should be refused by the desperate hardness of the the courtly reporter of the latter news, 66 my Lady prejudiced people." Whatever were the cause, the Arabella spends her time in lecture, reading, hearminister fell into a languid, hopeless state, and re- ing of service, and preaching. . . . She will not hear tired from business to drink the waters at Bath. of marriage." The pension James allowed her He derived no benefit from the healing springs, for her support was very irregularly paid; and it and, on the 24th of May, 1612, he died, worn out should appear that she was frequently reduced to and wretched, at Marlborough, on his way back to very great distress for want of money. She was the court. Long suffering had obliterated the charms also exposed to the persecutions of her aunt, the of rank and honors, princely mansions, and wide Countess of Shrewsbury, a violent and vulgar womestates, an enormous wealth, and a policy and am- an, who appears to have been placed over her at bition which had triumphed over many a formidable times as a sort of duenna. James thought it business rival. In his last moments he said to Sir Walter worthy of him to settle these womanly quarrels; and Cope," Ease and pleasure quake to hear of death; in 1608, he did something more, for he gave Arabut my life, full of cares and miseries, desireth to bella a cupboard of plate worth more than £200 for a be dissolved." His death was certainly not less new-year's gift, and 1000 marks to pay her debts, welcome to the great mass of the nation; but, in beside some yearly addition to her maintenance, the worse that followed, people soon lamented the "want being thought the chiefest cause of her disbad rule of this remarkable son of a most remarka- contentment."" Shortly after this, at some court ble father. Though heartless and perfidious, Cecil festival, she renewed an acquaintance, which had had abilities of the highest order; and though sub- begun in childhood, with William Seymour, son of servient and ready to erect James into an absolute Lord Beauchamp and grandson of the Earl of Heremonarch rather than lose favor and office by thwart- ford." If there had not been a tender affection ing that prince's vehement inclinations, he had a before (and it is probable there had been, and of an sense of national dignity, and a system of foreign old standing), it now sprung up, rapid and unconpolicy which would have saved England from deg- trollable. In February, 1610, an arrangement of radation. The scoundrels who succeeded him had marriage between them was detected. James was all his business and villainy with none of his genius. alarmed in the extreme, for the Seymours also Before Cecil found peace in his grave, the fate were descended from the royal blood of Henry VII.: of an interesting victim, whose adventures furnish they might pretend, in some time of trouble, to one of the most touching episodes in our history, the throne, and their claim would be wonderfully had been sealed by a barbarous hand. The Lady strengthened by absorbing it in that of the Lady Arabella Stuart, whose descent was a crime never Arabella. The two lovers were summoned before to be forgiven, had been kept chiefly about court the privy council. There, Seymour was repriever since the trial of Raleigh and Cobham, who manded for daring to ally himself with the royal were said to have aimed at her elevation to the blood (his own blood was as royal as Arabella's), and throne, though it was proved that the young lady they were both forbidden, on their allegiance, to had absolutely nothing to do with their plot. In contract marriage without the king's permission. the disorderly and tasteless revelry of the court she To escape imprisonment they promised obedience; had continued to cultivate a taste for elegant litera- but, in the following month of July, it was discovture, not wholly neglecting the study of divinity, ered that they were privately married. Instantly which James seems to have made fashionable with James issued his mandate, and Arabella was comboth sexes, and nearly all classes of his subjects. mitted to the custody of Sir Thomas Parry, at It was her avowed preference of a single life that Lambeth; her husband to the Tower. This, their somewhat disarmed the dangerous jealousy of Eliz- first confinement, was not rigorous; the Lady was abeth, though even in that queen's reign her con- allowed to walk in a garden, and Seymour, who dition was a very unhappy one. James at one probably purchased the indulgence from his keeptime when he had neither wife nor children of his ers, met her there, and in her own chamber. She own, asked the hand of the Lady Arabella for his also got letters conveyed to the queen, who interfavorite Esme Stuart, Duke of Lennox, who was fered in her favor, and to other friends of rank and the lady's cousin. Elizabeth not only forbad this influence. But one morning she received the dismarriage, but she also imprisoned Arabella, using mal news that she must remove forthwith to Durvery sharp and insulting language against James ham. She refused to quit her chamber; but the for his having dared to propose such a match. On officers carried her in her bed to the water-side, the death of Elizabeth, one of Cecil's first cares forced her, shrieking, into a boat, and rowed her up was, as we have seen, to secure the person of the the river. Her agitation and distress of mind lady, and when James was