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JAMES was thirty-seven years old, when by the death of Elizabeth he was raised to the English throne, and thus united the whole island under one sovereign. His character was an odd mixture of sense and folly, which it is very difficult to describe. He had a natural shrewdness and sagacity, with a great share of vanity and conceit; and he made even his learning, which was considerable, appear

ridiculous by his pedantry and pomposity. With all this he had a great deal of childish simplicity; and there was an openness of temper about him, which, though it might be reckoned a virtue, yet made him quite unfit to control the jealousies which arose between his English and Scotch subjects. He had no enlargement of mind; and though a good-natured and easy tempered man, he was a bad politician and an indifferent king.

His person was awkward, and his manners uncouth, and without dignity; and these defects, together with his broad Scotch accent, soon made him an object of contempt to those who had been accustomed to the stately majesty of Elizabeth.

James had married Anne, daughter of the king of Denmark, whose person and deportment are described as having been very homely and unprepossessing. They had three children at the time of James's accession. The eldest, Henry, was a fine promising boy of nine years old; the second child was named Elizabeth; and Charles, the youngest, a boy of four years old, was so sickly and rickety, that not one of the ladies of the court liked to take charge of him, fearing lest he should die under her care.

James, though surrounded on his arrival in England by Scotch nobles, all greedy of English honours, still retained many of Elizabeth's ministers in their places. The most distinguished of these was Cecil lord Salisbury, son of the great

lord Burleigh, who possessed much of his father's capacity, but without his integrity.

One of the first acts of the king was to restore the family of Howard, and some others who had suffered in his mother's cause, to their estates and honours.

A conspiracy was soon afterwards formed to place on the throne the lady Arabella Stuart. This lady was the daughter of a brother of lord Darnley, the king's father; consequently she was his first cousin, and equally descended with himself from Henry VII. Her mother was an English lady of the Cavendish family, and she had been brought up amongst her mother's relations in great privacy. She was neither qualified nor desirous to be a queen, and was totally ignorant of the conspiracy. The plot was soon discovered, and three persons were executed. Sir Walter Raleigh, who had been accused of sharing in it, but whose guilt was not proved, was condemned to death, but reprieved, and afterwards remained in prison many years.

The Roman Catholics had expected great indulgence from James for his mother's sake; but they found, to their great disappointment, that he was no less steady than Elizabeth had been to the cause of the Protestants; and to this disappointment was owing the well-known Gunpowder Plot, which had its first rise in 1604. Catesby and Percy, two Catholic gentlemen, being in conversation on public affairs, Percy, in great heat, said something

about assassinating the king. The other replied, that his single death would do them little good, and that they must also get rid of the lords and commons: he then suggested the possibility of laying a train of gunpowder under the parliament house, which would blow them up all together. Percy approved of the project: it was also agreed to communicate it to a few other persons; and they sent into Flanders in quest of Guy Fawkes, a man of known courage and zeal, then serving in the Spanish army, who they knew would be actively

useful in the execution of their scheme.

This plot was brewing all the spring. In the summer, the conspirators hired, in Percy's name, a house adjoining to the house of lords, and began to undermine the wall between the two. After they had carried on their work some time, they learnt that a vault which had been used as a coal vault, and which was immediately under the house of lords, was to be let. Percy hired it, and secretly placed in it thirty-six barrels of gunpowder, and concealed them with faggots and billets of wood. Every thing being now ready, it was resolved that some of the conspirators should seize and kill the little prince Charles; and that others should get possession of the princess Elizabeth, and proclaim her queen, on the same day on which the king and queen, with their eldest son, were to be present at the opening of the parliament. Thus confident were they of destroying their victims.

This secret, though intrusted to above twenty persons, had been faithfully kept for near a year and a half; during which period the execution was delayed from time to time by the repeated adjournments of parliament; and the bigotry of these men stifled all compunction at the thoughts of destroying so many of their fellow-creatures. A few days before the meeting of parliament, lord Monteagle received the following letter, written in an unknown hand:-"My lord; out of the love I bear to some of your friends, I have a care of your preservation; therefore, I advise you, as you tender your life, to devise some excuse to shift off your attendance at this parliament, for God and man have concurred to punish the wickedness of this time: and think not slightly of this advertisement; but retire yourself into your country, where you may expect the event in safety; for though there is no appearance of any stir, yet I say they will receive a terrible blow this parliament, and yet they shall not see who hurts them. This counsel is not to be contemned, because it may do you good, and can do you no harm: for the danger is past as soon as you have burnt the letter. And I hope God will give you grace to make good use of it, to whose holy protection I commend you."

Monteagle knew not what to think of this letter, and showed it to lord Salisbury, who was not inclined to pay much attention to it; heless, laid it before the king.

but who, never

The king had

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