PAGE. 590. Battle of Camperdown 598. Seige of St. Jean d'Acre 604. Battle of Alexandria 608. Battle of the Baltic 610. Battle of Trafalgar 614. Death of Nelson 615. Pitt, 1806 620. Fox, 1806 625. On the Death of Nelson, Pitt, and Fox 629. Life and Manners in the Second Half of the Eighteenth 675. Accession of William IV., and Events Preceding the Passing of the first Reform Bill . 679. Passing of the first Reform Bill, and Cholera in England ALISON. HUGHES. ALISON. MAXWELL. CAMPBELL. SOUTHEY. SOUTHEY. ALISON. ALISON. SIR WALTER SCOTT. LORD MAHON. H. CLINTON. NAPIER. NAPIER. VARIOUS, AND SIBORNE. EDITOR. H. MARTINEAU. H. MARTINEAU. T. RAIKES. EDITOR. DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM AND T. RAIKES. H. MARTINEAU. JUSTIN MCCARTHY. EDITOR. H. MARTINEAU. A. W. KINGLAKE. HALF HOURS OF ENGLISH HISTORY. BOOK V. THE REIGN OF JAMES I. THE EDITOR. JAMES SIXTH OF SCOTLAND was the son of Mary Stuart, queen of Scots, and her husband, Lord Darnley, son of the Earl of Lennox, and Mary's cousin. James was born June 19, 1566, and succeeded to the English crown on the death of Elizabeth, 1605; inheriting it in right of his great-grandmother, Margaret, the eldest daughter of Henry VII. Cecil, the astute minister of Elizabeth, had long favoured James's claims, and at the queen's death had succeeded in securing in his own keeping the only possible claimant who might disturb the king of Scots' peaceful succession to the throne. This was the lady Arabella Stuart, a descendant of the same Margaret, by her second husband, the earl of Lennox. The legal right of the elder and royal branch was indisputable; but at that period of unsettled succession, there might have been those who would have preferred the English born Arabella to the Scottish James. But there was no sign at first of anyone disputing his succession, and the king was loyally, and even warmly received in his new kingdom. He was crowned at Westminster, July 25, the people of London being, however, forbidden to go to the Abbey to witness the festivities, on account of the plague then raging in the City. The first event in the new reign was the discovery by Cecil of two plots—one called the "Bye," and the other the "Main." In the former two secular priests of the Roman Catholic Church; lord Cobham; lord Grey of Wilton, a Puritan; sir Griffin Markham, a Roman Catholic; and George Brooke, brother of lord Cobham had engaged. Their purpose was to seize the person of the king on his way to Windsor, and detain him prisoner till he consented to grant perfect toleration of religion, to change his ministers, and to grant a free pardon to the conspirators. Sir Walter Raleigh, who had joined Cecil in ruining the noble Essex, was now to reap the fruit of that crime. Cecil had meantime become his deadly enemy, and now persuaded James to take from Raleigh a monopoly which he possessed of licensing taverns, and retailing wines throughout the kingdom, and to deprive him of the post of captain of the guard. Raleigh, enraged at this treatment, listened, it is believed, to the conspirators, but was not actively engaged in either plot. Nevertheless, he was brought to trial, and charged with having designed to place the Lady Arabella Stuart on the throne, with the assistance of France and Austria; the only evidence against him, however, being that of lord Cobham, a coward, whose word could certainly not be trusted. Raleigh's defence was wonderfully good and eloquent; yet in spite of the doubtful evidence against him, and his clear defence, he and all connected with or suspected of being in the plots were sentenced to death. The two priests were executed with circumstances of great cruelty, and George Brooke was ** 16 B beheaded; but towards the others James showed mercy, though he exhibited, in so doing, the foolish (and in this instance cruel) buffoonery which belonged to his character. He had the condemned men brought severally to the scaffold, then removed from it; brought back again altogether; and finally, when the bitterness of death had been thus tasted, they were informed that their lives were given them, but that they must remain prisoners in the Tower during the king's pleasure. This grim pleasantry was not practiced on Raleigh; and his life was also given him, but it was to be spent for years in captivity, and to be yielded up finally, under this very sentence, on the scaffold. Before his accession to the English throne, James had made solemn promises to the Roman Catholics that he would allow them the free exercise of their religion. But on acceding to power, he found that the spirit of the English people was so strongly roused by any attempts at relieving those whom they had chained by penal laws, in order to prevent (as they believed) a repetition of the fires of Smithfield, that he feared even to attempt the fulfilment of them. On the contrary, the bigoted parliament and people insisted on putting the laws against Papists into force, and James was too timid to refuse compliance. An actual persecution of the Romanists ensued. Their priests, if known, were executed as traitors; the exercise of their religious ceremonies was forbidden them; and heavy fines were imposed on any disobedience to this hard law. The injustice and injuries to which they were exposed, and the instigations of the Jesuit priests, who were stealing into every household, roused at last a spirit of bitter vengeance on their part. Robert Catesby, a gentlemen of wealth and position, contrived, and brought others of his own faith to join in, a conspiracy to bring swift destruction on their enemies by means of the well-known Gunpowder Plot. Happily, Guy Fawkes (who was charged with laying the train which was to destroy king, lords, and commons at a blow) was found on the spot ere the dreadful deed was executed; the plot having