safely and so easily brought on a fever, and, by the time she reached seated on the throne, having ng now children, he seems Barnet, a physician declared that her life would be to have settled in his own mind that she should in danger if she were forced to travel farther. The never be allowed to marry. In the following year doctor waited upon the king with this intelligence. came from the K ambassador car great King of Poland, James observed, very sapiently, that it was enough whose chief errand was to demand her in marriage to make any sound man sick to be carried in a bed for his master; and at the very same moment there in the manner she was. But his resolution was were indirect proposals made for Count Maurice, fixed that she should proceed to Durham, if he were who claimed to be Duke of Gueldres. But," says Lodge, Illustrations. 2 lb. 3 See ante, p. 3, note. came ་་ king. The doctor said "that he made no doubt of the Lady's obedience." "Obedience is that required," replied James. But he soon relaxed his severity, and granted her permission to remain for a month at Highgate for the recovery of her health. At Highgate she was lodged in a gentleman's house, and closely watched; yet on the very day (the 3d of June, 1611) that the Bishop of Durham, whose guest or prisoner she was to be, proceeded northward to prepare her lodging, she effected her escape, being assisted by two friends, who were in correspondence with her husband in the Tower. Disguising herself by drawing a great pair of French-fashioned hose over her petticoats, putting on a man's doublet, a man-like peruke, with long locks over her hair, a black hat, a black cloke, russet boots with red tops, and a rapier by her side, she walked forth, between three and four of the clock, with Markham. After they had gone a-foot a mile and a half to a sorry inn, where Crompton attended with horses, she grew very sick and faint, so as the hostler that held the stirrup said, that the gentleman would hardly hold out to London; yet, being set on a good gelding, astride, in an unwonted fashion, the stirring of the horse brought blood enough into her face; and so she rode on toward Blackwall." There she found boats and attendants who rowed her down the river to Gravesend, where a French bark lay at hand to receive her. She expected to find her husband on board; but though Seymour had stolen out of the Tower in the disguise of a physician, he had not yet reached the vessel. After waiting for a short time, the French captain, who knew the seriousness of the adventure, became alarmed, and, in spite of the entreaties of the Lady, he hoisted all sail and put to sea. When Seymour reached the spot, he found his wife was gone; but he got on board a collier, the captain of which agreed to land him on the coast of Flanders for £40. Meanwhile the intelligence of Arabella's escape from Highgate had reached the palace. There, in an instant, all was alarm, hurry, and confusion, as if a new gunpowder-plot had been discovered. Couriers were dispatched in all directions, with orders to haste for their lives. Ships and boats were hurried down the Thames as if a new Armada were in the Channel. The alarm became the greater when, on dispatching a messenger to the Lieutenant of the Tower, it was learned that his prisoner also had escaped. The privy council believed, or affected to believe, that church and state were in danger, that the fugitives were going to the Spanish Netherlands, there to put themselves at the head of the papists, and then, aided by the Pope, the King of Spain, and other Catholic sovereigos, to invade England. In this passionate hurry there was a proclamation, first, in very bitter terms, but, by my lord treasurer's moderation, seasoned at the print.... There were likewise three letters dispatched in haste... to the king and queenregent of France, and to the archdukes, all written with harsher ink than now, if they were to do, I presume they should be, especially that to the archdukes, which did seem to pre-suppose their course The tending that way, and all three describing the of fense in black colors, and pressing their sending back without delay." Seymour got safe to shore, and was not sent back: the poor Lady Arabella was less fortunate, being overtaken by a "pink_royal,” when about midway across the Channel. Frenchman stood a sharp but short action; and when he lowered his flag, she was seized, carried back to the Thames, and then shut up in the Tower. Her heart was breaking, yet she said she cared not for captivity if her husband was safe. The advocacy of the queen, her own eloquent appeals, were all thrown away on James; she never recovered her liberty, and grief and despair made a wreck of her brilliant intellect. She died within the walls of the Tower, and in a pitiable state of insanity, on the 27th of September, 1615.2 James, who is described as dividing his time between his inkstand, his bottle, and his hunting, again took up the pen of controversy in 1611. As he was "out in pursuit of hares," a book written by the Dutch divine, Conrad Vorstius, treating of the nature and attributes of the Divinity, was brought to him. He instantly left off hunting, and began reading-and, with so critical an eye, that within an hour he detected and postillated a long list of what he called damnable heresies. With not less activity he wrote to Winwood, his ambassador in the Low Countries, commanding him to accuse