Another eye-witness of the last moments of this injured man has stated, that every one who saw Sir Walter Raleigh die, said it was impossible for any man to show more decorum, courage, or piety; and that his death would do more hurt to the faction that sought it, than ever his life could have done *." On the scaffold Raleigh was sustained by the same elevated courage. In a dispassionate address he vindicated or explained several points of his conduct, especially in the enterprize for which, though not ostensibly, he was now called to suffer. Of the matters charged upon him in 1603 he said nothing, as every one knew that the real causes of his death were of a much more recent date. Among the friends who attended him were the Earls of Pembroke, Arundel, and Northampton. Having taken leave of these persons he inquired for the axe, and feeling its keen edge, observed with a smile, "It is a sharp medicine, but a cure for all ills." He then laid his head upon the block, his last words being those addressed to the dilatory headsman, as he said "Why dost thou not strike? Strike, man!" His body continued unmoved, while, with two blows, the head was separated from it. Raleigh had reached the sixty-sixth year of his age. He left one son, who some years after was presented at court, but the conscience of the king described him as the ghost of his father, and the young man passed his time on the continent until the next reign. The declaration" with respect to the case of Raleigh, subsequently issued with the sanction of the monarch, was altogether an ex-parte statement, put forth solely with a view to lessen the odium which the transaction had brought on the sovereign and on all concerned in it. Nothing had occurred to show that Raleigh would have conducted himself otherwise than peaceably, had the Spaniards abstained from becoming the aggressors. What followed was no matter for punishment. That he sincerely hoped to obtain access to the precious metals in Guiana is highly probable; and his policy appears to have been, to leave this country in circumstances, that, in case of failure on that point, it might be in his power to give existence to an English settlement in those regions. This he was entitled to do by the right of discovery-the Spaniards of St. Thomas being in fact the real intruders-unless we admit & special authority in the pope to cede the known or the unknown territories of the earth to his spiritual children at pleasure †. Criminal Trials, i. 511-from a letter in the State Paper Office, + Hume's elaborate defence of the conduct of James in this disgraceful transaction is founded on the allegations of the declaration referred to, which the historian represents as a document of " undoubted credit," and as "subscribed by six privy councillors." Upon inquiry, however, it appears that no one of the privy council signed this paper, nor is there any evidence that it obtained their sanction. The declaration is preserved in the Harleian Miscellany, vol. iii. n. 2, and consists of nothing more than an argument artfully managed in favour of the king, and which was published by royal authority. Concerning the general character of such documents, see pp. 48, 49, note. On the whole we must place the execution of Sir Walter Raleigh among the many occurrences in the reign of James the First, which attach so much disgrace to the character of that monarch, and render the period during which he swayed the sceptre of England the most dishonourable in its history. No one can pretend, with any ingenuousness, that Raleigh was brought to the scaffold on account of the charges said to have been proved against him in 1603, or in consequence of the accusations, still more vague and contemptible, which were preferred against him in 1618. He was feared and hated by the King of Spain, and for that cause he was put to death. This, as we have seen, was admitted by the minister of the English monarch, who pleaded it as a merit in his master, that he had deprived himself of as useful a man as served any prince in Christendom, and one whose preservation would have been highly acceptable to his subjects, simply as a means of perpetuating his friendship with the King of Spain. Fifteen years had passed since the verdict now to be enforced against Raleigh was pronounced, and nothing but a sense of its gross injustice had prevented its being acted upon before. And what is remarkable, that verdict referred to alleged acts of collusion and friendly dealings with Spain, while the execution of the sentence to which it exposed the accused party was now called for on the pretence of an act of hostility against that country. Raleigh indeed is not the first English subject whose life must be regarded as sacrificed to political objects; but in his case there was a surrender of the sword of English justice into the hands of a foreign prince, which, in its meanness and pusillanimity, was without precedent. There was enough assuredly in these proceedings to warrant the