A Student's History of England, v. 2: 1509-1689

19. Irish Difficulties. 1583-1594.– The dread of a renewal of a Spanish invasion was productive of even greater mischief in Ireland than in England. After the suppression of the Desmond insurrection, an attempt was made to colonise the desolate lands of Munster (see p. 453) with English. The attempt failed, chiefly because – though courtiers willingly accepted large grants of lands – English farmers refused to go to Ireland in sufficient numbers to till the soil. On the other hand, Irishmen enough reappeared to claim their old lands, to rob, and sometimes murder, the few settlers who came from England. The settlers retaliated by acts of violence. All over Ireland the soldiers, left without pay, spoiled and maltreated the unfortunate inhabitants. The Irish, exasperated by their cruelty, longed for someone to take up their cause, and in 1594 a rising in Ulster was headed by Hugh O'Neill, known in England as the Earl of Tyrone. How bitter the Irish feeling was against England is shown by the fact that the other Ulster chiefs, who usually quarrelled with one another, now placed themselves under O'Neill.

20. O'Neill and the Earl of Essex. 1595-1600.– In 1595 O'Neill applied to the king of Spain for help; but Spain was weaker now than in former years, and though Philip promised help, he died in 1598 without fulfilling his engagement, being succeeded by his son, Philip III. In the same year O'Neill utterly defeated an English army under Bagenal on the Blackwater. All Celtic Ireland rose in his support, and in 1599 Elizabeth sent her favourite, Essex, to conquer Ireland in good earnest, lest it should fall into the hands of the king of Spain. Essex, through mismanagement, failed entirely, and after a great part of his army had melted away he came back to England without leave. On his arrival, knowing Elizabeth's fondness for him, he hoped to surprise her into forgiveness of his disobedience, and rushed into Elizabeth's presence in his muddy and travel-stained clothes.

21. Essex's Imprisonment and Execution. 1599-1601.– The queen, who was not accustomed to allow even her favourites to run away from their posts without permission, ordered him into confinement. In 1600, indeed, she restored him to liberty, but forbade him to come to court. Essex could not brook the disgrace, especially as the queen made him suffer in his pocket for his misconduct. As she had little money to give away, Elizabeth was in the habit of rewarding her courtiers by grants of monopoly – that is to say, of the sole right of selling certain articles, thus enabling them to make a profit by asking a higher price than they could have got if they had been subjected to competition. To Essex she had given a monopoly of sweet wines for a term of years, and now that the term was at an end she refused to renew the grant. Early in 1601 Essex – professing not to want to injure the queen, but merely to force her to change her ministers – rode at the head of a few followers into the City, calling on the citizens to rise in his favour. He was promptly arrested, and in the course of the enquiries made into his conduct it was discovered that when he was in Ireland he had entered into treasonable negotiations with James VI. At his trial, Bacon, who had been most kindly treated by Essex, shocked at the disclosure of these traitorous proceedings, turned against him, and, as a lawyer, argued strongly that he had been guilty. The Earl was convicted and executed.

22. Mountjoy's Conquest of Ireland. 1600-1603.– In 1600, after Essex had deserted Ireland, Lord Mountjoy was sent to take his place. He completed the conquest systematically, building forts as places of retreat for his soldiers whenever they were attacked by overwhelming numbers, and from which he could send out flying columns to devastate the country after the enemy had retreated. In 1601 a Spanish fleet and a small Spanish army at last arrived to the help of the Irish, and seized Kinsale. The English forces hemmed them in, defeated the Irish army which came to their support, and compelled the Spaniards to withdraw. The horrid work of conquering Ireland by starvation was carried to the end. "No spectacle," wrote Mountjoy's English secretary, "was more frequent in the ditches of the towns, and especially in wasted countries, than to see multitudes of these poor people dead, with their mouths all coloured green by eating nettles, docks, and all things they could rend up above ground." In one place a band of women enticed little children to come among them, and murdered them for food. At last, in 1603, O'Neill submitted. Ireland had been conquered by England as it had never been conquered before.

