribbon would serve that turn."

[Footnote A: The "Peace-Maker," 1618.]

The sudden wealth which seems to have rushed into the nation in this reign of peace, appeared in massy plate and jewels, and in "prodigal marriage-portions, which were grown in fashion among the nobility and gentry, as if the skies had rained plenty." Such are the words of Hacket, in his "Memorial of the Lord-Keeper Williams." Enormous wealth was often accumulated. An usurer died worth 400,000l.; Sir Thomas Compton, a citizen, left, it is said, 800,000l., and his heir was so overcome with this sudden irruption of wealth, that he lost his senses; and Cranfield, a citizen, became the Earl of Middlesex.

The continued peace, which produced this rage for dress, equipage, and magnificence, appeared in all forms of riot and excess; corruption bred corruption. The industry of the nation was not the commerce of the many, but the arts of money-traders, confined to the suckers of the state; and the unemployed and dissipated, who were every day increasing the population in the capital, were a daring petulant race, described by a contemporary as "persons of great expense, who, having run themselves into debt, were constrained to run into faction; and defend themselves from the danger of the law."[A] These appear to have enlisted under some show of privilege among the nobility; and the metropolis was often shaken by parties, calling themselves Roaring-boys, Bravadoes, Roysters, and Bonaventures.[B] Such were some of the turbulent children of peace, whose fiery spirits, could they have found their proper vent, had been soldiers of fortune, as they were younger brothers, distressed often by their own relatives; and wards ruined by their own guardians;[C] all these were clamorous for bold piracies on the Spaniards: a visionary island, and a secret mine, would often disturb the dreams of these unemployed youths, with whom it was no uncommon practice to take a purse on the road. Such felt that—

—in this plenty And fat of peace, our young men ne'er were train'd To martial discipline, and our ships unrigg'd Rot in the harbour.

MASSINGER.

[Footnote A: "Five Years of King James." Harl. Misc.]

[Footnote B: A. Wilson's "Hist. of James I." p. 28.]

[Footnote C: That ancient oppressive institution of the Court of Wards then existed; and Massinger, the great painter of our domestic manners in this reign, has made it the subject of one of his interesting dramas.]

The idleness which rusts quiet minds effervesces in fiery spirits pent up together; and the loiterers in the environs of a court, surfeiting with peace, were quick at quarrel. It is remarkable, that in the pacific reign of James I. never was so much blood shed in brawls, nor duels so tremendously barbarous. Hume observed this circumstance, and attributes it to "the turn that the romantic chivalry, for which the nation was formerly so renowned, had lately taken." An inference probably drawn from the extraordinary duel between Sir Edward Sackville, afterwards Lord Dorset, and the Lord Bruce.[A] These two gallant youths had lived as brothers, yet could resolve not to part without destroying each other; the narrative so wonderfully composed by Sackville, still makes us shudder at each blow received and given. Books were published to instruct them by a system of quarrelling, "to teach young gentlemen when they are beforehand and when behindhand;" thus they incensed and incited those youths of hope and promise, whom Lord Bacon, in his charge on duelling, calls, in the language of the poet, Aurorae filii, the sons of the morning,—who often were drowned in their own blood! But, on a nearer inspection, when we discover the personal malignity of these hasty quarrels, the coarseness of their manners, and the choice of weapons and places in their mode of butchering each other, we must confess that they rarely partake of the spirit of chivalry. One gentleman biting the ear of a Templar, or switching a poltroon lord; another sending a challenge to fight in a saw-pit; or to strip to their shirts, to mangle each other, were sanguinary duels, which could only have fermented in the disorders of the times, amid that wanton pampered indolence which made them so petulant and pugnacious. Against this evil his Majesty published a voluminous edict, which exhibits many proofs that it was the labour of his own hand, for the same dignity, the same eloquence, the same felicity of illustration, embellish the state-papers;[B] and to remedy it, James, who rarely consented to shed blood, condemned an irascible lord to suffer the ignominy of the gallows.

[Footnote A: It may be found in the popular pages of the "Guardian;" there first printed from a MS. in the library of the Harleys.]

