JAMES L (OF ENGLAND). 



JAMES I (OP ENG! 



so that UM allkBce of Church and Suu in this MM was one of a 

 very frangible nature. To make matUn worn, both partial cherished 

 the loftiest notions of their power* and rights. In December 1598, 

 in a tumult of the people of Edinburgh, excited as was said by the 

 clergy, the life of the king wa* plaoeil in great danger, and the decided 

 nswnras that followed on both side* made the conteit assume the 

 appearance of the commencement of a civil war. Nearly all the 

 rlftoeracy and the upper claaMa however were with the king ; and 

 by an unuinal exertion of vigour and firmneai James waa enabled not 

 only completely to truth the insurrection, but to turn the ocoaaion to 

 account in bringing the Church into full subjection to the civil 

 authority. In the course of the following year, 1598, the substance 

 of episcopacy, in a political sense, was restored by seats in parlia- 

 ment being given to about fifty eccleciutics on the royal nomination. 

 Even the General Assembly was gained over to acquiesce in this 

 great constitutional change. 



The most memorable event in the remainder of James's Scottish 

 reign waa the mysterious affair known in history by the name of the 

 Gowrie conspiracy. On the 5th of August 1600, James, being then 

 at Falkland, was induced by Alexander liuthven, a younger son of 

 the Earl of Gowrie who was executed in 1584, to accompany him with 

 a few attendants to the bouse of his brother the Earl of Gowrie at 

 Perth. Some time after his arrival he was led by Ruthven into a 

 retired apartment of the house ; there a struggle took place between 

 the two, in the presence only of the earl's steward, who was in full 

 armour, but either did not interfere at all, or, according to his own 

 account, only for the king's protection. Meanwhile, what was going 

 on was perceived from the street, on which the people assembled, and 

 the king's attendants rushed to the room : in the end the king 

 remained unhurt, but both Alexander Ruthven and his brother the 

 earl were killed. These are nearly all the known facts of this strange 

 transaction : they seem to establish a design on the part of the 

 Ruthvens to obtain possession of the king's person, but there appears 

 little ground for supposing as has been frequently asserted that they 

 were prompted by the English government That they intended to 

 take his life, as James endeavoured to make it appear, the whole 

 circumstances of the case will scarcely allow us to suppose. The 

 passage however is one of the least understood in history, and after 

 the expenditure of much ingenuity in the attempt to clear it up, it 

 may be pronounced that no explanation of it which is satisfactory at 

 all points has yet been given. Whatever was the nature of the affair, 

 it stands isolated from all the other events of the time, and had as 

 little effect upon anything that came after it as it is known to have 

 had of connection with anything that went before. 



In the hut years of his residence in Scotland James waa much 

 occupied in taking measures for securing his succession to the English 

 throne, an object which, from the capricious temper of Elizabeth, and 

 other circumstances of the cose, remained of doubtful attainment up 

 to the very moment of its accomplishment. Although no party to 

 the rath attempt which cost the Earl of Essex his life in 1601, ho 

 had been previously in correspondence with that nobleman, who 

 seems to have led the Scottish king to believe that zeal for his cause 

 was the motive of his conduct: and after receiving the news of the 

 ill success of his friend, James appears to have been prepared to go 

 all lengths to save him from the block, having even, as is affirmed, 

 so far overcome his habitual timidity as to order the ambassadors, 

 whom he despatched immediately to the English court, to follow up 

 thtir entreaties and remonstrances, if necessary, with an open decla- 

 ration of war. The head of Essex however had fallen before the 

 Scottish ambassadors reached London. Eventually Sir Robert Cecil 

 himself became James's chief confidant; but it is a characteristic 

 trait that even after he had thus secured the important services of 

 the Engli-h prime minister, James continued to bold a clandestine 

 correspondence on the same great subject of the succession with other 

 parties, of whose participation in the business Cecil apparently wns 

 kept in entire ignorance. (See Lord Hailes's 'Remarks on the 

 History of Scotland,' cb. xiv.) Many of Cecil's letters have been 

 preserved, and were published at Edinburgh by Lord Hailcs (Sir 

 David Dairy mple) in 1768, under the title of ' The Secret Correspond- 

 ence of Sir Robert Cecil with James VI., King of Scotland,' 12uio. 



James at length became king of England by the death of Elizabeth, 

 24th of March 1603, when his accession took place without a murmur 

 of opposition from any quarter. Having sot out from Edinburgh on 

 the jth of April, he entered London on the 7th of May, after a 

 journey which in both countries resembled a triumphal progress. 

 Many of his Scottish courtiers accompanied their sovereign, and the 

 prodigality with which he distributed the wealth and honours of the 

 kingdom among these hungry northern adventurers was one of tho 

 first things in his conduct that disgusted his new subjects. In his 

 foreign policy James began by continuing in the same course that 

 bad been pursued by Elizabeth, enuring into a close alliance with 

 Henri IV. of France for the support of the Dutch and resistance to 

 the aggrcaiioBS of Spain. The conspiracy of Sir Walter Raleigh, 

 Lord Cobham and others, to place on the throne the Lady Arabella 

 Stuart, James's cousin, was the first domestic affair of interest 

 [RALEIGH, WALTER.] The next business that engaged James's atten- 

 tion was the settlement of the dispute* between the Church and the 

 Puritans, for which purpose a conference was held at Hampton Court, 



In January 1C04, and the points of difference discussed ID the king's 

 presence, he himself taking a conspicuous and most undignified part 

 in the debate. James's first parliament met on the 10th of March, 

 and was opened by a speech which, as Hume remarks, " proves him 

 to have possessed more knowledge and greater parts than pi 

 or any just sense of decorum and propriety." Among other things 

 he zealously urged the union of England and Scotland into one king- 

 dom; but nothing came of this proposal for the present James 

 however, of his own authority, now assumed on his coins and in his 

 proclamations the title of King of Great Britain. 