23. Parliament and the Monopolies. 1601.– The conquest of Ireland was expensive and in 1601 Elizabeth summoned Parliament to ask for supplies. The House of Commons voted the money cheerfully, but raised an outcry against the monopolies. Elizabeth knew when to give way, and she announced her intention of cancelling all monopolies which could be shown to be burdensome. "I have more cause to thank you all than you me," she said to the Commons when they waited on her to express their gratitude; "for had I not received a knowledge from you, I might have fallen into the lap of an error, only for lack of true information. I have ever used to set the last judgment-day before mine eyes, and so to rule as I shall be judged to answer before a higher Judge – to whose judgment-seat I do appeal, that never thought was cherished in my heart that tended not to my people's good. Though you have had, and may have, many princes, more mighty and wise, sitting in this seat, yet you never had, or ever shall have, any that will be more careful and loving."

24. The Last Days of Elizabeth. 1601-1603.– These were the last words spoken by Elizabeth to her people. She had many faults, but she cared for England, and, more than any one else, she had made England united and prosperous. She had found it distracted, but by her moderation she had staved off civil war, till the country had rallied round the throne. No doubt those who worked most hard towards this great end were men like Burghley and Walsingham in the State, and men like Drake and Raleigh at sea; but it was Elizabeth who, being what she was, had given to each his opportunity. If either Edward VI. or Mary had been in her place, such men would have found no sphere in which their work could have been done, and, instead of telling of 'the spacious times of great Elizabeth,' the historian would have had to narrate the progress of civil strife and of the mutual conflict of ever-narrowing creeds. The last days of the great queen were gloomy, as far as she was personally concerned. Burghley, the wisest of her ministers, died in 1598. In his last days he had urged the queen to bring to an end the war with Spain, which no longer served any useful purpose; and when Essex pleaded for its continuance, the aged statesman opened the Bible at the text, "Bloody and deceitful men shall not live out half their days." In 1603 Elizabeth herself died at the age of sixty-nine. According to law, the heir to the crown was William Seymour, who, being the son of the Earl of Hertford and Lady Catherine Grey, inherited the claims of the Suffolk line (see pp. 411, 435). There were, however, doubts about his legitimacy, as, though his parents had been married in due form, the ceremony had taken place in private, and it was believed by many that it had never taken place at all. Elizabeth had always refused to allow her heir to be designated; but as death approached she indicated her preference for James, as having claim to the inheritance by descent from her own eldest aunt, Margaret (see p. 411). "My seat," she said, "hath been the seat of kings, and I will have no rascal to succeed me." "And who," she added, "should that be but our cousin of Scotland?"

Books recommended for further study of Part V

Brewer, J. S. The Reign of Henry VIII. from his Accession to the Death of Wolsey.

Dixon, Canon R. W. History of the Church of England from the Abolition of the Roman Jurisdiction.

Froude, J. A. History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vols, v. – xii.

Motley, J. L. The Rise of the Dutch Republic.

– The History of the United Netherlands.

Mullinger, J. B. History of the University of Cambridge. Vol. ii.

Strype, J. Annals of the Reformation.

– Life and Acts of Aylmer.

– " " Grindal.

– " " Whitgift.

Nicolas, Sir W. H. Life of Sir C. Hatton.

– " W. Davison.

Spedding, J. Letters and Life of Francis Bacon. Vol. i. – iii. p. 58.

Edwards, E. The Life of Sir W. Raleigh.

Fisher, H. A. L. The Political History of England. Vol. v. From the Accession of Henry VII. to the Death of Henry VIII. (1485-1547).

Pollard, A. F. The Political History of England. Vol. vi. From the Accession of Edward VI. to the Death of Elizabeth (1547-1603).

PART VI
THE PURITAN REVOLUTION. 1603-1660

CHAPTER XXXI
JAMES I. 1603-1625

LEADING DATES

• Accession of James I. 1603

• The Hampton Court Conference 1604

• Gunpowder Plot 1605

• Foundation of Virginia 1607

• The Great Contract 1610

• Beginning of the Thirty Years' War 1618

• Foundation of New England 1620

• Condemnation of the Monopolies and fall of Bacon 1621

• Prince Charles's visit to Madrid 1623

• Breach with Spain 1624

• Death of James I. 1625

1. The Peace with Spain. 1603-1604.– At the end of Elizabeth's reign there had been much talk of various claimants to the throne, but when she died no one thought seriously of any one but James. The new king at once put an end to the war with Spain, though no actual treaty of peace was signed till 1604. James gave his confidence to Sir Robert Cecil, Lord Burghley's second son, whom he continued in the office of Secretary of State, which had been conferred on him by Elizabeth. The leader of the war-party was Raleigh, who was first dismissed from his offices and afterwards accused of treason, on the charge of having invited the Spaniards to invade England. It is most unlikely that the charge was true, but as Raleigh was angry at his dismissal, he may have spoken rashly. He was condemned to death, but James commuted the sentence to imprisonment.

