pedantry, which is very indefinite, and always a task for his majesty's writings. There was somerelative one. HIS POLEMICAL STUDIES. THIS censure of the pedantry of James is also connected with those studies of polemical divinity for which the king has incurred much ridicule from one party, who were not his contemporaries; and such vehement invective from another, who were; who, to their utter dismay, discovered their monarch descending into their theological gymnasium to encounter them with their own weapons. thing prescient in this view of the national lanThe age of James I. was a controversial age, of guage, by the king, who contemplated in it those unsettled opinions and contested principles; an latent powers which had not yet burst into existage, in which authority was considered as strongerence. It is evident that the line of Pope is false than opinion; but the vigour of that age of genius which describes the king as intending to rule was infused into their writings, and those citers," senates and courts" by turning the council who thus perpetually crowded their margins, were to a grammar-school." profound and original thinkers. When the learning of a preceding age becomes less recondite, and those principles general which were at first peculiar, are the ungrateful heirs of all this knowledge to reproach the fathers of their literature with pedantry? Lord Bolingbroke has pointedly said of James I. that "his pedantry was too much even for the age in which he lived." His lordship knew little of that glorious age when the founders of our literature flourished. It had been overclouded by the French court of Charles II., a race of unprincipled wits, and the revolutioncourt of William, heated by a new faction, too impatient to discuss those principles of government which they had established. It was easy to ridicule what they did not always understand, and very rarely met with. But men of far higher genius than this monarch, Selden, Usher, and Milton, must first be condemned before this odium of pedantry can attach itself to the plain and unostentatious writings of James I., who, it is remarkable, has not scattered in them those oratorical periods, and elaborate fancies, which he indulged in his speeches and proclamations. These loud accusers of the pedantry of James were little aware that the king has expressed himself with energy and distinctness on this very topic. His majesty cautions Prince Henry against the use of any "corrupt leide, as booklanguage, and pen-and-ink-horn termes, and least of all, mignard and effeminate ones." One passage may be given entire as completely refuting a charge so general, yet so unfounded. "I would also advise you to write in your own language, for there is nothing left to be said in Greek and Latine already; and, ynewe (enough) of poore schollers would match you in these languages; and besides that it best becometh a King, to purifie and make famous his owne tongue; therein he may goe before all his subjects, as it setteth him well to doe in all honest and lawful things." * I have more largely entered into the history No scholar of a pedantic taste could have dared of the party who attempted to subvert the governso complete an emancipation from ancient, yet ment in the reign of Elizabeth, and who published not obsolete prejudices, at a time when many of their works under the assumed name of Martin our own great authors yet imagined there was no Mar-prelate, than had hitherto been done. In our fame for an Englishman unless he neglected his domestic annals that event and those personages maternal language for the artificial labour of the are of some importance and curiosity, but were idiom of ancient Rome. Bacon had even his own imperfectly known to the popular writers of our domestic Essays translated into Latin; and the history.-See Quarrels of Authors, p. 296, et king found a courtier-bishop to perform the same seq. The affairs of religion and politics in the reign of James I., as in the preceding one of Elizabeth *, were identified together; nor yet have the same causes in Europe ceased to act, however changed or modified. The government of James was imperfectly established while his subjects were wrestling with two great factions to obtain the predominance. The Catholics were disputing his title to the crown, which they aimed to carry into the family of Spain, and had even fixed on Arabella Stuart, to marry her to a Prince of Parma; and the Puritans would have abolished even sovereignty itself; these parties indeed were not able to take the field, but all felt equally powerful with the pen. Hence an age of doctrines. When a religious body has grown into power, it changes itself into a political one; the chiefs are flattered by their strength and stimulated by their ambition; but a powerful body in the state cannot remain stationary, and a divided empire it disdains. Religious controversies have therefore been usually coverings to mask the political designs of the heads of parties. We smile at James the First, threatening the States-general by the English Ambassador about Vorstius, a Dutch professor, who had espoused the doctrines of Arminius, and had also vented