THE CHARACTER AND CONDUCT OF JAMES I. 127 



not, out of fear, to the Spanish ambassador, openly recommend the 

 support of the Palatine."* 



Thus did this most self-degraded of kings, in the highest and 

 deepest sense of the word, whilst he was in his own eyes next to 

 omnipotent — for he had the impious audacity, in one of his lectur- 

 ing harangues to the Commons, to call himself " a God on earth" — 

 not only bring upon his own person the ribald jest, the sneers, the 

 taunts, the sarcasms and pity of all Europe, but even subjected the 

 elector and electress to the same systematic and mortifying attacks, 

 by his cowardice, by his inveterate habits of wavering and infirmity 

 of purpose, by his low and tricky expedients — in a word, by his 

 total incapacity to preserve to the name and character of England 

 that high station which she had so lately held among the great na- 

 tions of Europe. " The Spaniards," says Coke, " in their comedies 

 in Flanders, imitated messengers bringing news in haste, that the 

 palatine was likely to have a numerous army on foot, for the King 

 of Denmark would shortly furnish him with 1,000 pickled herrings, 

 the Hollanders with 100,000 butter boxes, and England with 

 100,000 ambassadors. They pictured King James in one place 

 with a scabbard without a sword j in another, with a sword which 

 nobody could draw out, though divers persons stood pulling at it. 

 In Brussels, they painted him with his pockets hanging out, and 

 not a penny in them, and his purse turned upside down. In Ant- 

 werp, they pictured the Queen of Bohemia like a poor Irish mantler, 

 with her hair hanging about her ears, her child at her back, and the 

 king (James) carrying the cradle after her ; and every one of the 

 pictures had mottos expressing their malice."t 



We proceed now to the most reprehensible of Burnett's attacks 

 upon the memory of King James, in the estimate of Higgons ; and 

 certainly we are not in the least surprised that it should have called 

 forth the strongest indignation from the pen of this staunch advo- 

 cate of the Stuarts. At first sight, in the passage we are about to 

 quote, there is something so highly offensive and outrageously inde- 

 cent, as if the rancour of Burnett not only delighted to persecute 

 the king with instinctive eagerness and unrelenting hostility, but 

 was not tired of even treading upon his dust, that it is difficult to 

 prevent our reason from being overpowered by our passions and na- 

 tural impressions : — " Eight years before that time, King James, 

 on a secret jealousy of the Earl of Murray, then esteemed the hand- 



* II, si. qfthe XVI. and XVII. Cent., by Itaumer, vol. ii, p. 240, 241. 

 f Roger Coke's Detection, vol. i, p. 12G. 



