290 TWO CHAPTERS ILLUSTRATIVE OF 



sought to palm this belief upon the intellects of his subjects, that 

 next to the knowledge of their God, it was necessary for them to 

 know the things contained in his book ; while so numerous are his 

 allusions to this topic in his speeches, that, in making choice of the 

 following examples, we are guided chiefly by the shortness of the 

 passages : — " The power of kings," he told the parliament, " was 

 like the divine power ; for as God can create and destroy, make and 

 unmake at his pleasure, so kings can give life and death, judge all, 

 and be judged by none."t And in a speech made in the Star 

 Chamber he asserts, " It is atheism and blasphemy to declare what 

 God can do ; good Christians coatent themselves with his will re- 

 vealed in his word : so it is presumption and contempt in a subject 

 to dispute what a king can do, or say that a king cannot do this or 

 that."t A more undisguised picture of a love of absolute sovereign- 

 ty cannot well be placed before the eyes of the reader than in these 

 sentences. Nevertheless Higgons will step in and beg him not to 

 infer so and so, because he can assure him that the fact is othei'wise. 

 The essence, we would say, of James's inordinate love of arbitrary 

 authority is concentrated in this striking fact, that, during twelve 

 years of his reign, we have two hundred and fifty proclamations 

 without a single statute. True it is that James, in his speech to 

 parliament, April 5th, 1614, designated, from its surprizing kind- 

 liness and concession, " Flowers of Grace," disclaims the doctrine 

 of giving the strength of law to his proclamations. " As touching 

 proclamations, which, in the last parliament, were excepted against, 

 as he is a traitorous subject that will say a king may not proclaim 

 and bind it, so did I never intend proclamations to have force of law, 



• To demonstrate to his people, that justice emanated from him really as 

 well as theoretically, James actually sat with his judges in Westminster 

 Hall ; but subservient as they all were to his arbitrary will, with the excep- 

 tion of Coke, he was told by the ermined sages, he could not deliver an 

 opinion. — See Blackstone, vol. iii., p. 41. " It is a remarkable fact," observes 

 Mr. Allen m his admirable work. An Inquiry into the Rise and Growth of the 

 Royal Prerogative, p. 9fi, " that the same reign which for the last time exhi- 

 bited a king of England interposing in his own person in the administration 

 of justice, should also be the last during which he could be sued like a subject 

 in the courts of law." 



f See King James's Works, p. 557. The patriots of the day, in conse- 

 quence of James having drawn a veil for awhile over liberty, began to be ap- 

 prehensive they should not leave to their successors that freedom they re- 

 ceived from their forefathers, " nor make account of any thing longer than 

 they listed that governed."— Winwood, vol. iii., p. 175. And well indeed 

 they might. 