language of Mr. Justice Gawdy, when affirming that "the justice of England had never been so degraded and injured as by the condemnation of Sir Walter Raleigh*." Ireland. From the death of Raleigh, the most unpopular event in the reign of James I., we may turn to the policy of this monarch with Government regard to Ireland, the part of his conduct in which there is of James in most to approve, though not so much perhaps as is sometimes represented, Until the accession of Elizabeth, the wars between the natives of Ireland and the English, had resulted altogether from a desire of ascendency on the one side, and from a love of independence on the other. But under the last Tudor sovereign this struggle became one of religion as well as of general freedom. The pope had been long acknowledged by the chiefs and vassals of Ireland as lord paramount of that kingdom, with respect both to its spiritual and temporal affairs. But Elizabeth, who sought to impose the protestant faith on that tributary * Criminal Trials. i. 519, 520. In 1620 one Roger North and others contemplated a settlement in the part of Guiana bordering on the Amazon river, and obtained a charter of incorporation for the purpose. But James, again influenced by the fear of Spain, revoked the commission; and as North still prosecuted his object, a proclamation was issued, calling upon all persons to treat the adventurer and his followers as culprits, and to bring them to justice. Anderson's Hist. Commerce, ii. 5. country, was a 'princess whom the papal power had excommunicated. To retain the Irish catholics in any semblance of allegiance to a sovereign so circumstanced, must naturally have required the utmost watchfulness and vigour. State of the lics. On the accession of James, the minds of the people had become somewhat familiar with the notion that civil obedience might be a duty, even though the sceptre should be swayed by a heretic; and the new monarch, moreover, against whom no sentence of deposition or excommunication had gone forth, was a descendant, through the line of Fergus, from the ancient kings of Erin. During the reign of Elizabeth, the laws against the Catholic worship had been of necessity but very partially enforced; nor was it without considerable policy and spirit that Mountjoy, the lord deputy, succeeded in crushing the beginning of violent measures in its favour, on the death of that princess. There were weekly fines that might be imposed on all who failed to attend the Protestant worship on the Lord's day. And there was an oath recognizing the king as supreme in all matters ecclesiastical as well as civil, that might be tended before any person could hold the office of magistrate, sue out the livery of his lands, plead at the bar, or acquire literary honours. But these oppressive statutes belonged to a rude system of government, which left the execution of them to be regulated by circumstances, and more commonly by the temper or caprice of individuals. This, as we have seen, was the case, in a great degree, with such enactments in England, but it was much more so in Ireland. This practical lenity of the English government taught the Catholics of Ireland to petition the new monarch for a toleration of their worship, and they were much surprised on hearing that the king had described their customs as idolatrous, and contrary to his conscience; and that four of their deputies were sent to the Tower, that they might learn to be less presumptuous. A similar fate awaited Sir Patrick Barnewell, who, a little later, appeared in the same character, deprecating the severities introduced during the alarm which followed the detection of the Gunpowder Conspiracy. But James was an unwilling actor in these proceedings, and soon issued his "commission of graces," which, by mitigating the previous severities, served to lessen the feeling of dis content. Great im the laws respecting These graces were meant to prepare the way for some important changes in the laws of Ireland, with a view to their nearer provement in assimilation to those of England. Almost the only penalty attached to offences by the customs of that island, consisted in mulcts or fines, regulated by the supposed nature of the offence, and the station of the offender. Even the murderer might secure himself by means of these pecuniary compensations. offences and property. In the distribution of property, the usage known by the name of gavelkind prevailed, which required that at the death of a parent his substance should be divided in equal portions among the male children of his sept or family, whether legitimate or not. It also vested the chief with so much power of re-distribution with respect to the possessions of families on other deaths, that all individual property in the soil was destroyed, each man being left to no better motive in labouring to improve his lands or buildings than what arose from a regard to his clan, scarcely anything being really at his own disposal. This pernicious custom was