some metaphysical notions of his own respecting the occult nature of the Divinity. He was the head of the Remonstrants, who were at open war with the party called the Contra-Remonstrants. The ostensible subjects were religious doctrines, but the concealed one was a struggle between Pensionary Barnevelt, aided by the French interest, and the Prince of Orange, supported by the English; even to our own days the same opposite interests existed, and betrayed the Republic, although religious doctrines had ceased to be the pretext *. What was passing between the Dutch Prince and the Dutch Pensionary was much like what was taking place between the King of England and his own subjects. James I. had to touch with a balancing hand the Catholics and the Non-conformists to play them one against another; but there was a distinct end in their views. "James I.," says Burnet, "continued always writing and talking against Popery, but acting for it." The King and the bishops were probably more tolerant to monarchists and prelatists, than to republicans and presbyters. When James got nothing but gunpowder and Jesuits from Rome, he was willing enough to banish, or suppress, but the Catholic | families were ancient and numerous; and the most determined spirits which ever subverted a govern * Pensionary Barnevelt, in his seventy-second year, was at length brought to the block. Diodati, a divine of Geneva, made a miserable pun on the occasion; he said that "the Canons of the Synod of Dort had taken off the head of the advocate of Holland." This pun, says Brandt in his curious History of the Reformation, is very injurious to the Synod, since it intimates that the church loves blood. It never entered into the mind of these divines that Barnevelt fell, not by the Synod, but by the Orange and English party prevailing against the French. Lord Hardwicke, a statesman and a man of letters, deeply conversant with secret and public history, is a more able judge than the ecclesiastical historian or the Swiss divine, who could see nothing in the Synod of Dort, but what appeared in it. It is in Lord Hardwicke's preface to Sir Dudley Carleton's Letters that his Lordship has made this important discovery. ↑ James did all he could to weaken the Catholic party by dividing them in opinion. When Dr. Reynolds, the head of the Non-conformists, complained to the King of the printing and dispersing of Popish pamphlets, the King answered, that this was done by a warrant from the Court, to nourish the schism between the Seculars and Jesuits, which was of great service. "Doctor," added the King, you are a better clergyman than statesman." Neale's History of the Puritans, vol. i. p. 416, 4to. ment were Catholic +. Yet what could the King expect from the party of the Puritans, and their “ conceited parity,” as he called it, should he once throw himself into their hands, but the fate his son received from them? In the early stage of the Reformation, the Catholic still entered into the same church with the Reformed; this common union was broken by the impolitical impatience of the court of Rome, who, jealous of the tranquillity of Elizabeth, hoped to 'weaken her government by disunion §; but the Reformed were already separating among themselves by a new race who, fancying that their religion was still too Catholic, were for reforming the Reformation. These had most extravagant fancies, and were for modelling the government according to each particular man's notion. Were we to bend to the foreign despotism of the Roman Tiara, or that of the republican rabble of the Presbytery of Geneva ? The character and demeanour of the celebrated Guy or Guido Fawkes, who appeared first before the council under the assumed name of Johnson, I find in a MS. letter of the times, which contains some characteristic touches not hitherto published. This letter is from Sir Edward Hoby to Sir Thomas Edmondes, our ambassador at the court of Brussels-dated 19th November, 1605. "One Johnson was found in the vault where the Gunpowder Plot was discovered. He was asked if he were sorry? He answered that he was only sorry it had not taken place. He was threatened that he should die a worse death than he that killed the Prince of Orange; he answered, that he could bear it as well. When Johnson was brought to the King's presence, the King asked him how he could conspire so hideous a treason against his children and so many innocent souls who had never offended him? He answered, that dangerous diseases required a desperate remedy; and he told some of the Scots that his intent was to have blown them back again into Scotland !"