Vorstius, before the States, of heresy and infidelity, and to signify to the States his utter detestation of those crimes, and of all by whom they were tolerated. The Hollanders, who had recently elected this heresiarch to the professorship of divinity at Leyden, vacant by the death of Arminius, were not inclined to give ear to this remonstrance from a foreign prince, and they intimated as much in a respectful tone. Thereupon James, "plying his inkstand again," sent them an admonition in his own handwriting. Assuming the tone of a Protestant pope, haying authority in spirituals over other countries than his own, he bade them remember that the King of England was the Defender of the Faith, and that it would be in his competency, in union with other foreign churches, to "extinguish and remand to hell these abominable heresies." He told them that this wretched Vorstius deserved to be burned alive, as much as any heretic that had ever suffered. He left it to their own Christian wisdom to burn him or not; but as to allowing him, upon any defense or abnegation, to continue to teach and preach, it was a thing so abominable, that he assured himself that it could never enter into any of their thoughts. To all this the Hollanders returned a very cool and a very evasive answer. Then James entered a public protest against the heresies of Vorstius, and informed the States that they must either give up their divinity professor, or forfeit the friendship of the King of England. Archbishop Abbott applauded the king, and urged him to adopt violent measures; and Winwood, the Winwood, Memorials. Lodge, Illustrations. Sir Henry Ellis, Original Letters-Wilson. Aikin, Court of King James, &c.-Winwood, Memorials, flowing bigotry of many classes, that the mass of the nation could no longer look upon such executions with any other feelings than those of horror and disgust, not unmixed, in some cases, with an admi"Aration of the courage of the sufferers. The lawyers began to question whether the proceedings were strictly legal, and the bishops to doubt whether they were useful to their church. The king accordingly preferred the heretics hereafter should silently and privately waste themselves away in prison." In other words men were exposed to a slower and more cruel martyrdom; but there was no more burning in England. 3 1 ambassador, who was equally zealous, thundered threats in the ears of the Dutch; but still the States refused to displace Vorstius, till he should be heard in his own defense. James put forth a short work, in French, of his own composition, entitled, Declaration against Vorstius." But, after all, he would have been defeated in this warfare, if the Hollanders had not been divided as to what was orthodoxy and what heterodoxy. A powerful sect and party, called the Gomarists, hated Vorstius as much as James, and Abbot and Winwood hated him, and, in the end, the divinity professor was not only deprived of his place, but expelled from Leyden to wander about in poverty and obscurity. During six or seven years he was obliged to conceal himself from his intolerant opponents in Tergau; and at the end of that period he was driven out of Holland, the synod of Dort having given a definitive judgment against him, and the States having sentenced him to perpetual banishment. At this said | synod, which was held in 1619, the deputies from the clergy of England and Scotland were the principal promoters of the proscription of Vorstius, which was followed by the barbarous exile of seven hundred families who entertained his tenets. During two years the expelled professor disappeared from the world, being obliged to hide himself in very secret places; for there were many men who imagined that it would be doing a good deed to murder him. At last the Duke of Holstein offered him and the exiled families a secure asylum. He arrived at this haven of rest in the month of June, 1622, but he soon quitted it for a surer and more lasting one-dying in the month of September of the same year. James was prouder of this victory than he would have been of winning battles like Crecy and Agincourt. Unfortunately, the controversy sharpened his temper; and, as if to give the Dutch an example, he relighted the fires of Smithfield, being the last English sovereign to sign the writ de hæretico comburendo. Bartholomew Legate, who is de-entertained far wider views than the expulsion of scribed as an obstinate Arian heretic, was apprehended and examined by the king and some of the bishops, and then committed to Newgate. After lying a considerable time in prison, he was tried before the Consistory Court, which, like the Bonners of former times, passed sentence upon him, as contumacious and obdurate, and delivered him over to the secular arm, to be burned; and he was burned accordingly in Smithfield, on the 18th of March, 1612. On the 11th of April following, which was Easter-eve, Edward Wightman, convicted of heresy of a very multiform character, was burned at Litchfield. A third victim was ready for the flames; but it was found, notwithstanding the over Some time before these events Henry IV. of France had fallen beneath the knife of an assassin. The treaty of the Hague, which was signed in March, 1609, ran a risk of being broken as soon as made. John, Duke of Cleves, Juliers, and Berg, died without children, and the emperor seized the city of Juliers and laid claim to the whole succession. The Elector of