2. The Hampton Court Conference. 1604.– The most important question which James had to decide on his accession was that of religious toleration. Many of the Puritan clergy signed a petition to him known as the Millenary Petition, because it was intended to be signed by a thousand ministers. A conference was held on January 14, 1604, in the king's presence at Hampton Court, in which some of the bishops took part, as well as a deputation of Puritan ministers who were permitted to argue in favour of the demands put forward in the petition. The Puritan Clergy had by this time abandoned Cartwright's Presbyterian ideas (see p. 446) and merely asked that those who thought it wrong to wear surplices and to use certain other ceremonies might be excused from doing so, without breaking away from the national church. James listened quietly to them, till one of them used the word Presbytery. He at once flew into a passion. "A Scottish Presbytery," he said, "agreeth as well with a monarchy as God with the devil. Then Jack and Tom and Will and Dick shall meet, and at their pleasures censure me and my council… Until you find that I grow lazy – let that alone." James ordered them to conform or to leave the ministry. He adopted the motto, "No bishop, no king!" Like Elizabeth, he used the bishops to keep the clergy from gaining power independent of the Crown. The bishops were delighted, and one of them said that 'his Majesty spoke by the inspiration of God.'

3. James and the House of Commons.– In 1604 Parliament met. The members of the House of Commons had no more wish than James to overthrow the bishops, but they thought that able and pious ministers should be allowed to preach even if they would not wear surplices, and they were dissatisfied with the king's decision at Hampton Court. On the other hand, James was anxious to obtain their consent to a union with Scotland, which the Commons disliked, partly because the king had brought many Scotsmen with him, and had supplied them with English lands and money. Financial difficulties also arose, and the session ended in a quarrel between the king and the House of Commons. Before the year was over he had deprived of their livings many of the clergy who refused to conform.

4. Gunpowder Plot. 1604-1605.– Not only the Puritans, but the Catholics as well, had appealed to James for toleration. In the first year of his reign he remitted the recusancy fines (see p. 454). As might be expected, the number of recusants increased, probably because many who had attended church to avoid paying fines stayed away as soon as the fines ceased to be required. James took alarm, and in February 1604 banished the priests from London. On this, a Catholic named Robert Catesby proposed to a few of his friends a plot to blow up king, Lords, and Commons with gunpowder at the opening of Parliament. The king had two sons, Henry and Charles, and a little daughter, Elizabeth. Catesby, expecting that the two princes would be destroyed with their father, intended to make Elizabeth queen, and to take care that she was brought up as a Roman Catholic. Guy Fawkes, a cool soldier, was sent for from Flanders to manage the scheme. The plotters took a house next to the House of Lords, and began to dig through the wall to enable them to carry the powder into the basement. The wall, however, was nine feet thick, and they, being little used to mason's work, made but little way. In the spring of 1605 James increased the exasperation of the plotters by re-imposing the recusancy fines on the Catholic laity. Soon afterwards their task was made more easy by the discovery that a coal-cellar reaching under the floor of the House of Lords was to be let. One of their number hired the cellar, and introduced into it barrels of powder, covering them with coals and billets of wood. Parliament was to be opened for its second session on November 5, and in the preceding evening Fawkes went to the cellar with a lantern, ready to fire the train in the morning. One of the plotters, however, had betrayed the secret. Fawkes was seized, and his companions were pursued. All the conspirators who were taken alive were executed, and the persecution of the Catholics grew hotter than before.

5. The Post-nati. 1606-1608.– When another session opened in 1606 James repeated his efforts to induce the Commons to do something for the union with Scotland. He wanted them to establish free trade between the countries, and to naturalise his Scottish subjects in England. Finding that he could obtain neither of his wishes from Parliament, he obtained from the judges a decision that all his Scottish subjects born after his accession in England – the Post-nati, as they were called – were legally naturalised, and were thus capable of holding land in England. He had to give up all hope of obtaining freedom of trade.