-Mordacious Guy Fawkes! § Sir Edward Coke, attorney-general, in the trial of Garnet the Jesuit, says, "There were no Recusants in England-all came to church howsoever Popishly inclined, till the Bull of Pius V. excommunicated and deposed Elizabeth. On this the Papists refused to join in the public service. State Trials, vol. i. p. 242. The Pope imagined, by false impressions he had received, that the Catholic party was strong enough to prevail against Elizabeth. Afterwards, when he found his error, a dispensation was granted by himself and his successor, that all Catholics might show outward obedience to Elizabeth till a happier opportunity. Such are Catholic politics and Catholic faith! the organs of the Non-conformists, inveigh against POLEMICAL STUDIES WERE POLITICAL. James; even Hume, with the philosophy of the Ir was in these times that James I., a learned eighteenth century, has pronounced that the king prince, applied to polemical studies; properly was censurable "for entering zealously into these understood, these were in fact political ones. frivolous disputes of theology." Lord Bolingbroke Lord Bolingbroke says, "He affected more learning declares that the king held this conference "in than became a king, which he broached on every haste to show his parts." Thus a man of genius occasion in such a manner as would have misbe- substitutes suggestion and assertion for accuracy come a schoolmaster." Would the politician of knowledge. In the present instance, it was an then require a half-learned king, or a king without attempt of the Puritans to try the king on his any learning at all? Our eloquent sophist appears arrival in England; they presented a petition for not to have recollected that polemical studies had a conference, called "The Millennary Petition†," long with us been considered as royal ones; and from a thousand persons supposed to have signed that from a slender volume of the sort our sove-it; the king would not refuse it; but so far from reigns still derive the regal distinction of " De- being in haste to show his parts," that when fenders of the Faith." The pacific government he discovered their pretended grievances were so of James I. required that the King himself should futile, "he complained that he had been troubled be a master of these controversies to be enabled with such importunities, when some more private to balance the conflicting parties; and none but a course might have been taken for their satisfaclearned king could have exerted the industry or tion." attained to the skill. The narrative of this once celebrated conference, notwithstanding the absurdity of the topics, becomes in the hands of the entertaining Fuller a picturesque and dramatic composition, where the dialogue and the manners of the speakers are after the life. In the course of this conference we obtain a familiar intercourse with the king; we may admire the capacity of the monarch whose genius was versatile with the subjects; sliding from theme to theme with the ease which only mature studies could obtain; entering into the graver parts of these discussions; discovering a ready knowledge THE HAMPTON-COURT CONFERENCE. IN the famous conference at Hampton Court which the King held with the heads of the Nonconformists, we see his Majesty conversing sometimes with great learning and sense, but oftener more with the earnestness of a man, than some have imagined comported with the dignity of a crowned head. The truth is, James, like a true student, indulged, even to his dress, an utter carelessness of parade, and there was in his character a constitutional warmth of heart and a jocundity of temper which did not always adapt it to state-occasions; he threw out his feelings, and sometimes his jests. James, who had passed his youth in a royal bondage, felt that these Non-at once against the whole church-establishment, conformists, while they were debating small points, were reserving for hereafter their great ones; were cloaking their republicanism by their theology, and, like all other politicians, that their ostensible were not their real motives*. Harris and Neale, offer of the Silenced Ministers, 1606," that those who were appointed to speak for them at Hampton Court were not of their nomination or judgment; they insisted that these delegates should declare &c., and model the government to each particular man's notions! But these delegates prudently refused to acquaint the king with the conflicting opinions of their constituents.-Lansdowne MSS. 1056, 51. This confession of the Non-conformists is also acknowledged by their historian Neale, vol. ii. p. 419, 4to edit. • In political history we usually find that the heads of a party are much wiser than the party themselves, so that, whatever they intend to The petition is given at length in Collier's acquire, their first demands are small; but the Eccles. Hist. vol. ii. p. 672. At this time also the honest souls who are only stirred by their own Lay Catholics of England printed at Douay "A innocent zeal, are sure to complain that their Petition Apologetical," to James I. Their language business is done negligently. Should the party is remarkable: they complained they were excluded at first succeed, then the bolder spirit, which they" that supreme court of parliament first founded have disguised or suppressed through policy, is by and for Catholike men, was furnished with left to itself; it starts unbridled and at full gallop. Catholike prelates, peeres, and personages; and All this occurred in the case of the Puritans. We so continued till the times of Edward VI. a find that some of the rigid Non-conformists did childe, and Queen Elizabeth a woman."