-tobacco ("divine tobacco," his friend Spenser calls it); and the story is well known that his servant, for the first time seeing his master smoking, threw a bucket of water over him, supposing him to be on fire. James I. thought the smoking of tobacco a detestable custom, and wrote a book against it, but he could not prevent the new luxury from becoming very popular. James was very cruel and unjust to Sir Walter Raleigh; he imprisoned him on a charge of treason and kept him for many years in the Tower, where Raleigh beguiled his time in writing, or beginning to write, "The History of the World." Prince Henry, James's eldest son, who had more sympathy and a gentler mind than his father, felt great shame at Raleigh's treatment, and wondered how his father "could keep such a bird in such a cage." Raleigh at last ended his life on the scaffold, grieved and lamented over by everyone.

The

1617.

James, having become what may be called a High Churchman, was not content with persecuting the Puritans; he was equally rigorous with the Roman Catholics. They Catholics. perhaps hoped that, as they had always sided with his mother Mary, he would be more indulgent to them than Elizabeth had been, but they found themselves mistaken. And it must have made an impression on the minds of the people of England to observe the contrast between them and the Puritans in their way of meeting the hard treatment of the government. The Puritans endeavored quietly to leave the country; the Catholics made plots and conspiracies. They had already been quite accustomed to this mode of action during the days of Elizabeth, and now they began again. It was early in the reign of James I. that the most famous of all their plots, the "Gunpowder Treason," was devised.

1604.

It was a deep-laid plot, and was darkly brooded over for many months before it was discovered. The object was, as the conspirators hoped, to get rid of all their ene Gunpowder mies at one stroke, by blowing up the House of plot. Parliament on the day of its assembling. The king would be there in state to open the session; with him would be his eldest son, Prince Henry. They and all the lords, the bishops, and the commons, would be destroyed at once; one of the younger princes should then be proclaimed king, and educated as a Roman Catholic. The plot was very nearly brought to perfection. The barrels of gunpowder were

laid

in readiness under the Parliament House, hidden under piles of fagots. A fearless and fanatical man stood ready to light the fatal train.

One of the traitors, a Northamptonshire gentleman named Tresham, had felt some relentings towards his brother-inlaw, Lord Monteagle, who would be sure to be in his place in the House of Lords, and would perish with the rest. He wrote him an anonymous letter, in a feigned hand, hinting at some terrible blow which the Parliament would receive, and warning him, as he valued his life, to keep away. This letter, being shown to the king and his ministers, led to the discovery of the plot before it was too late. Guy Fawkes was seized in the cellar; the rest of the conspirators were pursued, and either died in defending themselves, or were taken, tried, and executed.

This Gunpowder Treason had something demoniacal about it. The darkness and mystery, the terribleness of a sudden explosion which would give no warning, the awful cruelty of involving innocent people in the punishment which was supposed to be due to the guilty, and its having so very nearly succeeded, struck the whole nation with horror, and remains still one of the most vivid memories in the imagination of the people. Still it is only just to remark that only eighty men, at most, knew of its existence, and it would be entirely wrong to lay it on the Roman Catholics in general, most of whom probably thought it quite as wicked as the Protestants did.

The conspirators, however, believed themselves to be One of them, a engaged in a noble and sacred work. gentleman of high character and unblemished reputation, Sir Everard Digby, wrote to his wife after his condemnation: "Now for my intention; let me tell you that if I had thought there had been the least sin in the plot, I would not have been in it for all the world; and no other cause drew me to hazard fortune and my life but zeal to God's relimy gion."

It is said that Digby and some of the others, notably Guy Fawkes, died very penitently and devoutly.

CHAPTER XLVII.

THE KING AND THE PARLIAMENT.

The royal prerogative. The Parliament. Charles I. The Cavaliers and the Roundheads. Strafford and Laud. Ship-money. Hampden. The Prayerbook in Scotland.

Ir was not only in religious matters that James showed his arbitrary spirit, and alienated many of his people. He wished to be supreme in all points, and to have the The royal prerog- authority of Henry VIII. without possessing the ative. intellect or character of that able prince. The exact power which lawfully belonged to the king was not at that time very clearly defined, nor can it be said to be so now. The royal prerogative is a shadowy thing, which seems in theory to be very great, but which may shrink to almost nothing unless the sovereign and the nation are of one mind. The Tudors had felt this by instinct, if they did not know it; but the Stuarts neither felt it nor knew it.

