JAMES I., of England, and VI., of Scotland, was the only son of Mary, Queen of Scots, by her second husband, Darnley, who was the grandson of Margaret Tudor, through whom the Scottish line claimed the succession to the English crown. "Solomon the Second," as he was called by his obsequious courtiers, or the "wisest fool in Christendom," as he was styled by Henry IV., of France, was withal a man of shrewd parts and considerable learning; but he was mean, vulgar and undignified, and never really understood his English subjects. His overweening conceit in his own wisdom, and his fixed idea that he ruled by "divine right," and was responsible to no earthly power, led to those incessant disputes with the Commons which culminated so tragically in the reign of his son, Charles I.

The first act of James's reign was to put an end to the Spanish War; but the most important question he had to decide, was one of religious toleration. A memorable conference was held at Hampton Court in 1604, at which four Puritan ministers, the king, some twenty bishops and a large number of courtiers were present. Everything was quietly discussed till some one mentioned the word "presbytery;" then the king lost his temper and treated the conference to an animated specimen of royal logic, the burden of which was:

"No bishop, no king." He needed the bishops to prevent the clergy from gaining ascendancy over the crown. After hearing the royal speech, Bancroft, bishop of London, blessed God on his knees for having sent them such a monarch. The Puritans were flatly told to conform or leave the church. This Hampton Court Conference led the king to order a revised translation of the Bible to be made. This Authorized Version, published in 1611, and still in common use, has, by its power and beautiful diction, contributed more than any other work to the formation and maintenance of the English language in its strength and simplicity.

When Parliament met in the following March, there was a large sprinkling of Puritan members who showed their dissatisfaction with the king's late decision; the king also showed his dissatisfaction with the members for their opposition to his scheme of a union with Scotland; the session closed with a quarrel between king and Commons. Before the end of that year, some three hundred of the clergy who refused to conform were deprived of their livings.

Severer laws were also passed against the Roman Catholics; some of the priests were banished, and a sum of £20 a month was levied on "recusants," that is, Catholics who refused to attend the Church of England services. Such severe measures led to the conception of the deep-laid plot of the "Gunpowder Treason," which was attended with many romantic and dramatic incidents. Both Puritans and Catholics had looked to James for toleration; but he hated Puritans; they were too much like the Presbyterians who had given him trouble in Scotland; and then both Puritans and Presbyterians combined their influence in urging measures against the Catholics.

Parliament met again in 1606, and James, as before, brought up his scheme of union with Scotland, and even proposed free trade between the countries. Again he was thwarted in his design, but succeeded in obtaining a decision from the judges by which his Scotch subjects born after his accession to the English throne could become naturalized and hold land in England.

To this reign belongs the first successful attempt to colonize Virginia. Raleigh had sent out colonists as early as

1585; but they either returned to their native shores to escape starvation, or fell under the tomahawks of the Indians in their new home. About 1607 other colonists were sent out, and after undergoing unspeakable hardships, at length founded the prosperous tobacco-planting colony of Virginia. (See Vol. III., p. 288.) Another charter had been granted to the Plymouth Company for the colonization of North Virginia, a name afterwards changed by Captain John Smith to New England. The founders of this northern colony, later known as Massachusetts, were the hundred Pilgrims who landed from the "Mayflower" in 1620. They consisted of a number of Nottinghamshire Puritans, who, feeling themselves grievously oppressed in England, and seeing no chance of ever being allowed to meet and worship in their own way, determined to leave the country altogether. At first they settled in Holland; but after twelve years, fearing that their children might lose their nationality by intermarriage with the Dutch, they again set sail across the Atlantic for a new home, and with the Bible for their law and brotherhood for their charter, paved the way for those who came after to create the great American nation. (See Vol. II., p. 340.)