-Dodd's confess in a pamphlet, "The Christian's modest | Church History. of biblical learning, which would sometimes throw itself out with his natural humour, in apt and familiar illustrations, throughout indulging his own personal feelings with an unparalleled naïveté. 66 The king opened the conference with dignity; "he said, he was happier than his predecessors, who had to alter what they found established, but he only to confirm what was well settled." One of the party made a notable discovery, that the surplice was a kind of garment used by the priests of Isis. The king observed that he had no notion of this antiquity, since he had always heard from them that it was "a rag of popery." "Dr. Reynolds," said the king with an air of pleasantry, 'they used to wear hose and shoes in times of popery; have you therefore a mind to go barefoot?" Reynolds objected to the words used in matrimony, "with my body I thee worship." The king said the phrase was an usual English term, as a gentleman of worship, &c., and turning to the doctor, smiling, said, "Many a man speaks of Robin Hood, who never shot in his bow; if you had a good wife yourself, you would think all the honour and worship you could do to her were well bestowed." Reynolds was not satisfied on the 37th article, declaring that "The bishop of Rome hath no authority in this land," and desired it should be added, "nor ought to have any." In Barlow's narrative we find that on this his majesty heartily laughed a laugh easily caught up by the lords; but the king nevertheless condescended to reply sensibly to the weak objection, "What speak you of the pope's authority here? Habemus jure quod habemus; and therefore inasmuch as it is said he hath not, it is plain enough that he ought not to have." It was on this occasion that some "pleasant discourse passed," in which "a Puritan" was defined to be "a Protestant frightened out of his wits." The king is more particularly vivacious when he alludes to the occurrences of his own reign, or suspects the Puritans of republican notions. On one occasion, to cut the gordian-knot, the king royally decided-" I will not argue that point with you, but answer as kings in parliament, Le Roy s'avisera." When they hinted at a Scottish Presbytery, the king was somewhat stirred, yet what is admirable in him (says Barlow) without a show of passion. The king had lived among the republican saints, and had been, as he said, "A king without state, without honour, without order, where beardless boys would brave us to our face; and, like the Saviour of the world, though he lived among them, he was not of them." On this occasion, although the king may not have " shown his passion," he broke out, however, with a naïve effusion, remarkable for painting after the home life a republican government. It must have struck Hume forcibly, for he has preserved part of it in the body of his history. Hume only consulted Fuller. I give the copious explosion from Barlow. If y f you aim at a Scottish Presbytery, it agreeth as well with monarchy as God and the devil. Then Jack, and Tom, and Will, and Dick, shall meet, and at their pleasure censure me and my council, and all our proceedings; then Will shall stand up and say, It must be thus; then Dick shall reply, Nay, marry, but we will have it thus. And therefore here I must once more reiterate my former speech, Le Roy s'avisera. Stay, I pray you, for one seven years before you demand that of me, and if then you find me pursy and fat, I may hearken to you; for let that government once be up, I am sure I shall be kept in breath; then shall we all of us have work enough: but, Dr. Reynolds, till you find that I grow lazy, let that alone." The king added, "I will tell you a tale :-Knox flattered the queen-regent of Scotland, that she was supreme head of all the church, if she suppressed the popish prelates. But how long, trow ye, did this continue? Even so long, till, by her authority, the popish bishops were repressed, and he himself, and his adherents, were brought in, and well settled. Then, lo! they began to make small account of her authority, and took the cause into their own hands." This was a pointed political tale, appropriately told in the person of a monarch. The king was never deficient in the force and quickness of his arguments. Even Neale, the great historian of the Puritans, complaining that Dean Barlow has cut off some of the king's speeches, is reluctantly compelled to tax himself with a high commendation of the monarch, who, he acknowledges, on one of the days of this conference, spoke against the corruptions of the church, and the practices of the prelates, in so much that Dr. Andrews, then dean of the chapel, said, that his Majesty did that day wonderfully play the Puritan*. The king, indeed, was * The bishops of James I. were, as Fuller calls one of them, "potent courtiers," and too worldly-minded men. Bancroft was a man of vehement zeal, but of the most grasping avarice, as appears by an epigrammatic epitaph on his death in Arthur Wilson: "Here lies his grace, in cold earth clad, Who died with want of what he had." We find a characteristic trait of this bishop of London in this conference. When Ellesmere, Lord Chancellor, observed, that "livings rather