109 CHAPTER XXIX. JAMES I. Born at Holyrood Palace, Edinburgh. Buried at Westminster. Reigned 22 years. From A.D. 1603 to A.D. 1625. Archbishops of Canterbury. Richard Bancroft, A.D. 1604-1611. By the accession of James, the two kingdoms which had so long divided the island were united under the same prince, of the royal house of Stuart. The new king was possessed of considerable learning, and often showed much shrewdness and sagacity; but these qualifications, as well as his unquestionable kindness of heart, were spoilt by a childish vanity and want of moral courage. Slovenly in his own person, he was yet greatly captivated by splendour of apparel and personal beauty in his courtiers, and suffered himself to be led by favourites, who had no better qualifications than these. He had imbibed very lofty notions of the kingly power, and was on this account inclined to the English Church, which has ever favoured the principle of monarchy, rather than to the presbyterian system, in which he had been brought up, and which in the course of this and the following reigns became more and more infected with a levelling and republican spirit. Before he reached London he had received from the Puritans a petition for redress of what they considered grievances in the Established Church; and a conference was soon appointed at Hampton Court between several bishops and the chief puritan divines. In this discussion James himself took part with singular sagacity, and its result was wholly favourable to the Church. The demands of the Puritans were far too unreasonable to be granted, and very soon set aside the hope of agreement; but their objections may have contributed to produce some of the alterations which were soon afterwards made in the Book of Common Prayer, Among these may be mentioned the appointment of forms of thanksgiving upon several occasions; the addition of questions and answers on the sacraments to the Catechism, which before that time had ended with the answer to the question immediately following the Lord's Prayer. James succeeded also in the course of his reign in re-establishing episcopacy in his native kingdom. Scotland had not cared to have bishops since the Reformation; and this was rightly felt by the king to affect its whole ecclesiastical polity. The ancient line of Scottish bishops had come to an end in the person of James Beaton, archbishop of Glasgow, who died April 24, 1603. King James nominated bishops to the thirteen Scottish sees; and then sent for three of them to London, where they were consecrated by English bishops on Oct. 21, 1610: on their return they consecrated the rest. 4 At the Hampton Court conference it was also agreed that a new translation should be made of the Holy Scriptures; and that noble version which is still used by authority in our Church was now prepared with great care by the most learned divines. Thus far James's proceedings were good; it may however be doubted whether his measures were not, in some respects, so conducted, in England as well as in Scotland, as only to embitter the feelings which were now gaining ground against that constitution of the Church, of which he saw the beauty and the apostolic origin. A plot was formed almost immediately on his accession, in favour of Lady Arabella Stuart, who (as well as James himself) was a descendant of Henry VII. She was treated with great harshness by the king, and died in prison. Sir Walter Raleigh was detained for thirteen years in the Tower for being implicated in this plot. A much more serious conspiracy was soon afterwards entered into by the papists, who were disappointed in their expectation of being favoured by the new king. This is called the Gunpowder Plot, because the conspirators formed 4 John Spottiswood, Andrew Lamb, and Gavin Hamilton, who were consecrated respectively Bishops of Glasgow, Brechin, and Galloway. This succession also came to an end in the person of Thomas Sydserf, who died Bishop of Orkney in 1663. But previously to his death, another consecration of bishops for the Church in Scotland had been obtained from England. On December 15,1661, James Sharpe, Andrew Fairfull, Robert Leighton, and James Hamilton were consecrated respectively to the sees of St. Andrew's, Glasgow, Dumblane, and Galloway. From them the present episcopate in Scotland is derived. the diabolical design of blowing up the parliament-house with gunpowder, at the time when James in person should open the meeting of the great national council. The chief conspirators were Catesby, a gentleman of property in Warwickshire, and Percy, a kinsman of the Earl of Northumberland. They fixed on one Guy Fawkes as their agent; a man of good family and blameless life, but remarkable for his fanatical zeal in favour of the Romish Church. Francis Tresham, Sir Everard Digby, and others, were made acquainted with the design during its progress, that they might hold themselves ready to act with the conspirators. A house adjoining the parliament-house was taken, and access thus obtained to the vaults under that building. These were filled with barrels of powder and fagots, and a train was laid, which was to be fired by Fawkes. By the providence of God, the plot was discovered a few days only before the meeting of parliament, which was appointed for Nov. 5 (1604). A mysterious letter was brought to the Lord Mounteagle, to warn him of an impending danger. It spoke of a sudden blow, and that no one should see the hand that gave it. Mounteagle was a brother-in-law of Tresham, by whom (most probably) the letter was written. He laid it at once before the council, and the king himself suggested that the vaults under the parliament-house should be searched. Fawkes was taken, as he was stepping out of the cellar, and having been (as is believed) put to the torture, confessed the whole plot. The conspirators fled when they heard that Fawkes was taken; but the house in which they were concealed was surrounded, and many of them were killed on the spot after a desperate defence. Digby, with Fawkes and several others, was executed opposite the parliamenthouse. This plot must ever be classed with the massacre of St. Bartholomew, and the cruelties of the Inquisition in Spain, as instances of the baleful effects produced by that false zeal in religion, which the Church of Rome has so much encouraged. James was engaged in continual contests with his parliament, and in the early part of his reign was assisted by the sagacity of Cecil, earl of Salisbury, a son of the great Lord Burleigh. This statesman died in 1612, in which year the country lost also Prince Henry, a youth of great promise, on whose death the king's only surviving son, Charles, became Prince of Wales. On the death of Salisbury, the king brought forward a favourite whom he had made Viscount Rochford, and soon created Earl of Somerset. This was Robert Kerr, a man of most abandoned character, who together with his wife was concerned in the murder of his secretary, Sir Thomas Overbury, for having advised him against his marriage. James had by this time transferred his affection to Villiers, who became Duke of Buckingham; and Somerset was condemned and dismissed from court, while the immediate but less guilty agents in the murder were executed. Soon after the death of his son, the king married his only daughter Elizabeth to the Elector Palatine of the Rhine. This prince was afterwards chosen King of Bohemia on the death of the Emperor Matthias, by whom the rights secured to the Bohemian Protestants had been so grossly violated, that they refused to acknowledge his successor (Ferdinand of Austria) as their king. The elector was however driven not only from his new kingdom, but even from his hereditary dominions; and was but feebly assisted by his father-in-law, though the English were anxious to support his cause, which they looked upon as the cause opposed to Rome. The king was the less inclined to comply with this wish, because he was desirous of marrying his son to a daughter of the King of Spain, who was nearly allied to the house of Austria. With a view of furthering this marriage, the young Prince of Wales was induced by Buckingham to make a secret expedition to the court of Madrid: and it may be observed, that even in this romantic and hurried excursion, great care was taken to provide for the celebration of Divine service, according to the English Prayer Book, in the apartments of the prince. The English, however, were alarmed at the risk to which Charles was thus exposed of being influenced in favour of popery, and were not sorry when the match was afterwards broken off in a manner highly offensive to the Spanish court. The king's desire for this marriage had induced him, some years before, to sacrifice Sir Walter Raleigh to the resentment of Spain. After being in prison for thirteen years, Raleigh had obtained permission to conduct a second ex |