connected with a kindred usage known by the name of Tanistry, according to which the Irish chieftains exacted a sort of revenue from the members of their clan in the shape of produce, called casherings, sessings, rents of butter and oatmeal, and the like, the proportions of which were determined much more by the power or pleasure of the chieftain or landlord than by any known law. James abolished these rude customs, and introduced laws which connected more adequate penalties with offences, which empowered the possessors of property to dispose of it more according to the usage of England, and substituted a fixed payment in rent in the place of the irregular exactions of the Tanists. In this manner vice was more effectively checked; the influence of the chiefs and the ties of clanship were broken; while each man experienced the stimulus to exertion which can only result from a consciousness of being secured in possession of its legitimate fruits. That these measures did not remove all the old evils of Ireland, and that they produced others before unknown, is but too certain; the benefits, however, which resulted from them were many and considerable, and much credit is due to the intelligence and feeling in which they originated*. Plantation of Another project which occupied the attention of the monarch was the colonization of Ulster, a large province, nearly the whole of which, in consequence of the attainder of certain rebel lords, had fallen to the crown. The lands were accordingly divided into lots of a thousand, fifteen hundred, and two thousand acres each. The larger lots were disposed of to such settlers as came from England or Scotland, and who were persons of capital; the smaller were open to be possessed by them or by the natives. But it was so ordered that the hills and fastnesses should be secured to the new colonists, the natives being situated in the plains. By this means the most turbulent province in Ireland was converted into the most peaceful and prosperous, and made to operate as a permanent check on the tendencies to disorder through a considerable portion of the kingdom t. The success of this experiment induced James to attempt extending Sir John Davis's Discovery, 166–278. Davis, 280. Desirata curiosa Hiberniæ. Address, ii. 296. Evils attend it to other provinces. But these subsequent measures fell ing subsequent into the hands of a rapacious and unprincipled agency, proceedings. and proved injurious rather than beneficial. Inquiries were instituted as to the titles on which lands were held, which served to show that if the forms of law were insisted on, the possessions of the most established natives of Ireland would be found, with very rare exceptions, to be wholly at the mercy of the crown. The immediate effect of this discovery was, a demand that these defective titles should be surrendered in order that the occupiers might receive more valid documents in their room; and it was enjoined by the king that this important exchange should not be allowed to occasion a loss to any proprietor of more than one fourth of the lands so possessed. But many were sufferers much beyond that extent, even to their last acre; and so numerous, and often so flagrant, were the cases of hardship, that the benefit conferred on Ireland by what had been done in Ulster was perhaps more than outweighed in that bitter sense of wrong which was spread over a much wider space by these later innovations. Between the strangers thus introduced and the older inhabitants, nothing better was to be expected than the feud and bloodshed which followed *. CHAPTER IX. Ecclesiastical affairs-Proceedings in Scotland-Small progress of episcopacyJames visits that kingdom-impolicy of his proceedings-England-the Catholics-the Puritans-primacy of Bancroft-attack on the High Commission Court-nature of that court-Progress of separation from the Established Church-two classes of Puritans-their doctrine respecting the province of the magistrate in regard to religion-Primacy of Abbot-New translation of the Scriptures-Legate and Wightman put to death on a charge of heresy-The Book of Sports-Passive obedience-Calvinistic tenets discountenance dat court -Rise of the doctrinal Puritans-Origin of the Brownists-their notions concerning ecclesiastical polity-the Church of England-their loyalty Notice of Robert Brown-Number of the Brownists-their confession of faith-they become exiles-Origin of the Independents. OUR last notice of ecclesiastical affairs related to the proceedings immediately consequent on the debate at Hampton Court, and on the discovery of the Gunpowder Conspiracy. It will now be proper to review the state of religion, and of religious parties, from that period to the close of the present reign. The reader may compare the account given of these transactions by Hume with the more circumstantial one furnished by Dr. Lingard (ix. 187-212), and by making some allowance for) the prejudices of both, he will probably arrive at the substantial truth. |