MEMOIRS

OF THE

COURT OF KING JAMES I.

CHAPTER I.

1566 To 1586.

Birth of James.-He is set on the throne by a protestant party.-Care taken of his education.—Buchanan his tutor ; character of him.—His treatment of James.-Dedication of his book De jure regni; account of this work.Death of Buchanan.-Civil wars in Scotland.-James assumes the government.—His favorites the duke of Lenox and earl of Arran.—Ruin and death of regent Morton.Malversation of the favorites.-Bad principles instilled into James.-Raid of Ruthven.-Conduct of the French and English sovereigns.-James released from control.Return of Arran to power.-Mission of Walsingham.— The church humbled.-Oppression of Arran.-Rebellion. -King's person seized.-Arran disgraced.—Alliance with England. James's commentary on the Apocalypse.

ON the personal character of a sovereign whose authority is extensive, the manners of his court and even the political events of his reign in great measure depend; and character is principally formed

VOL. I.

B

upon

upon the mpressions of childhood and early youth: in order, therefore, to estimate truly the destiny prepared for England by the accession of the first of the line of Stuart, the monarch must be traced back to the land of his forefathers and the period of his infancy.

Prince JAMES, only son of Mary, queen of Scots by Henry lord Darnley her second husband, was born at Edinburgh castle on the nineteenth of June 1566; and in consequence of the dethronement of his mother, was proclaimed king of Scotland by the title of James VI. on July 29th 1567.

The revolution by which Mary had been deposed, and her infant son elevated into her place, was principally, though not entirely, effected by the chiefs of the presbyterian party associated under the appellation of the Lords of the Congregation. The catholic leaders, during the whole miserable remnant of Mary's days, continued to correspond with her, to exert themselves in a variety of ways for her deliverance, and to form schemes for her return to power: thus James, like Elizabeth, was placed by a political necessity at the head of a protestant party, and in fact held his crown by no other tenure than its continued preponderance.

The direction of his childhood appears to have devolved principally on the earl of Mar, governor of Stirling castle, a nobleman of high integrity, to whose faithful custody his mother had the prudence and affection to commit him, before she madly surrendered up to Bothwell her person and her reputation.

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To imbue the mind of the prince as early and as deeply as possible with the principles of that religion which his situation thus imperiously called upon him to adopt, was naturally regarded as an object of high importance; it was also judged a desirable one that he should be early and diligently grounded in classical learning, and both appeared to be effectually secured by the appointment of the celebrated George Buchanan to the office of preceptor. Several circumstances, however, contributed to render the instructions of this eminent man and illustrious scholar less beneficial in their influence on the mind of the royal pupil, than the hopes of his patrons had anticipated.

Buchanan, born in 1506, was sixty years older than the king of Scots; a disparity certainly too great in a relation which bears so close an analogy to that of parent and child: the faculties indeed of the tutor had suffered nothing by the lapse of time; for his great work, the History of Scotland, was the product of a still later period of his life; but his original faults of temper appear to have been exasperated into habitual moroseness during the course of that long struggle which his fine genius and energetic character had been doomed to wage with penury and persecution through half the countries of Europe. That contempt also for the artificial distinctions of rank and fortune, so natural to men conscious of having elevated themselves from obscurity by the unaided force of native genius, was in Buchanan exaggerated into a species of republican

cynicism which often impelled him to trample on the pride of kings with greater pride of his own. It has been recorded, that he once took upon him to inflict on the young monarch a severe whipping, for persisting in disturbing him at his studies; and the general impression of him left upon the mind of his pupil may be collected from a speech used by James concerning a person in high place about him in England; "That he ever trembled at his approach, he minded him so of his pedagogue." The tutor, on his part, confessed a failure when, being reproached for making the king a pedant, he replied, that it was the best he could make of him.

James was deficient neither in quickness of parts nor in application; and under the guidance of so able a master, he accumulated a mass of erudition which formed through life his pride and boast: but the original and irremediable defects of his nature, feebleness of judgement and frigidity of temperament, defeated all the nobler ends of his instructor. The most accomplished Latin poet and scholar of the age was unable to form him to elevation and purity of taste; the most intrepid and able champion of popular rights, could neither inspire him with due respect for the public will, nor warm his bosom with the sentiments of a patriot king. The last, however, was a point zealously, if not judiciously, labored by Buchanan, since it was expressly for the instruction of the king, then in his fourteenth year, that he pub

a Osborn's Advice to a Son.

lished,

lished, in 1579, his learned Latin dialogue concerning the constitution of Scotland; a work which called forth enthusiastic plaudits from one party, while it provoked the keenest invectives from the other. This piece, as an authentic record of the principles at this period maintained by that party in Scotland of which Buchanan was the oracle, appears worthy of a somewhat detailed examination.

It opens with a dedication to James, explaining that he had written it several years before as a defence of the actions of the party with whom he acted at the juncture; that the return of tranquillity had then caused him to suppress it; but lately meeting with it among his papers, and finding it to contain many things with which the monarch ought now to become acquainted, he had resolved to publish it, both as a testimony of his affection to his pupil, and as an admonition to him of his duty towards his people.

Many circumstances," he adds, "give me confidence that this attempt will not prove fruitless: your age, uncorrupted as yet by evil principles; a genius above your years, spontaneously urging you on to every splendid enterprise; a docility towards good counsel, whether offered by your instructors or by others, but united with an acuteness in examining and judging, which causes you in these matters to be little swayed by authority, unless supported by sound reasoning. I also observe in you a kind of instinctive abhorrence of adulation, that nurse of

a De Jure Regni apud Scotos.

tyranny