At this period, in other countries as well as in England, the monarchs became more despotic than they had ever been yet; in some of them the last traces of liberty disappeared. The kings of Spain became utter tyrants. In France, too, the national assemblies of the people ceased, and the king and nobles did as they pleased, without any check upon them. But in England the people were better off, because Parliament never came to an end.

During the reigns of the Tudors, it is true, the Parliaments had been very meek and submissive, and had almost always done what the king or queen desired; but outThe Par- wardly they had all their old powers and rights, liament. and neither king nor queen ever professed to act without their consent. Under the Stuarts the Parliaments were no longer meek and submissive; they remembered their duties and their privileges, and stood up like men to defend them. They fell back on the right which their pred ecessors had exercised so manfully in days of old, and would

give the king no money until he had redressed their grievances. Then the king in his turn fell back on the old plan of Edward IV., and tried to levy "benevolences." He could

not have done much by force, even if he had desired it, because he had no army. Elizabeth's whole standing army is said to have consisted of a hundred beef-eaters,* and James had no hope of getting more.

66

James, like many other kings, made favorites, and such as the nation could not respect. The principal one The Duke was George Villiers, who was afterwards made of BuckDuke of Buckingham, but whom the king always ingham. called Steenie, because he thought him like a picture he had seen of the martyr Stephen. Steenie does not seem to have had anything else saint-like about him, and his principal recommendations were that he danced and dressed beautifully. He treated the king with the greatest familiarity and insolence, which seemed to please James, but disgusted the nation.

Lord

Bacon,

But a far more sad and shameful thing than the follies of a worthless courtier occurred during this reign-the disgrace of the most eminent man in the whole kingdom; one of the greatest men, indeed, whom England has ever produced. This was the famous Lord Bacon, who was lord chancellor of England, but whose great fame rests upon his writings and his studies more than on his high position. He has been long looked on as the father of modern science, though it is now supposed by some competent authorities that his work has been somewhat overrated. He carried on the ideas of his great old namesake, Roger Bacon, by teaching men to observe Nature, and to learn from her instead of busying themselves with words and phrases of their own manufacture.

He had grand thoughts and clothed them in noble words, but it is unfortunately true that neither thoughts nor words could help him to live a noble life. Most of his books were written in Latin, but one was in English, a little book of essays, which are full of wise thoughts, very forcibly expressed, about matters of constant and practical interest. They are about envy, truth, death, parents and children, marriage and single life. One is about "judicature." It shows that he had reflected gravely on the responsibilities

* Beef-eaters, corrupted from buffetiers, personal attendants.

of a judge's office. "The place of justice," he wrote, "is an hallowed place; and therefore not only the bench, but the foot pace and precincts thereof ought to be preserved without scandal and corruption." "Judges should imitate God, in whose place they sit." Yet the man who wrote this, the highest judge in the land, was charged with taking bribes, a hundred pounds from one; three or four hundred 1620. pounds from another. He was found guilty, admitted the justice of the charge with shame and penitence, and was degraded from his high office by the king and Par liament.

In his case the world seems to have quite reversed Shakespeare's aphorism,

"The evil that men do lives after them;

The good is oft interrèd with their bones."

For the sake of his great works as a philosopher and a writer, his name is held in honor, and his faults and infirmi ties pardoned.

James continued to go contrary to the wishes of his people in most matters to the end of his reign. They earnestly desired him to help the cause of the Protestants abroad. His own daughter, Elizabeth, who was so gracious and beautiful that she was called the Queen of Hearts, had married a Protestant German prince, the Elector Palatine Frederic, who was afterwards elected king of Bohemia. He was in great need of help and support; but though the country implored James to take his part, he would not

1620.

do so.

It was still more offensive to the English that he actually wished to make friends with Spain. He seemed to forget the past, the cruelty of Philip, the dread of the Armada, and the triumph and deliverance of England, and wished to marry his son to a Spanish princess. His eldest son, Henry, having died very young, the second, Charles, became heir to the throne, and it was proposed that he should take a Spanish wife. Charles and the favorite Buckingham went off in disguise to Spain, but on their way thither, passing through Paris, Charles saw a French princess who attracted him. Nevertheless he went on and saw the Spanish princess also; he dallied and played with the Spaniards, making them believe that he fully intended to marry her; but as soon as he returned to England he broke off the match.

1623.