THE CHARACTER AND CONDUCT OF JAMES I. 149 



acts were notoriously influenced by foreign gold ;* a government, 

 under which bishopricks and deaneries were vendiblet the most strin- 

 gent monopolies imposed, not upon nice emergencies only, but as 

 habitual practices; + proclamations quite unwarranted by the ancient 

 customs and laws of the land issued against the personal liberty of 

 the subject upon the most petty § occasions, executions by fire,|| re- 

 vived on the pretext of an unrepealed statute against heresy, a go- 

 vernment under which titles ^J of honour were openly set up for sale 

 to the highest bidder, the great officers of the state convicted of pe- 

 culation, **and a lord chancellor, (the heart sickens here to pro- 



* State Trials, vol. ii, p. 596. It was only by a judicious application of 

 bribes, that Gondomar was enabled to keep those of the Council who passed 

 tor sincere Romanists, firm to the union of* Prince Charles with the Infanta. 

 See Wilson and Rushworth, vol. i, p. 19. 



■f There were, " savs Weldon, '' books of rates on all the offices, bishop- 

 rics, and deaneries in England." — p. 122. 



% The nation, says Osborne, grew feeble, over-opprest by them. 



§ See those for preventing attendance at the coronation and against 

 country gentlemen coming to James on hunting days ; and ordering them to 

 leave London and return to their country houses on pain of condign punish- 

 ment Lodge's Illustrations of British History, vol. iii, p. 270 ; and Rymer, 



voL xvi, p. 517, 521, 527. 



|| Two Unitarians, named Bartholomew Legate and Edward Wrightman, 

 were thus handed over to the secular arm, by James. — See the writ for their 

 execution, in Howell, State Trials, vol. ii, p. 731, 736. The third was con- 

 demned to be burnt, but his sentence was remitted in consequence of the 

 loud murmurs uttered by the spectators, when the two former atoned for 

 their errors at the stake. Yet James' humanity only extended so far as to 

 mitigate his punishment into imprisonment for life — See Fuller, lib. 10, 

 p. 62, 64. 



^[ In a letter to his Sowship, the familiar appellation given to James by 

 Buckingham and published in the Dalrymple papers, vol. i, p. 1C4, this 

 worthless minister informs his equally worthless master, that he has sold a 

 peerage to Sir Francis Leake, and desires the patent to be signed. No 

 prince, indeed, so much degraded the peerage as James did by selling patents 

 for it at large prices; and when he created the order of Baronets the pur- 

 chased price for this new species of knighthood, was a thousand pounds 

 apiece. Among the condensed and apothegmatical sayings of James, for we 

 have many of them recorded, one of the most felicitous in expression is the 

 following, " Perceiving a country gentleman approach him in considerable 

 confusion of manner and countenance, to receive his vended honour, lie ex- 

 claimed, ' What, hold up thy heud man, I have more reason to be ashamed 

 than thou." — Miss Aiken's Life of Jam '» !■, vol. i, p. 164. 



"• Who can read without high indignation of the impeachment of a Lord 

 Treasurer for bribery. One of the charges against the Eaill of Middlesex 

 was of receiving a gratuity for taking off the duty i<[ <.';( per Urn which he 



