146 TWO CHAPTERS ILLUSTRATIVE OF 



bility at least of Sir Walter Scott's opinion, " that James's alarm 

 is to be attributed to a still more flagitious cause than being acces- 

 sary to the murder of Prince Henry."* And was there not much 

 in the life and conduct of James that deservedly subjected him to 

 the heavy suspicion of indulging in unnatural inclinations ? It is 

 related by Osborne, " that Somerset and Buckingham laboured to 

 resemble women in the effeminacy of their dress, and exceeded even 

 the worst in the grossness of their gestures." t 



Queen Anne herself, has also some contemptuous but very signi- 

 ficant insinuations against the dear ones,% while the revolting pic- 

 ture drawn by Sir Antony Weldon, and others,§ of James and his 

 dissolute and profligate courtiers, would incline us to believe, that 

 among them, every vice and crime were practised. 1T But the reply 

 here is, that Weldon was a satirist, and the statement of satirists 

 are to be received with considerable caution and distrust. Time, 

 however, which brings new things to light, has put to rest the ques- 

 tion concerning his credibility, since the printing in the Archseo- 

 loi(ia,\\ of Sir George More's letters to the Lieutenant of the Tower. 

 In one of these to which we have before referred, it must be ac- 

 knowledged, that we met an expression, which certainly does favour 

 the presumption, that James' inquietude of mind arose from the fear 

 of being publickly named by Somerset, as a partner of his guilt in 

 the murder of Overbury ; for to prove that this great criminal was 

 the author of it, we can have no clearer or more explicit testimony 

 than his own, in the letter in which he sues for mercy, or rather 



told verbatim in Wanstead Parke to two gentlemen, (of which the author 

 was one) who were both left by him to their owue freedome without engaging 

 them, even in those times of high distemperatures, unto a faithful secresie 

 in concealing it ; yet though he failed in his wisdome, they failed not in that 

 worth inherent in every noble spirit, never speaking of it till after the kinge's 

 death. See notes to Somers' State Tracts, p. 233, 252, 262, &c. 



* See Note in his Edition of Somers's Tracts, vol. ii, p. 488. 



•f- Secret History of the Court of King James, p. 14. 



X The name of James and woman-hater was considered by many of his 

 courtiers as synonimous. Carte and Birch state on the authority of the 

 French Ambassador's dispatches, that he suffered the women to be presented 

 to him on their knees ; while he spoke of them and even of his queen as if 

 thev were objects of mingled contempt and disgust. 



§ The court was the source and spring " of all sorts of shameful vices," 



abounding among the higher orders See Fulke, Lord Brooke's Five Years of 



King. 



^[ There is not a lobby or chamber, if it could speak, but would verify this 

 See Peyton, 3(i!), and Wilson, 728, apitd Keimet. 



II Vol. xviii. 