6. Irish Difficulties. 1603-1610.– James was the first English sovereign who was the master of the whole of Ireland. He tried to win the affection of the tribes by giving them the protection of English law against the exactions of their chiefs. Naturally, the chiefs resented the change, while the tribesmen distrusted the interference of Englishmen from whom they had suffered so much. In 1607 the chiefs of the Ulster tribes of O'Neill and O'Donnell – known in England as the Earls of Tyrone and Tyrconnell – seeing resistance hopeless, fled to Spain. James ignored the Irish doctrine that the land belonged to the tribe, and confiscated six counties as if they had been the property of the chiefs, according to the feudal principles of English law. He then poured in English and Scottish colonists, leaving to the natives only the leavings to live on.

7. Bate's Case and the New Impositions. 1606-1608.– The state of James's finances was almost hopeless. Elizabeth, stingy as she was, had scarcely succeeded in making both ends meet, and James, who had the expense of providing for a family, from which Elizabeth had been free, would hardly have been able to meet his expenditure even if he had been economical. He was, however, far from economical, and had given away lands and money to his Scottish favourites. There was, therefore, a large deficit, and James wanted all the money he could get. In 1606 a merchant named Bate challenged his right to levy an imposition on currants, which had already been levied by Elizabeth. The Court of Exchequer, however, decided that the king had the right of levying impositions – that is to say, duties raised by the sole authority of the king – without a grant from Parliament – holding that the Confirmatio Cartarum (see p. 221), to which Bate's counsel appealed, only restricted that right in a very few cases. Whether the argument of the judges was right or wrong, they were the constitutional exponents of the law, and when Cecil (who had been James's chief minister from the beginning of the reign, and was created Earl of Salisbury in 1605) was made Lord Treasurer as well as Secretary in 1608, he at once levied new impositions to the amount of about 70,000l. a year, on the plea that more money was needed in consequence of the troubles in Ireland.

8. The Great Contract. 1610-1611.– Even the new impositions did not fill up the deficit, and Parliament was summoned in 1610 to meet the difficulty. It entered into a bargain – the Great Contract, as it was called – by which, on receiving 200,000l. a year, James was to abandon certain antiquated feudal dues, such as those of wardship and marriage (see p. 116). An agreement was also come to on the impositions. James voluntarily remitted the most burdensome to the amount of 20,000l. a year, and the House of Commons agreed to grant him the remainder on his passing an Act declaring illegal all further levy of impositions without a Parliamentary grant. Unfortunately, before the details of the Great Contract were finally settled, fresh disputes arose, and early in 1611, James dissolved his first Parliament in anger without settling anything either about the feudal dues or about the impositions.

9. Bacon and Somerset. 1612-1613.– In 1612 Salisbury died, and Bacon, always ready with good advice, recommended James to abandon Salisbury's policy of bargaining with the Commons. Bacon was a warm supporter of monarchy, because he was anxious for reforms, and he believed that reforms were more likely to come from the king and his Council than from a House of Commons – which was mainly composed of country gentlemen, with little knowledge of affairs of State. Bacon, however, knew what were the conditions under which alone a monarchical system could be maintained, and reminded James that king and Parliament were members of one body, with common interests, and that he could only expect the Commons to grant supplies if he stepped forward as their leader by setting forth a policy which would commend itself to them. James had no idea of leading, and, instead of taking Bacon's advice, resolved to do as long as he could without a Parliament. A few years before he had taken a fancy to a handsome young Scot named Robert Carr, thinking that Carr would be not only a boon companion, but also an instrument to carry out his orders, and relieve him from the trouble of dispensing patronage. He enriched Carr in various ways, especially by giving him the estate of Sherborne, which he took from Raleigh on the ground of a flaw in the title – though he made Raleigh some compensation for his loss. In 1613 he married Carr to Lady Essex, who had been divorced from her husband under very disgraceful circumstances, and created him Earl of Somerset. Somerset was brought by this marriage into connection with the family of the Howards – his wife's father, the Earl of Suffolk, being a Howard. As the Howards were for the most part Roman Catholics at heart, if not openly, Somerset's influence was henceforth used in opposition to the Protestant aims which had found favour in the House of Commons.

10. The Addled Parliament. 1614.– In spite of Somerset and the Howards, James's want of money drove him, in 1614, to call another Parliament. Instead of following Bacon's advice that he should win popularity by useful legislative projects, he tried first to secure its submission by encouraging persons who were known as the Undertakers because they undertook that candidates who supported the king's interests should be returned. When this failed, he again tried, as he had tried under Salisbury's influence in 1610, to enter into a bargain with the Commons. The Commons, however, replied by asking him to abandon the impositions and to restore the nonconforming clergy ejected in 1604 (see p. 482). On this James dissolved Parliament. As it granted no supplies, and passed no act, it became known as the Addled Parliament.