Brandenburg, the Duke of Newburg, and the Elector of Saxony, pretended each to a better and an exclusive right. Religion as well as policy was involved in this dispute, it being deemed no less expedient for the Protestant interests to check the Roman church than to prevent the further extension of the wide dominions of the House of Austria. The Protestant princes of Germany and the States of Holland formed a league with the kings of England and France, for the support of the Protestant claimant, the Elector of Brandenburg, and for the expulsion of the Austrians from Juliers. On the other side were the King of Spain, the archduke, and the other princes connected by family and religion. The Protestants of Germany and Holland agreed to furnish among them nine thousand foot and two thousand horse; the French king a like number, and the King of England four thousand foot. But Henry IV., who was indifferent to the question of religion, and who the Austrians from Juliers, raised a splendid army of thirty thousand men, with a great train of artillery, and prepared all things for taking the command in person. On the 14th of May, 1610, three days before that fixed for his departure, as he was on his way to the arsenal, he was stabbed in a street of Paris, by Francis Ravaillac, a young fanatic friar of the order of the Jacobins. An opinion prevailed, or is said to have prevailed, among the French populace, that the king, who had allied himself with Protestants and heretics, was going to wage war against the Pope; and attempts were made at the time, and long afterward, to connect the regicide with the court of Rome, with the court of Spain, with the Jesuits: but the murderer, even on the rack, maintained that he had had no accomplices or instigators whatever, and that he had been carried to do the deed only by an instinct or impulse which he could neither control nor ex 1 Fuller. Three times before this fatal blow of Ravaillac, the life of Henry IV. had been attempted by assassins: by Pierre Barriere in 1593,-by Pierre Ouin, in 1597,-and by Jean de l'Isle, a maniac, in 1605. 66 plain. The truth appears to be, that the monk was mad, and unconnected with any party either religious or political: but this did not save him from a horrible death, nor prevent James from persecuting more sharply the English Catholics. In all this, however, James had the full consent of his parliament, which was then sitting, and which would readily have carried him to greater extremities. In Scotland, perhaps, more than in England, people were convinced that Henry had fallen a sacrifice to the Pope and the Jesuits, and that an attempt would be made on the sacred person of James. The Scottish privy council addressed a long letter to their most “gracious and dread sovereign," beseeching him (most unnecessarily) to have a care of himself, and recommending him to call up a bodyguard of native Scots, that might attend him in all his huntings and games. We can not,” said they, but be much dismayed, and driven into a just fear thereby, to see these last frogs, foretold in the Apocalypse, thus sent out by the devil, and his supporters on earth, to execute their hellish directions upon God's own lieutenants; which damnable persons may think perhaps no time or occasion more probably and likely for achieving of such a villainy than when your majesty shall be at game abroad; at which time every one almost, albeit unknown, have heretofore been accustomed, upon pretence of seeing of the sport, to have more access near your sacred person than was expedient, which form can not hereafter continue without too much likelihood of danger and peril; and in so far as your majesty's guard are most of them unfit for any such purpose, and that in the time of your highness's progress, the pensioners have not been much accustomed to attend, we could therefore wish that some should be especially designed for this intent only, and to be exempted from all other service or attendance, other than their waiting upon your majesty's person in the time of your being abroad, at hunting, hawking, or any other pastime or game in the fields; who, being to the number of some twenty gentlemen, under the commandment and charge of that worthy nobleman, the captain of your majesty's guard, may be ever still attending your person, stopping and debarring all men from access, or coming in any sort near to your majesty, enduring your highness being abroad, except noblemen, your majesty's own known servants, and such others as it shall please your majesty to call upon." By the death of Henry IV. the crown of France fell to his son, Louis XIII.a weak boy, who never became a man in intellect or strength of character. During his minority, the post of regent was occupied by his mother, Mary de Medici, who soon undid the good which her husband had 1 Dalrymple. The lords of the Scottish council were too cautious to hint at the propriety of his majesty spending less time in his hunt ing, &c. They told him, on the contrary, that they knew it to be most necessary and expedient" for the preservation of his health, that he should continue his frequent exercises abroad, the deserting whereof could not be without the hazard and danger of insuring in firmity and sickness." They trusted "that He who holdeth the bridle in the devil's mouth would never so loosen the reins as to allow of any harm to him, the chief and greatest protector and nursing father of