been betrayed enigmatically to lord Mounteagle by a friend. Severer laws against the Catholics, and the death of its contrivers, was the sole result of this merciless conspiracy. The character of James had by this time revealed itself to his astonished subjects, who found that their really learned sovereign utterly lacked common sense. He was extravagant beyond all precedent; was always in want of money; so much so, that in the third year of his reign he could not pay his servants, nor provide decent food for his household; though he squandered large sums on his favourites, and on court masques and entertainments. Cecil, who had been created earl of Salisbury, and became in 1608 prime minister, in fact, if not in name, sought vainly to supply the needs of his spendthrift sovereign. On becoming lord treasurer he found that the king's debts amounted to £1,300,000, while his ordinary expenditure exceeded his income by £81,000 yearly. Cecil appealed to the parliament to grant the crown a fixed yearly revenue, promising in return for it the redress of every grievance, and the abandonment of all other modes of obtaining money; but he could not induce the commons to listen to him. The parliament dissolved without passing a single act, and Cecil's death has been ascribed to the mortifications he experienced from its treatment, and the pecuniary embarassments of the government. When we consider the character of James, and the circumstances of the time, we can well believe that the aged minister should have uttered the words he is said to have spoken at this time. "Ease and pleasure quake to hear of death; but my life, full of cares and miseries, desireth to be dissolved." He died, worn out and wretched, at Marlborough, May 24, 1612. Before his death the unhappy Arabella Stuart had married, had been separated from her husband, and had died mad in the Tower, James devoted the greater part of his time to hunting; the rest to theological disputations with his pen. He was really possessed of a good fund of information, and was by no means a bad classical scholar, but his acquired knowledge contrasted whimsically with his folly, which continually exposed him to contempt. His fondness for worthless favourites tended, also, to disgust his people, who could not but contrast his rude dissolute court with the decorous and stately one of their wise Elizabeth. While Cecil lived the king's mania for favourites was kept in some check; after his death a most unworthy one, Robert Carr, whom the king had created viscount Rochester, was put virtually by the king in the place of his great minister, and became absolute master of the sovereign. Rochester, unhappily, fell in love with lady Essex-Frances Howard—and endeavoured at her suggestion to get her divorced from her husband, the young earl, in order to marry her himself. His friend, the gifted sir Thomas Overbury, urged him strongly not to marry a woman of so bad a character, objecting, "the baseness of the woman;" these fatal words were weakly repeated to lady Essex, who from that moment vowed Overbury's destruction. By her contrivance, aided by her iniquitous father and uncles, Overbury was offered by the king the post of envoy to Russia, and was not unwilling to accept it: but Rochester, whose adviser and guide he had hitherto been, besought him to refuse it for his sake, "not to leave him," and Overbury consented. James was then persuaded that the refusal was an act of insolence and disobedience, and Overbury was committed to the Tower as a traitor. Here he was slowly and cruelly poisoned by the creatures of Frances Howard; by this time married to Rochester, whom (for her sake) the king had created earl of Somerset. She used as her tools a certain Mrs. Turner-an old dependent of her family-and Franklin, an apothecary, who supplied the drugs to Weston, the keeper of Overbury's apartments. Thus in the royal prison the crime was achieved with (they supposed) perfect safety, the lieutenant of the Tower, sir William Wade, having been removed, and Sir Jervis Elois or Elwes, substituted in his place for the purpose of carrying out the crime. He neglected his dress; he and silent; and James was The enemies of the Howards Then secretary Winwood But the conscience of Somerset would not sleep. His love for his old friend revived, and he became a prey to remorse and anguish. bore on his brow the mark of Cain; he grew dull wearied and disgusted by his favourite's moodiness. were on the watch. They introduced to the king a young man far handsomer and more graceful than Somerset, who was also gay and amusing. The king was charmed with him, and at once bestowed his fickle favour on George Villiers, afterwards the well-known duke of Buckingham. ventured to whisper to the king, that Somerset and his wife were murderers. Elwes was sent for and examined by James, and ultimately the king gave Somerset up to justice. The crime was proved in all its dreadful details, and the inferior agents, Mrs. Turner, Franklin, Weston, and Elwes were hanged. The Somersets were pardoned (it is believed because Somerset held some secret of the king which James feared he would reveal on the scaffold), but were compelled to withdraw from the court, and to spend the miserable remnant of their lives together alone in sullen hatred and remorse. From the time of the fall of Somerset George Villiers, created a peer, remained the ruling favourite till the king's death. James married Anne of Denniark, and had three children: Henry, Charles, and Elizabeth. Of these Henry was the idol of the nation, being as opposed to his father in character as it is possible to conceive. But this promising prince died of putrid fever at the age of eighteen, leaving the unhappy heritage of the English crown to his brother Charles. Elizabeth, the daughter, was married to the Count |