11. The Spanish Alliance. 1614-1617.– James was always anxious to be the peacemaker of Europe, being wise enough to see that the religious wars which had long been devastating the Continent might be brought to an end if only the contending parties would be more tolerant. It was partly in the hope of gaining influence to enable him to carry out his pacificatory policy that he aimed, early in his reign, at marrying his children into influential families on the Continent. In 1613 he gave his daughter Elizabeth to Frederick V., Elector Palatine, who was the leader of the German Calvinists, and he had long before projected a marriage between his eldest son, Prince Henry, and a Spanish Infanta. Prince Henry, however, died in 1612, and, though James's only surviving son, Charles, was still young, there had been a talk of marrying him to a French princess. The breaking-up of the Parliament of 1614 left James in great want of money; and, as he had reason to believe that Spain would give a much larger portion than would be given with a French princess, he became keenly eager to marry his son to the Infanta Maria, the daughter of Philip III. of Spain. Negotiations with this object were not formally opened till 1617, and in 1618 James learnt that the marriage could not take place unless he engaged to give religious liberty to the English Roman Catholics. He then offered to write a letter to the king of Spain, promising to relieve the Roman Catholics as long as they gave no offence, but Philip insisted on a more binding and permanent engagement, and, on James's refusal to do more than he had offered to do, Gondomar, the very able Spanish ambassador who had hitherto kept James in good humour, was withdrawn from England, and the negotiation was, for the time, allowed to drop.

12. The rise of Buckingham. 1615-1618.– In 1615 Somerset and his wife were accused of poisoning Sir Thomas Overbury. There can be no doubt that the Countess was guilty, but it is less certain what Somerset's own part in the matter was. In 1616 they were both found guilty, and, though James spared their lives, he never saw either of them again. He had already found a new favourite in George Villiers, a handsome youth who could dance and ride gracefully, and could entertain the king with lively conversation. The opponents of the Spanish alliance had supported Villiers against Somerset, but they soon found that Villiers was ready to throw himself on the side of Spain as soon as he found that it would please the king. James gave him large estates, and rapidly advanced him in the peerage, till, in 1618, he created him Marquis of Buckingham. He also made him Lord Admiral in the hope that he would improve the navy, and allowed all the patronage of England to pass through his hands. Statesmen and lawyers had to bow down to Buckingham if they wished to rise. No wonder the young man felt as if the nation was at his feet, and gave himself airs which disgusted all who wished to preserve independence of character.

13. The Voyage and Execution of Raleigh. 1617-1618.– In 1617 Raleigh, having been liberated through Buckingham's influence, sailed for the Orinoco in search of a gold-mine, of which he had heard in an earlier voyage in Elizabeth's reign (see p. 464). He engaged, before he sailed, not to touch the land of the king of Spain, and James let him know that, if he broke his promise, he would lose his head. It was, indeed, difficult to say where the lands of the king of Spain began or ended, but James left the burden of proving this on Raleigh; whilst Raleigh, imagining that if only he could find gold he would not be held to his promise, sent his men up the river, without distinct orders to avoid fighting. They attacked and burnt a Spanish village, but never reached the mine. Heart-broken at their failure, Raleigh proposed to lie in wait for the Spanish treasure-ships, and, on the refusal of his captains to follow him in piracy, returned to England with nothing in his hands. James sent him to the scaffold for a fault which he should never have been given the chance of committing. Raleigh was the last of the Elizabethan heroes – a many-sided man: soldier, sailor, statesman, historian, and poet. He was as firmly convinced as Drake had been that there was no peace in American waters, and that to rob and plunder Spaniards in time of peace was in itself a virtue. James's unwise attempt to form a close alliance with Spain made Raleigh a popular hero.

