place the celebrated Raid of Ruthven, by which a few presbyterian nobles,
headed by the earl of Gowrie, were enabled to take possession of the royal
person, and use his authority for some time in behalf of liberal government and
their own religious principles, while Stuart and Lennox were forbidden his
presence.
It was not till June, 1583, that James emancipated himself from a control which, however well he appeared to bear it, was far from agreeable to him. Lennox had now been banished to France, where he died of a broken heart; Stuart was created earl of Arran on the ruins of the Hamilton family, and became almost sole counsellor to the young monarch. The nobles who had seized the king at Ruthven, were pardoned ; but Gowrie, having soon after made a second and unsuccessful attempt, was beheaded at Stirling. During the interval between June, 1583, and November, 1585, the government was of a decidedly anti-popular and anti-presbyterian character, Arran being permitted to act entirely as he pleased. The presbyterian nobles, however, who had fled into England, were, at the latter period, enabled by Elizabeth to invade their own country, with such a force as overturned the power of the unworthy favourite, and re-established a system agreeable to the clergy and people, and more closely respondent to the wishes of Elizabeth. In this way James grew up to man's estate.
In 1584, when eighteen years of age, he made his first appearance as an author, by publishing a small thin quarto, entitled "Essayes of a Prentice in the Divine Art of Poesie, with the Rewlis and Cauteles to be pursued and avoided." This work consists of a mixture of poetry and prose; the poems being chiefly a series of sonnets, which bear very much the appearance of school exercises ; while the prose consists of a code of laws for the construction of verse according to the ideas of that age. There is little in the king's style or his ideas to please the present age; yet, compared with the efforts of contemporary authors, these poems may be said to bear a respectable appearance.
The main effect of the late revolution was to re-establish the English influence, which had been deranged by the ascendancy of captain Stuart. In June, 1586, James entered into an arrangement with Elizabeth, by which, in consideration of a pension of five thousand pounds, rendered necessary by his penurious circumstances, he engaged to support England against the machinations of the catholic powers of Europe. It was also part of this treaty, that a correspondence which he had entered into with his mother, should be broken off; and he even submitted so far to the desires of his new superior, as to write a disrespectful letter to that unhappy princess, who replied in an eloquent epistle, threatening to denounce him as a usurper, and load him with a parent's curse. James, in reality, during the whole of his occupancy of the Scottish throne, was a mere tool in the hands of one party or another; and had no personal influence or independence whatever till the advanced age of Elizabeth gave him near hopes of the English crown. Great care is therefore to be taken in judging of his actions, lest that be attributed to his own vicious will, which was only the dictate of a political system, of which he was the apparent head, but the real slave. In the winter of 1586-7, he had to endure the painful reflection, that his mother was threatened with, and ultimately brought to the scaffold, without his being able to make the least movement in her favour. It is but justice to him to say, that so far from his manifesting the levity on this subject attributed to him by several writers, he appears from documents of respectable authority,[1] to have manifested the highest indignation, and a degree of grief hardly to be expected from him,
- ↑ See the Life of James I., forming two volumes of Constable's Miscellany, by the editor of the present work.