[Footnote B: "A publication of his Majestie's edict and seuere censure against private combats and combatants, &c." 1613. It is a volume of about 150 pages. As a specimen of the royal style, I transcribe two passages:—

"The pride of humours, the libertie of times, the conniuencie of magistrates, together with a kind of prescription of impunity, hath bred ouer all this kingdome, not only an opinion among the weakest, but a constant beleefe among many that desire to be reputed among the wisest, of a certain freedome left to all men vpon earth by nature, as their birth-right to defend their reputations with their swords, and to take reuenge of any wrong either offered or apprehended, in that measure which their owne inward passion or affection doth suggest, without any further proofe; so as the challenge be sent in a civil manner, though without leave demanded of the sovereign," &c.

The king employs a bold and poetical metaphor to describe duelling—to turn this hawk into a singing-bird, clip its wings, and cage it. "By comparing forraine mischiefes with home-bred accidents, it will not be hard to judge into what region this bolde bird of audacious presumption, in dealing blowes so confidently, will mount, if it bee once let flie, from the breast wherein it lurkes. And therefore it behoveth justice both to keep her still in her own close cage, with care that she learn neuer any other dittie then Est bene; but withall, that for preuention of the worst that may fall out, wee clippe her wings, that they grow not too fast. For according to that of the proverb, It is labour lost to lay nets before the eyes of winged fowles," &c. p. 13.]

But, while extortion and monopoly prevailed among the monied men, and a hollow magnificence among the gentry, bribery had tainted even the lords. All were hurrying on in a stream of venality, dissipation, and want; and the nation, amid the prosperity of the kingdom in a long reign of peace, was nourishing in its breast the secret seeds of discontent and turbulence.

From the days of Elizabeth to those of the Charleses, Cabinet transmitted to Cabinet the caution to preserve the kingdom from the evils of an overgrown metropolis. A political hypochondriacism: they imagined the head was becoming too large for the body, drawing to itself all the moisture of life from the middle and the extremities. A statute against the erection of new buildings was passed by Elizabeth; and from James to his successors proclamations were continually issued to forbid any growth of the city. This singular prohibition may have originated in their dread of infection from the plague, but it certainly became the policy of a weak and timid government, who dreaded, in the enlargement of the metropolis, the consequent concourse of those they designated as "masterless men,"—sedition was as contagious as the plague among the many. But proclamations were not listened to nor read; houses were continually built, for they were in demand,—and the esquires, with their wives and daughters, hastened to gay or busy London, for a knighthood, a marriage, or a monopoly. The government at length were driven to the desperate "Order in Council" to pull down all new houses within ten miles of the metropolis—and further, to direct the Attorney-General to indict all those sojourners in town who had country houses, and mulct them in ruinous fines. The rural gentry were "to abide in their own counties, and by their housekeeping in those parts were to guide and relieve the meaner people according to the ancient usage of the English nation." The Attorney-General, like all great lawyers, looking through the spectacles of his books, was short-sighted to reach to the new causes and the new effects which were passing around. The wisest laws are but foolish when Time, though not the lawyers, has annulled them. The popular sympathy was, however, with the Attorney-General, for it was imagined that the country was utterly ruined and depopulated by the town.

And so in the view it appeared, and so all the satirists chorused! for in the country the ancient hospitality was not kept up; the crowd of retainers had vanished, the rusty chimneys of the mansion-house hardly smoked through a Christmas week, while in London all was exorbitantly prosperous; masses of treasure were melted down into every object of magnificence. "And is not this wealth drawn from our acres?" was the outcry of the rural censor. Yet it was clear that the country in no way was impoverished, for the land rose in price; and if manors sometimes changed their lords, they suffered no depreciation. A sudden wealth was diffused in the nation; the arts of commerce were first advancing; the first great ship launched for an Indian voyage, was then named the "Trade's Increase." The town, with its multiplied demands, opened a perpetual market for the country. The money-traders were breeding their hoards as the graziers their flocks; and while the goldsmiths' shops blazed in Cheap, the agriculturists beheld double harvests cover the soil. The innumerable books on agriculture published during these twenty years of peace is an evidence of the improvement of the country—sustained by the growing capitals of the men in trade. In this progress of domestic conveniency to metropolitan luxury, there was a transition of manners; new objects and new interests, and new modes of life, yet in their incipient state.

The evils of these luxuriant times were of quick growth; and, as fast as they sprung, the Father of his people encountered them by his proclamations, which, during long intervals of parliamentary recess, were to be enforced as laws: but they passed away as morning dreams over a happy, but a thoughtless and wanton people.