It was not in matters of religion only that the king and the Commons could not agree. James, like so many of his predecessors, made favorites of men whom the people could not respect, worthless in themselves, and owing whatever doubtful importance they had to their position near the king. Lawyers and ministers had to bribe their way through them to high offices. Chief-Justice Montague had to pay £20,000 for his office. Scotch favorites had the ascendancy, much to the disgust of English aspirants. George Hume, Earl of Dunbar; Philip, Earl of Montgomery and Pembroke; James Hay, Earl of Carlisle, had all in succession been court minions. Next to these came Robert Carr, a handsome young Scotchman, who quickly succeeded to the titles of Viscount Rochester and Earl of Somerset. After Somerset's ignominious downfall, George Villiers, more splendid than any of his predecessors, succeeded to the unenviable notoriety of court favorite, and the title of the Duke of Buckingham. This last maintained to the end his ascendancy over the king, and exerted

a still stronger influence over young Charles, the heir-apparent to the throne.

Amongst such favorites as these James distributed lands and money with a lavish hand. He knew nothing about economy in his domestic affairs, and was always in financial embarrassment. Hence he found himself reduced to various unworthy and unconstitutional methods of raising money. A merchant named Bate, on one occasion challenged his right to levy an imposition on currants, which had already been taxed by Elizabeth. The Court of Exchequer, however, which was the constitutional exponent of the law, held that the king had the right by his own sovereign authority to levy such duties, and Cecil, the Lord Treasurer, at once levied new impositions to the amount of £700,000 a year, on the plea that more money was required on account of the troubles in Ireland. It is worthy of notice that James's high-handed policy in Irish affairs was the means of sowing the seeds of disaffection and dissensions which have borne a most plentiful crop of thorns for all his successors, and raised questions of state policy which have not yet found their solution. His idea was to gain the good-will of the tribes by promising them protection against the power of the tribal chiefs. But the tribes had little confidence in his promises; and the chiefs resented the interference. The Earls of Tyrone and Tyrconnell, the chiefs of the Ulster tribes, rose in rebellion, and at first showed a stout front of resistance, but were obliged to take refuge in Spain. James confiscated six counties as if they had been held by the chiefs according to the English law of feudal tenure, and peopled them with Scotch and English colonists.

James was a sincere lover of peace, and was anxious to pose as the peace-maker of Europe. He had sense enough to see that the devastating wars on the continent could be avoided by religious tolerance on the part of the contending parties. With this pacific policy in view, he sought alliances for his family among the influential powers of the continent. In 1613 he married his daughter Elizabeth to the Elector Palatine, Frederick V., and wished to make friends with the Spanish by marrying his eldest son, Henry, to the Infanta of Spain,

while Charles, who was yet young, was to be mated from the court of France. His hopes were sadly frustrated. In 1612 Prince Henry died in the eighteenth year of his age. This young prince had given promise of more than ordinary talent; he was expert in military exercises and the management of artillery; his language was pure, and his conduct without stain. These qualities, contrasting so strongly with those of his father, endeared him to the people.

After the dissolution of the Addled Parliament, 1614, James was in great want of money, and thinking the Spanish Princess would have a richer dower than the French, he became anxious to marry his son Charles to the daughter of Philip III., of Spain; but finding that this could not be effected without a guarantee for the religious liberty of the Roman Catholics in England, the project was allowed to drop.

One of the greatest blots on James's character is the execution of Sir Walter Raleigh, who from the first year of the reign had been confined in the Tower, where he employed his time in writing a "History of the World" for the instruction of his young friend and admirer, Prince Henry. The death of that promising youth broke the captive's interest in his work. After Buckingham came into power, Raleigh's friends began to speak of a gold mine which he had discovered in Guiana. The story reached the king, who, being always in want of money, set him at liberty to make the voyage to America, but also told him not to fight the Spaniards, or he would pay for it with his head. Raleigh did not find the mine, but lost his son in a skirmish with the Spaniards. Then, not wishing to return empty-handed, he projected the seizure of a Spanish treasure-ship, but his crew mutinied; he returned to England broken-hearted and was beheaded under his former sentence. (See Vol. I., p. 66.)

During this reign the Thirty Years' War commenced, which lasted till the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. The immediate cause was a revolution in Bohemia, where the Protestant nobility had deposed their Catholic king, Ferdinand II., and elected in his stead Frederick, the Calvinist Elector Palatine, who had married Elizabeth, James's daughter. This gave the English king a personal interest in the war.

The king of