seriously inclined to an union of parties. More and to those studies Whitelocke attributes that than once he silenced the angry tongue of Bancroft, aptitude of Charles I. which made him so skilful and tempered the zeal of others; and even com- a summer-up of arguments, and endowed him with mended when he could Dr. Reynolds, the chief of so clear a perception in giving his decisions. the Puritans; the king consented to the only two important articles that side suggested; a new catechism adapted to the people-" Let the weak be informed and the wilful be punished," said the THE WORKS OF JAMES THE FIRST. king; and that new translation of the Bible which forms our present version. "But," added the WE now turn to the writings of James the king, "it must be without marginal notes, for the First. He composed a treatise on demoniacs and Geneva Bible is the worst for them, full of witches; those dramatic personages in courts of seditious conceits; Asa is censured for only law. James and his council never suspected that deposing his mother for idolatry, and not killing those ancient foes to mankind could be dismissed her." Thus early the dark spirit of Machiavel by a simple Nolle prosequi. "A Commentary had lighted on that of the ruthless Calvin. The on the Revelations," which was a favourite specugrievances of our first dissenters were futile-their lation then, and on which greater geniuses have innovations interminable; and we discover the written since his day. "A Counterblast to king's notions, at the close of a proclamation Tobacco!" the title more ludicrous than the issued after this conference. "Such is the desultory levity of some people, that they are always their sovereign's interference in these matters, may languishing after change and novelty, insomuch be traced. When James charged the chaplains, that were they humoured in their inconstancy, they would expose the public management, and make the administration ridiculous." Such is the vigorous style of James the First in his proclamations; and such is the political truth, which will not die away with the conference at Hampton Court. These studies of polemical divinity, like those of the ancient scholastics, were not to be obtained without a robust intellectual exercise. James instructed his son Charles*, who excelled in them; want learned men, than learned men livings, many in the Universities pining for want of places. I wish therefore some may have single coats (one living) before others have doublets (pluralities), and this method I have observed in bestowing the king's benefices." Bancroft replied, "I commend your memorable care that way; but a doublet is necessary in cold weather." Thus an avaricious bishop could turn off, with a miserable jest, the open avowal of his love of pluralities. Another, Neile, bishop of Lincoln, when any one preached who was remarkable for his piety, desirous of withdrawing the king's attention from truths he did not wish to have his Majesty reminded of, would in the sermon-time entertain the king with a merry tale, which the king would laugh at, and tell those near him, that he could not hear the preacher for the old bishop; prefixing an epithet explicit of the character of these merry tales. Kennet has preserved for us this "rank relation," as he calls it; not, he adds, but, "we have had divers hammerings and conflicts within us to leave it out." KENNET'S History of England, ii. 729. That the clergy were somewhat jealous of who were to wait on the prince in Spain, to decline, as far as possible, religious disputes, he added, that "should any happen, my son is able to moderate in them." The king, observing one of the divines smile, grew warm, vehemently affirming, “I tell ye, Charles shall manage a point in controversy with the best studied divine of ye all." What the king said, was afterwards confirmed on an extraordinary occasion, in the conference Charles I. held with Alexander Henderson, the old champion of the kirk. Deprived of books, which might furnish the sword and pistol of controversy, and without a chaplain to stand by him as a second, Charles I. fought the theological duel; and the old man, cast down, retired with such a sense of the learning and honour of the king, in maintaining the order of episcopacy in England, that his death, which soon followed, is attributed to the deep vexation of this discomfiture. The veteran, who had succeeded in subverting the hierarchy in Scotland, would not be apt to die of a fit of conversion; but vexation might be apoplectic in an old and sturdy disputant. The king's controversy was published; and nearly all the writers agree he carried the day. Yet some divines appear more jealous than grateful : Bishop Kennet, touched by the esprit du corps, honestly tells us, that "some thought the king had been better able to protect the church, if he had not disputed for it." This discovers all the ardour possible for the establishment, and we are to infer that an English sovereign is only to fight for his churchmen. But there is a nobler office for a sovereign to perform in ecclesiastical history-to promote the learned and the excellent, and repress the dissolute and the intolerant. |