Peace with Spain was concluded, much to the gratification of the 

 king's wishes, on the 18th of August this year. The great event of 

 the year 1605 was the Gunpowder Plot, of which a sufficient account 

 will be found under FAWKES, GUT, and GARNET, HENRY. For some 

 years after this the history of the reign is marked by no memorable 

 events either foreign or domestic ; but although James still continued 

 to govern by parliaments, various causes were contributing gradually 

 to alienate the House of Commons from the crown, and to prepare 

 the elements of that open contest between the two powers which 

 broke out in the next reign. In 1612, the death of James's eldest 

 sou, Henry prince of Wales, in the nineteenth year of hi* age, spread 

 a general grief through the nation, to which the prince had already 

 endeared himself by the promise of a character which may be most 

 shortly described as being in almost all respects in its deftcts as well as 

 in its virtues the reverse of that of his contemptible father. A rumour 

 arose at the time, and has been preserved by some conteuij 

 writers of a violent party spirit, that the prince had been carried 

 poison, and not without the privacy and consent of the king ; hut 

 this accusation, too monstrous to be admitted without the strongest 

 evidence, rests upon neither proof nor probability of any kind 

 death of Prince Henry was followed, 14th of February 1613, by the 

 marriage of James's daughter, the Princess Elizabeth, with Ki . 

 the Elector Palatine, an alliance which was attended with imp 

 results both in that age and in the next 



The ruling favourite whom James had brought with him from 

 Scotland was Sir George Hume whom in 1604 he created Lord lhu..c 

 in the English peerage, and in 1608 Earl of Dunbar in that i>t 

 land a man of integrity, as well as of superior talent. The king's 

 silly and mutable fondness however was in course of time transferred 

 to other objects to Philip Herbert, tho second son of the Earl of 

 Pembroke, whom he made Earl of Montgomery in 1605, and who 

 many years after succeeded his elder brother as Earl of Pembroke ; 

 and to another Scotchman, Sir James Hay, mode a Scottish pet r by 

 the title of Lord Hay of Bewlie in 1609, and who afterwards bore 

 successively in the English peerage the titles of Lord Hay of Sawley 

 (1615), Viscount Doncaater (1617), and Earl of Carlisle (1822), l.y 

 which last he is best remembered. It is said to have been Hay who, 

 about the beginning of the year 1610, introduced at court a young 

 countryman of his own, Robert Carr, or more properly Ker, of a 

 good family, but chiefly distinguished by his handsome person, an 

 advantage which never failed to attract the effeminate king's attention 

 and regard. Carr was immediately taken into the highest favour, 

 made a knight of the Bath, and the next year a peer by the title of 

 Viscount Rochester. In 1613 the young and beautiful Frances Howard, 

 countess of Essex, having by an infamous process, in urging which 

 the king took a port that alone ought to consign his memory to abhor- 

 rence, obtained a divorce from her husband, was married to the 

 favourite, her previous profligate passion for whom is believed to have 

 incited her to the proceedings by which she succeeded in dissolving 

 her first marriage. The king ou this occasion raised Rochester to tho 

 rank of Earl of Somerset (November 1013). Somerset's fall however 

 was still more rapid than his rise. His chief friend Sir Thomas Over- 

 bury, who had strenuously exerted his influence to prevent his 

 marriage with Lady Essex, which he represented as the sure 

 destruction of bis fortunes, waa first, by the contrivance of the 

 unprincipled woman whom he had thus made his enemy, thrown 

 into the Tower, and soon after taken off by poison administered to 

 him by her means, and with the privity of her husband. The crime, 

 though suspected from the first, was not fully discovered till about 

 two years after its commission ; but in 1615 all the parties concerned 

 in it were brought to trial, and their guilt completely cstablixlad. 

 Four persons who had been accomplices in the murder were left to 

 tho executioner; the two principals, the wretched Somerset and his 

 wife, had their better merited punishment commuted into confiscation 

 of their property, and imprisonment, from which they were both 

 after some years released. Their condemnation of course threw down 

 the earl from his place and favour at court, and ho was given up 

 with the most easy indifference, not unaccompanied with some touches 

 of gratuitous baseness, by James, whoso mind hod now been taken 

 possession of by a passion for a new minion, another handsome youth, 

 named George Villicrs, who had been recently introduced to his 

 notice. Villicrs, who, after having been knighted, was created suc- 

 cessively Viscount Villicrs (1616), Earl of Buckingham (1617), Marquis 

 of Buckingham (1618), and Duke of Buckingham (1623), continued 

 the first favourite and ruling minister during the remainder of the 

 reign. [BOCKIXOBAU.] 



In the summer of 1617 James paid a visit to Scotland, ami, having 

 summoned a parliament, succeeded, though not without great difficulty, 



