Law. district. It also placed restrictions on the practice of labourers removing from one district to another in search of higher wages. In the time of Edward VI. the clergy were ordered to exhort their parishioners to provide by their liberality for the maintenance of their own poor. This not proving efficient, officers were appointed to assess the in- The Poor habitants of the parish, and to demand the payment on pain of being censured by the magistrates; and finally, compulsion being found necessary, the law was consolidated into the great Poor Law of 1601, which provided that in every parish the churchwarden, and from two to four householders should be nominated by the justices of the peace as overseers of the poor. These persons might levy a rate on land and use it: first, to set to work indigent children, and able-bodied men out of work; second, to relieve people who could not work and had no near relatives to support them; and third, to erect houses of correction for vagabonds, and to put out pauper children as apprentices. This Act formed the basis of the Poor Law till 1834. The last two years of Elizabeth's life were marked by no political event of first-rate importance. The war with Spain still dragged on, but took mainly the form of privateering. In Ireland Essex's Conclusion of the reign. successor, Mountjoy, distinguished himself by defeating Tyrone, who was pardoned. At court the chief attention of statesmen was given to securing their own fortunes under Elizabeth's successor. That successor, it was now quite understood, would be James of Scotland, for the claim of the Suffolk family was forgotten, and the advantage of uniting England and Scotland under one crown was obvious to everybody. Until 1602 Elizabeth had preserved her regular health; but during the autumn of that year she failed fast, and in March 1603 her long and successful reign came to a close. In estimating the merits of a sovereign it is always difficult to apportion praise and blame between the crown and its ministers; but in Elizabeth's case it may fairly be said that where she differed from her ministers, events almost invariably showed that she was right, and, what is still more remarkable, she contrived that even the very weaknesses of her character should play their part in the attainment of what she considered the national good. The Main and Bye Plots-The religious question-Parliament-The Gunpowder Plot-Financial and constitutional difficulties of James-Death of RaleighThe Thirty Years' War-Buckingham-the Spanish Match. sion. On the death of Elizabeth, James VI. of Scotland became king of England and Ireland by right of descent from his great-grandmother, Margaret, daughter of Henry VII. According to the will of The AccesHenry VIII. (see p. 426), Elizabeth should have been succeeded by William Seymour, the grandson of the earl of Hertford, and of Katharine Grey, younger sister of Lady Jane; but the legitimacy of their marriage was in dispute, and he had no party behind him. Indeed, had Elizabeth been willing, parliament would gladly have named James heir-apparent, but Elizabeth resented the mention of the subject, and only on her deathbed had indicated 'her cousin of Scotland' as her heir. Character. At his accession James was thirty-seven years of age. He had been king from babyhood, and had most exaggerated ideas of the rights of sovereigns. Great as had been the personal respect exacted The King's by the Tudors, and high-handed as had been their conduct, the Tudor sovereigns had never troubled themselves much about the theory of government. Absolute monarchs, indeed, they claimed to be— that is, free from the control of pope or emperor, or of any external |