ances of the nobles, whom, on their slightest opposition to his lawless will, he crushed by his tyranny. By means of spies and informers he held the whole country in dread, and caused innocent men to be put to death for feigned plots; he induced James to write a letter of great cruelty to his captive mother; and, to complete his assumptions, he claimed, not indeed without reason, a better title to the crown by descent than the king himself.

The monarch, devoted to frivolous amusements or useless studies, remained an unconcerned spectator of these enormities: but the banished nobles, sure of their welcome, returned in 1585 as the deliverers of their country; and finding themselves almost instantly at the head of 10,000 men, obliged James to capitulate in Stirling castle, possessed themselves without bloodshed of the fortresses of the kingdom, and banished Arran and his creatures from court for ever. A parliament, which was immediately summoned, stripped the detested minion of all his ill-gotten spoils, not excepting his title of nobility; but his life was spared, from a magnanimous disdain of his original and intrinsic insignifi

cance.

James now contracted a fresh alliance with Elizabeth, for the avowed purpose of affording protection to the reformed faith from the machinations of the great catholic league of Europe. No other plea could have rendered the measure so acceptable to the Scotch presbyterians, whose zeal against popery

was

was carried to a degree of fury, and who had lately conceived strong disgust and apprehension from the measures taken by the king for the partial restoration of the order of bishops, to which he retained during life a strong attachment. About the same time, the monarch thought proper to afford a more remarkable indication of his attachment to the faith of the reformers, by writing a Latin commentary on the Apocalypse, in which he professed to demonstrate that the pope is Antichrist. A work of such a nature, proceeding from the pen of a prince not yet twenty years of age, known only by his devotedness to the chase and to the society of buffoons and flatterers, and in public life by the tameness with which he sacrificed his own honor and the welfare of his people to the inordinate appetites of his favorites, must doubtless have excited no small astonishment in the whole church militant, to which it was with much solemnity addressed. No truer presage could have been afforded of the strange incongruities which were in future to distinguish the life and character of the royal author. James's eminent disregard of decorum, or rather, his total inability to resist importunities, was soon after displayed by his granting a pardon to Archibald Douglas, publicly known as one of his father's murderers, and appointing him, immediately afterwards, his ambassador to England.

VOL. I.

CHAPTER

CHAPTER II.

1586 TO 1603.

Death of queen Mary.-Administration of Maitland.Lenity of James towards catholic conspirators.—His voyage to Denmark.-His own account of his motives.His marriage. Character of the queen.-King's professions respecting presbytery.—His zeal against witchcraft. -Rebellion of Bothwell.-Murder of Murray.—Fresh attempt of Bothwell; of the catholic lords.-Weak conduct of James.-Queen's faction.-Fresh rebellions.-Doleman's conference.-James conciliates the catholics.-His contests with the Scotch church.- Letter to the pope.Basilicon Doron.—Measures to secure the English succession.-Gowrie conspiracy.-Birth of prince Charles.-The queen of Scotland and the Gowries.-James's conduct towards her. His transactions with the earl of Essex, and sentiments respecting him.-Sir Robert Cecil.-Earl of Northumberland, his letters to James.-Summary of James's Scotch reign and character.

THE sentence of death solemnly pronounced by an English tribunal, on the 25th of October 1586, against Mary queen of Scots, roused to momentary energy the reckless temper of her son. To preserve her life, and with it his own honor, he pleaded, negotiated, implored, and at length menaced. But the cause was betrayed by his new favorite Gray, whom he dispatched into England on this momentous affair; and when the irrevocable deed was done, Elizabeth found little difficulty in appeasing

appeasing James, by a judicious mixture of intimidation and cajolery. Gray, however, was banished on discovery of his perfidy; and by some happy accident Maitland, a man of sense and conduct, rose to the office of chancellor and the influence of prime minister. To him, probably, the chief praise is due of the steadiness with which James adhered to his alliance with England during the trying year 1588; when Philip II. exerted all his efforts to gain him over to his party. But he relapsed into weakness when, on discovery of a formidable and atrocious conspiracy of several catholic noblemen, partly for the purpose of aiding the king of Spain in a design of invading England through Scotland, he treated the offenders with an excess of lenity by which they were emboldened again and again to attempt the seizure of his person and the overthrow of his government.

James's voyage, in the winter of the year 1589, through tempestuous seas to Denmark, for the purpose of convoying home his bride, was a sally so little to be anticipated from his timid and indolent temper, combined with his known indifference to female charms, that it appears to have perplexed not a little all to whom his character has furnished matter of speculation; but a statement on the subject drawn up by himself, and left behind him at his departure, has lately been discovered in some abridged records of the Scotch privy council, which clears up the mystery, whilst it affords a rich display of the style and character of the monarch. The preamble

c 2

courteous and affable manner recommended her in some degree to the favor of the people; but in the early years of their connexion her conduct appears frequently to have excited the jealousy, both political and conjugal, of her husband, while her domi- . neering temper disturbed his repose, and her passion for show and expense added to the embarrassment of his finances.

The stream of popular opinion in Scotland ran so strongly in favor of presbytery, that the efforts of the king for the support of the episcopal order proved for the present totally unavailing; and it was abolished by public opinion. On the solemn occasion of the coronation of the queen, which took place in 1590, not a single bishop gave his attendance, and the ceremony was performed by Robert Bruce, a leading minister of the Scotish church. In the same year, James was compelled to sanction the measures of a general assembly for the formation of an ecclesiastical establishment on a model purely presbyterian; on which occasion, resolved, as it should appear, to make a virtue of necessity, "he stood up, with his bonnet off and his eyes lifted up to heaven, and said he praised God that he was born in the time of the light of the gospel; and in such a place as to be king of such a church, the sincerest kirk in the world:" adding, "As for our neighbouring kirk of England, their service is an evil said mass in English; they want nothing of the mass but the liftings." He ended with an exhortation to all classes to "stand to their purity,"

and