SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.
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ieeU,Dee. 14. DiU, Charles Hovaid, earl of Notttn^iaiii, lord high admiral of England. This nobleman planned the following woric, with a view to sooth queen Elizabeth's despair for the recent execution of the earl of Essex, by flatter- ing her preposterous ranity, and gave for a prize aubject to the best poets and musicians, vbom he liberally rewarded, the beauty and accom- plishments of his royal mistress: — The Triwmpht of OrianM, to five and tix voicea, compoied by diven teveral author*. London : printed by Thomas Este, 1601; consisting of twenty-five songs.
1625, March 27. Died, James I. of England, and VI. of Scotland, after a reign over England of twenty-two years, in the fifty-ninth year of his age ; and was buried -with great pomp and solemnity in Westminster abbey. He left only one son, tlharles, and Elizabeth', the titular queen of Bohemia.
The reign of James was vastly different from that of his predecessor. Instead of an uninter- rupted harmony of government, it was marked by a perpetual jamng dissonance ; instead of success and glory abroad, disappointment and contempt ; instead of satisfaction, prosperity and union at home, discontent, dbtress, and, at last, civil war in all its horrors, and the ruin of his family. It was unfortunate for himself that James was born to fill a throne, since he had neither the spirit nor resolution to act as became a sovereign, and his weaknesses were more con- spicuous from his elevated siatiun, particularly at a period when the general diffusion of know- ledge rendered men eager to discern and to exag^gerate the defects of their superiors.
James had the advantage of queen Elizabeth's good example; and happy had it been for Eim, his family, and the nation, if her example had really had a due influence over his conduct. Fraught with learning, not with knowledge; ignorant of the true principles, of government ; more a stranger to our constitution by his notions and habits of thinking, than to our country by his birth ; obstinate, though not steady ; misled by self-opinion, and confirmed in error by super- lative pedantry. His pedantry was too much even for the age in which he lived, and fixed upon him a just ridicule ; because the merit of a chief governor is wisely to superintend the whole, and not to shine in any inferior class, because different, and in some cases, perhaps, opposite talents, both natural and required, are necessary to move and regulate the movements of the machine of government ; in short, because as a g^ood adjutant may make a very bad general, so a great reader ana writer too may be a very igno- rant king. In vain did the people look for the judgment and discernment which had rendered the government of the last reign glorious. A prince who had worn the crown of Scot- land under so many restraints, and in so neat penurv, might have contenteid himself, to Bold tna-t df'^ England on the same principles as bad contented the best and greatest of his prede- cessors ; but his designs were as bad as those of
the very worst of the princes who were before him.* From the principle of an absolute inde- pendent right to toe crown, inherent in himself, as he vainly boasted of from the fiist, he intro- duced the notion of an independent authority; a right superior to law, not to be contradicted by any human power; and consequently that an independent king is accountable to God alone. Could he have imposed this system of policy upon the generality of his subjects, he might have basked himself in the full sunshine of arbitrary power. But instead of making his impositions pass on the people, he only awakened their jealousy. The spirit of liberty baffled all his designs; and the same active principle which complied with queen Elizabeth, vigorously re- sisted king James, though he scrupled not to tell his parliament, " that, as it is blasphemy^ to dis- pute what God may do, so it is sedition in sub- jects to dispute what a king may do in the height of his power." Yet, notwithstanding his notions and principles of government were so absurd, by which he hoped to establish his authority, he found numbers to adopt them ; for numbers are at all times liable to be deceived, ready to be tempted, and prone to be corrupted. By his system of government, by his giving the reins of power into the hands of favourites, he conjured up that storm in which his successor perished.
Amongst the arbitrary acts of James's, was his opposing the election of sir Francis Good- win, member for the county of Berks, after he had been declared duly elected by a committee of the house of commons. That king James was unfriendly to the liberty of the press, has already been noticed, and the following are fur- ther proofs of his desire to curtail the fruits of genius ; he proclaimed Buchanan's HUtory, and a political tract of his at the "Mercat Cross;" and every one was to bring his copy " to be perusit and purgit of the offensive and extraordi- nare materis," under a heavy penalty. Knox, whom Milton calls " the reformer of a king- dom," was also curtailed; and " the sense of that great man shall, to all posterity, be lost for the fearfulness or the presumptuous vastness of a perfunctory licenser.
On the 4th December, 1621 , the king addresses
- Qneen Elizabeth had so lltUe concern abont here-
ditary riKht, that ahe neither held, nor desired to hold, her crown by any other tenure than the statute of the 3Sth of her father's rcigu. In the 13th of her own reign, she declared it, by law, high treason, during her life, and a pramunire, after her decease, to deny the power of parliament, in limiting and binding the descent and in- heritance of the crown, or the claims to it. It was nsoal when the people compared the reign of James with that of the proceding glorious one, to distinguish liim by the nameof 9«em Jame8,andhispredecessorasJHiif Elixabetb
A public record informs us, that James I. granted to. the duchess of Richmond and another person, an exdn- sive patent for coining fartkingi. Francis Howard, duchess of Richmond di^ 1639.
In the reign of James I. an act was passed to prevent the further growth of poetry in Bngland ; the ob)ecto(the bill was to prevent the growth of papa p.
The Orst lottery known in England was drawn in this reign, and was made for Uie support of the English colonies in North America ; the last lottery was drawn in 183/.
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