14. Colonisation of Virginia and New England. 1607-1620.– Gradually Englishmen learned to prefer peaceable commerce and colonisation to piratical enterprises. In 1585 Raleigh had sent out colonists to a region in North America to which he gave the name of Virginia, in honour of Elizabeth, but the colonists either returned to England or were destroyed by the Indians. In 1607 a fresh attempt was made, and, after passing through terrible hardships, the Colony of Virginia grew into a tobacco-planting, well-to-do community. In 1608 a congregation of Separatists emigrated from England to Holland, and, after a while, settled at Leyden, where, anxious to escape from the temptations of the world, many of them resolved to emigrate to America, where they might lead an ideally religious life. In 1620 the emigrants, a hundred in all, 'lifting up their eyes to heaven, their dearest country,' crossed the Atlantic in the 'Mayflower,' and found a new home which they named Plymouth. These first emigrants, the Pilgrim Fathers, as their descendants fondly called them, lost half their number by cold and disease in the first winter, but the remainder held on to form a nucleus for the Puritan New England of the future.

15. The Beginning of the Thirty Years' War. 1618-1620.– As yet, however, these small beginnings of a colonial empire attracted little attention in England. Men's thoughts ran far more on a great war – the Thirty Years' War – which, in 1618, began to desolate Germany. In that year a revolution took place in Bohemia, where the Protestant nobility rose against their king, Matthias, a Catholic, who was at the same time Emperor, and, in 1619, after the death of Matthias, they deposed his successor, Ferdinand, and chose Frederick, the Elector Palatine, James's Calvinist son-in-law, as king in his place. Almost at the same time Ferdinand became by election the Emperor Ferdinand II. James was urged to interfere on behalf of Frederick, but he could not make up his mind that the cause of his son-in-law was righteous, and he therefore left him to his fate. Frederick's cause was, however, popular in England, and in 1620, when there were rumours that a Spanish force was about to occupy the Palatinate in order to compel Frederick to abandon Bohemia, James – drawing a distinction between helping his son-in-law to keep his own and supporting him in taking the land of another – went so far as to allow English volunteers, under Sir Horace Vere, to garrison the fortresses of the Palatinate. In the summer of that year, a Spanish army, under Spinola, actually occupied the Western Palatinate, and James, angry at the news, summoned Parliament in order to obtain a vote of supplies for war. Before Parliament could meet, Frederick had been crushingly defeated on the White Hill, near Prague, and driven out of Bohemia.

16. The Meeting of James's Third Parliament. 1621.– Parliament, when it met in 1621, was the more distrustful of James, as Gondomar had returned to England in 1620 and had revived the Spanish marriage treaty. When the Houses met, they were disappointed to find that James did not propose to go to war at once. James fancied that, because he himself wished to act justly and fairly, every one of the other Princes would be regardless of his own interests, and, although he had already sent several ambassadors to settle matters without producing any results, he now proposed to send more ambassadors, and only to fight if negotiation failed. On learning this, the House of Commons only voted him a small supply, not being willing to grant war-taxes unless it was sure that there was to be a war. Probably James was right in not engaging England in hostilities, as ambition had as much to do with Frederick's proceedings as religion, and as, if James had helped his German allies, he could have exercised no control over them; but he had too little decision or real knowledge of the situation to inspire confidence either at home or abroad; and the Commons, as soon as they had granted a supply, began to criticise his government in domestic matters.

17. The Royal Prerogative. 1616-1621.– Elizabeth had been high-handed enough, but she had talked little of the rights which she claimed, and had set herself to gain the affection of her subjects. James, on the other hand, liked to talk of his rights, whilst he took no trouble to make himself popular. It was his business, he held, to see that the judges did not break the law under pretence of administering it. "This," he said in 1616, "is a thing regal and proper to a king, to keep every court within its true bounds." More startling was the language which followed. "As for the absolute prerogative of the Crown," he declared, "that is no subject for the tongue of a lawyer, nor is it lawful to be disputed. It is atheism and blasphemy to dispute what God can do: good Christians content themselves with His will revealed in His word; so it is presumption and high contempt in a subject to dispute what a king can do, or say that a king cannot do this or that; but rest in that which is the king's will revealed in his law." What James meant was that there must be in every state a power above the law to provide for emergencies as they arise, and to keep the authorities – judicial and administrative – from jostling with one another. At present this power belongs to Parliament. When Elizabeth handed on the government to James, it belonged to the Crown. What James did not understand was that, in the long run, no one – either king or Parliament – will be allowed to exercise powers which are unwisely used. Such an idea probably never entered into James's mind, because he was convinced that he was himself not only the best but the wisest of men, whereas he was in reality – as Henry IV. of France had said of him – 'the wisest fool in Christendom.'