HISTORY OF GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND. 



that, on the day of the meeting of parliament, 

 November 5, 1605, the House of Lords should be 

 blown up by gunpowder, at the moment when the 

 King, Lords, and Commons were all assembled 

 in it ; thus destroying, as they thought, all their 

 chief enemies at one blow, and making way for a 

 new government, probably under one of the king's 

 younger children, which should be more favour- 

 able to them. Accordingly, thirty-four barrels of 

 powder were deposited in the cellars beneath the 

 House, and a soldier of fortune, named Guido or 

 Guy Fawkes, was prepared to kindle it at the 

 proper time. The plot was discovered, in conse- 

 quence of the receipt of a letter by Lord Mount- 

 eagle, a Romanist, warning him not to attend the 

 meeting of parliament. He shewed the letter to 

 "ic king's chief adviser, Robert Cecil, Earl of 

 Salisbury, and, in consequence, an investigation 

 sok place during the night between the 4th and 

 th of November, when the gunpowder was dis- 

 covered, and Fawkes taken into custody. He 

 snfessed his intentions ; and the rest of the con- 

 sirators fled to the country, where most of them 

 rere cut to pieces in endeavouring to defend them- 

 slves. 



PLANTATIONS IN IRELAND. 



James was the first king who extended the 

 English law over the whole of Ireland, by making 

 judicial appointments suited to the extent of the 

 juntry. He passed an act of oblivion and indem- 

 lity, by which all persons who had committed 

 Tences, coming to the judges of assize within a 

 ertain day, might claim a full pardon. At the 

 same time, toleration was virtually refused to the 

 Catholic persuasion, and much discontent there- 

 "sre still existed. Some of the chieftains, particu- 

 rly Tyrone, O'Donnel, Earl of Tyrconnel, and 

 )'Dogherty, having conspired against the crown, 

 2re attainted in 1608, and their lands, which 

 /ere in Ulster and Leinster, were given to Eng- 

 'sh and Scotch settlers, with a view to improving 

 :he population of the country by an infusion of 

 ivilised persons. But this experiment, though 

 irell meant, was managed in a partial spirit, and 

 ive rise to much injustice. In 1613, the first 

 Irish parliament was held in which there were any 

 representatives of places beyond the ' Pale.' 



Apart from this pacification of Ireland, which, 

 lowever, only caused the Irish to sigh for their 

 Id landlords and laws, the reign of James was 

 lot marked by what are called great events. This 

 greatly owing to his timid character, which 

 iduced him to maintain peace, at whatever sacri- 

 "ice, throughout the greater part of his reign. The 

 prime leaders of his government were youthful 

 favourites, who possessed no merit but personal 

 elegance, and of whom the chief were Robert 

 Carr, a Scotchman, who was made Earl of Somer- 

 set, and George Villiers, who became Duke of 

 Buckingham. Nevertheless, although no great 

 event occurred at this period, there was gradually 

 growing up a spirit of constitutional freedom. The 

 Commons began to combat the prerogative of the 

 king, and to remonstrate on the score of public 

 grievances. In 1621, a parliament met which 

 attacked various corruptions and abuses ; Bacon, 

 then Lord Chancellor, being charged with taking 

 bribes, and being dismissed from his office in 

 consequence. These and many other instances of 

 bold resistance were the shadows of coming events. 



English literature, which first made a decisive 

 advance in the reign of Elizabeth, continued to be 

 cultivated with great success in the reign of King 

 James. The excellence of the language at this 

 time as a medium for literature, is strikingly shewn 

 in the translation of the Bible now executed ; it is 

 also shewn in the unequalled dramatic writings of 

 Shakspeare, in the poetry of Edmund Spenser, 

 and in the valuable philosophic works of Bacon. 

 Very great praise is also due to Napier of Mer- 

 chiston, in Scotland, for the invention of loga- 

 rithms, a mode of calculating intricate numbers, 

 essential to the progress of mathematical science. 

 It was in this reign that a great number of the 

 most important British colonies took their rise. 

 In 1607, James Town, in Virginia, was founded 

 by some emissaries of a London Company of mer- 

 chants. In 1610, Newfoundland was colonised; 

 and in 1620, a number of Puritan Nonconformists, 

 known as the ' Pilgrim Fathers,' founded the New 

 England States. 



THE KING'S CHILDREN. 



In 1612, the king had the misfortune to lose his 

 eldest son, Henry, a youth of nineteen, who was 

 considered as one of the most promising and 

 accomplished men of the age. The second son, 

 Charles, then became the heir-apparent. Elizabeth, 

 the king's other child, was married, in 1613, to 

 Frederick, Prince Palatine of the Rhine, who sub- 

 sequently lost his dominions, in consequence of 

 his placing himself at the head of the Bohemians, 

 in what was considered as a rebellion against his 

 superior, the Emperor of Germany. This dis- 

 crowned pair, by their youngest daughter Sophia, 

 who married the Duke of Brunswick, were the 

 ancestors of the family which now reigns in 

 Britain. 



CHARLES I. HIS CONTENTIONS WITH THE 

 HOUSE OF COMMONS. 



King James died in March 1625, in the fifty- 

 ninth year of his age, and was succeeded by his 

 son CHARLES, now twenty-five years of age. One 

 of the first acts of the young king was to marry 

 the Princess Henrietta Maria, daughter of Henry 

 IV. of France, and a Catholic. The alliance was 

 highly unpopular. 



Britain at this time became involved in a war 

 with Spain, chiefly on account of the breaking off 

 in the last reign of a match between Charles and 

 the Princess Mary of that country. To supply 

 the expenses of this contest, and of a still more 

 unnecessary one into which he was driven with 

 France, the king applied to parliament, but was 

 met there with so many complaints as to his 

 government, and such a keen spirit of popular 

 .iberty, that he deemed it necessary to revive a 

 practice followed by other sovereigns, and par- 

 ticularly Elizabeth, of compelling his subjects to 

 jrant him gifts, or, as they were called, benevolences^ 

 md also to furnish ships at their own charge, for 

 carrying on the war. Such expedients could not 

 ae endured in this age, when the people and 

 the parliament were so much more alive to their 

 rights. A general discontent spread over the 

 nation, and the Commons resolved to take every 

 measure in their power to check the king's 

 proceedings. Having made an inquiry into the 