God's church." done to the French people, without reforming the morals of the court. It was her general system to pursue a course of politics directly contrary to that of Henry, who had been a most unfaithful husband; but, notwithstanding this system, she adhered to the Protestant league, and sent ten thousand men to join four thousand English who had landed on the continent, under the command of Sir Edward Cecil. These allies joined the Dutch and Germans under the commands of the Prince of Orange and the Duke of Anhalt. The Austrians were presently driven out of Juliers; and as the emperor was not in a condition to renew the struggle, and as James and Mary de Medici were most anxious for peace, the tranquillity of Europe was not very seriously disturbed. While these events were passing abroad and at home, Robert Carr, the handsome Scotchman, was eclipsing every competitor in the English court. He was created Viscount Rochester in the month of March, 1611; was made a member of the privy council in April, 1612; and he received also from his lavish master the Order of the Garter. Upon the death of the Earl of Salisbury (Cecil) he became lord chamberlain, that post being given up to him by the Earl of Suffolk, who succeeded Cecil as lord treasurer. And as the post of secretary remained vacant for a considerable time, the favorite did the duties of that office by means of Sir Thomas Overbury, whose abilities and experience made up in part for his own deficiences. Carr, Viscount Rochester, became in effect prime minister of England as much as Cecil had beeu,. though nominally he held no official situation; and his power and his influence were not decreased when the king nominated Sir Ralph Winwood and Sir Thomas Lake to be joint secretaries of state; for these men were not high and mighty enough to oppose the wishes of the favorite. But Sir Thomas Overbury, who, on several accounts, was distasteful to the king, became an object of his jealousy and hatred when James saw the entire confidence and affection which his minion reposed in him. Prince Henry, the heir to the crown, had now entered his eighteenth year, and had been for some time the idol of the people. If his character is fairly described by his cotemporaries, he was entitled to this admiration; but we can not but remember the universal practice of contrasting the heir apparent with the actual occupant of the. throne; and this prince's untimely end may very well have produced some of that exaggeration which arises out of tenderness and hopeless regret. In person, in manners, and in character, he differed most widely from his father. He was comely, well made, graceful, frank, brave, and active. Henry V. and Edward the Black Prince were proposed to him as models; and it was the example of those warlike princes that he determined to follow. Though not absolutely averse to learning, spending two or three hours a day in his study, he loved arms better than books. He employed a great part of his time in martial exercises, in } T handling the pike, throwing the bar, shooting with the bow, vaulting and riding. He was a particular lover of horses, and what belonged to them, but not fond of hunting like his father; and, when he engaged in it, it was rather for the pleasure of galloping his gallant steeds than for any which the dogs afforded him. It was not wonderful that he should have been annoyed by James's pedantry and schoolmaster manners. His mother is said to have encouraged this feeling, and to have represented to him, out of contempt for his father, that so much learning was inconsistent with the character of a great general and conqueror, which he ought to be. One day, as he was tossing the pike, when the French ambassador asked him whether he had any message for the king his master, Henry replied, "Tell him what I am now doing." He studied fortification, and at a very early age turned his attention to ships and sea matters. Sir Walter Raleigh, the brave and the scientific soldier and sailor, who was still languishing in the Tower, became an object of his enthusiastic admiration; and he was often heard to say that no other king but his father would keep such a bird in such a cage. All this was when he was a mere child. It is remarked by an old writer, that he was too soon a man to be long-lived. As he grew up, he practiced tilting, charging on horseback, and firing artillery. He caused new pieces of ordnance to be cast, with which he learned to shoot at a mark. He was no less careful in furnishing himself with great horses of the best breeds, which he imported from all countries. He delighted to converse with men of skill and experience in wars, whether natives or foreigners; and he entertained in his household a celebrated Dutch engineer, It is quite possible that all this warlike ardor and activity might have proved more fatal to his country than the pedantry and pusillanimity of his father; but the young spirits of England would hardly reflect on such a possibility. In other particulars, Prince Henry was strikingly and studiously contrasted with his parent. James could never be quiet in church time, having always an eagerness to be preaching himself: Henry was a most attentive hearer of sermons, and, instead of disputing with them, was wont to reward the preachers,-no uncertain road to popularity, James was a most profane swearer, Henry swore not at all; and he had boxes kept at his three houses- |