rich mines in Guiana. This which, if not law, humanity at least ought to have interpreted into a pardon of his offence, was however not so understood by the monarch, whose heart had no great portion of the generous feelings. Raleigh's expedition was unsuccessful; the court of Spain complained of an attack which he had made upon one of their settlements. James wished to be at peace with Spain, and Raleigh at his return was ordered to be beheaded on his former sentence.

In the second year of this reign was framed another plot of a more dangerous nature, and one of the most infernal that ever entered into the human breast to conceive-the Gunpowder Treason. The circumstances of this conspiracy, which had for its object to cut off at one blow the king and the whole body of the parliament, are so generally known as to need no detail. It had originated from the disgust and disappointment of the Catholics, who, on the accession of James, the son of a Catholic, had formed to themselves illusive hopes of the establishment of their religion. It was discovered from a circumstance of private friendship; for, strange as it may appear, such hellish designs are not always incompatible with a degree of the social and benevolent affections. The conduct of the king in the punishment of this conspiracy was an instance of moderation, if not humanity. The majority of his people would have gladly seen an utter extinction of the whole Catholics in the kingdom. But James confined the vengeance of the laws to those only who were actually engaged in the plot a measure which was by many of his subjects construed into a tacit inclination to

favour the Popish superstitions-an idea, of which the absurdity was yet greater than its illiberality. It was perhaps the small share which James had of the affections of his people that produced his attachment to particular favourites. Robert Carr, whom he created Earl of Somerset, had no other pretensions to recommend him but a graceful person and a good address. He was a weak and an unprincipled man. He fell from the king's favour on conviction of his being guilty of a crime for which he should have suffered an ignominious death-the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury. Somerset had married the Countess of Essex-a most debauched woman, who, to accomplish this marriage, had procured a divorce from the Earl of Essex, in which she had found a chief obstacle in Sir Thomas Overbury, a confidant of Somerset. This flagitious woman now prevailed on her husband, Somerset, to have Overbury removed by poison, which they accomplished in a most barbarous manner, by feeding him daily for some months with poisoned victuals, while confined, through the means of Somerset, in the Tower. For this murder Somerset and his countess were condemned to suffer death, but they both received the king's pardon *. His place was supplied by George Villiers, afterwards Duke of Buckingham, on whom the king, in the space of a few years, lavished all possible

*State Trials, vol. i.; and Sir Fulke Greville's Five Years of King James, in the Harleian Miscellany, vol. vii. Mallet, in his Life of Bacon, takes up the calumnious report, which was spread by some of the king's enemies, that James was privy to the murder of Overbury; but the.circumstances of presumption which he mentions are quite inconclusive.

honours: : yet this man was devoid of every talent of a minister; he was headstrong in his passions, imprudent, impolitic, and capricious. He was distinguished by a romantic spirit which led him into the most extravagant excesses; and the indulgence of his favourite passions had their influence even upon the public measures of the nation. He projected an absurd expedition of Charles, the Prince of Wales, into Spain, on a visit, in disguise, to the Infanta, the daughter of Philip IV., who had been proposed to him as a desirable match. Their adventures on this expedition have more the air of romance than of history; but Buckingham was the hero of the piece. He filled all Madrid with his intrigues, his amours, serenades, challenges, and jealousies. He insulted the prime minister Oli. varez by openly making love to his wife, as he did afterwards with still more folly and insolence to the Queen of France; in short, the projected match with the Infanta seemed to be the least object of Buckingham's journey, and it accordingly was never concluded.

The pacific inclinations of James I., though they contributed in the main to the happiness of his subjects, were unfavourable to the glory and honour of the nation. James had some talents which would have qualified him to shine in a private station; but he had none of the distinguishing virtues of a monarch. His conduct towards his son-in-law, the Elector Palatine, then dispossessed of his dominions by the Emperor Ferdinand II., has been generally and most justly censured as mean, dastardly, and inglorious. The whole nation would have gladly armed in defence of the fugitive

prince, and repeated addresses were made by parliament to incite James to make a vigorous effort in his behalf. He was at length compelled to send a feeble armament to the continent without sufficient preparations for its support. Famine and a pestilential distemper cut off one half of the troops, and the other were too weak to be of any service. This was the only attempt towards a military expedition during the reign of James I., who soon after died in the fifty-ninth year of his age, after he had swayed the sceptre of England for twenty-two years, and that of Scotland from his

cradle.

We have shortly taken notice of some of those maxims of government adopted during the reign of Elizabeth and her predecessors-the high stretches of the prerogative of the crown, and that tone of despotic authority used by the sovereign to the parliament, which seemed by the general consent of the nation to be then understood as agreeable to the constitution of England. But this was a false idea the actual government and the constitution are two things extremely different. The rights of the subject, though long forgotten and neglected, were not extinguished: they were overlooked during the wars with France and the civil commotions between the houses of York and Lancaster; they were overpowered under the artful and splendid despotism of the house of Tudor; but under the first sovereign of the house of Stuart, the nation began gradually to awake from its lethargy ; a few threw back their eyes to the ancient charters of freedom, to which the impolitic discourses of the prince had called their attention; and in the reign

of his son we shall now see that spirit completely roused, which was not to be satisfied with the attainment of more than ancient liberty-a spirit highly laudable in its first exertions, but fatal and even deplorable afterwards in its immediate consequences.

It may be allowed, on an impartial estimate of the character and personal qualities of Charles I., that had the nation in his reign entertained no higher ideas of the liberty of the subject, or of the powers of parliament, than those which prevailed during the two preceding centuries, this prince would have reigned with high popularity. It was his misfortune to fill the throne of England at the period of this remarkable crisis in the public opinions, and to be educated in the highest notions of the powers of the crown at the time when those usurped powers were justly doomed to come to an end. It was his misfortune, too, that with many good dispositions, and a very large share of mental endowments, he wanted that political prudence which should have taught him to yield to the necessity of the times, and that it was wiser to abandon a little of that power which he conceived to be his right, than, by obstinately maintaining it to its utmost extent, to risk an entire deprivation of it.

Charles discorded with his first parliament. He was ambitious of sending an effectual aid to his brother-in-law the Elector Palatine-a measure which parliament in the preceding reign had most strongly prompted. But this parliament repressed his ardour by voting a supply totally inadequate to its purposes. The honour of the king was engaged