Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 13.djvu/584

558 the various factions in complete restraint until his assassina tion at Linlithgow in February 1570. The absence of his authoritative will at once allowed free scope to the various elements of disorder latent in the kingdom, and during the regency of Lennox, who was mortally wounded in a fray at Stirling with the adherents of Mary, Sep tember 1571, and of the earl of Mar his successor, who died in October 1572, strife and confusion held almost rampant sway. The earl of Morton, the next regent, being possessed, however, of some of the high qualities of his predecessor Murray, succeeded .with assistance from Elizabeth of England in quelling the last embers of insurrection, and afterwards held in check the interested ambition of the nobles, until in 1578 they succeeded in discrediting his influence by the scheme of placing the government nominally in the hands of the boy monarch. In June 1581 Morton suffered death for his connexion with the murder of Darnley. James, to whom were thus early entrusted the functions of sovereignty, had spent his infancy under the care of the earl of Mar, on whose death he was taken charge of by the earl s brother, Alex ander Erskine. For his principal tutor he had George Buchanan, who inspired him with a genuine interest in learning and a strong ambition to excel in poetical com position ; he was also so far influenced by the Reformed type of religion as to have imbibed a love for theo logical argument, although he always cherished a strong distaste towards both Calvinistic doctrine and the Presby terian form of government. His character was indeed formed amidst moral and intellectual surroundings strangely mingled and inharmonious, in addition to which the nature he inherited was rather a medley of isolated capacities than a definite and distinct icliosyncracy. From the first compelled to adopt an attitude hostile to his mother, and, at the same time that he could not but resent her imprisonment by Elizabeth, unable to trust in her intentions towards himself, he seems to have regarded her death both as a relief and as a calamity and disgrace. As he knew that each party in the state, the Catholics, the nobles, the Presbyterians, wished to make him their tool, he resolved to act towards them as suited his convenience ; but, although he possessed a certain sharp shrewdness and foresight as well as no small knowledge of character, his inability to take a comprehensive view of affairs, or to form a truly courageous resolution, made his policy often rash and reckless in regard to matters seemingly small, and always shifting and irresolute in regard to affairs of the highest moment. The moral courage he possessed was not incon sistent with physical cowardice ; indeed the chief element in it was an overweening self-conceit, to which the conscious ness of superior intellectual attainments gave the consum mating touch ; and thus it was that the very difficulties of his position gradually nourished within him the conviction of the divine right inherent in his office, and caused all his conduct, wavering and uncertain as it was, to be inspired by the one purpose of building up his kingly prerogative. Taking advantage of the weakness of the royal authority during the king s minority, the General Assembly of the Scottish Church resolved in 1581 to substitute Presbyterian- ism for Episcopacy, and James, being shortly afterwards seized by the nobles at the raid of Iluthven, was unable to put his veto on their procedure, until after the overthrow of those implicated in the conspiracy, when in 1584 the estates passed an act denouncing their assumption of legislative power. In 1585 James was, however, besieged in Stirling by the exiled lords, and compelled to pardon them and dismiss his favourite, Arran. As their influence was moreover backed by Elizabeth, and as the hopes of James were even thus early directed towards succeeding her on the English throne, he discovered it to be advan tageous to disguise his sentiments towards the Presbyterians. The destruction in 1588 that overtook the Armada of the Catholic Philip of Spain deprived James of all anxiety regarding the effects of his mother s testamentary disposal of her crown to that monarch, but it naturally inclined him for a time to a more close alliance with the Protestants, the result of which was seen, not only in his marriage in 1589 to the Protestant princess Anne of Denmark, but in an Act of the estates in 1592, which sanctioned the formal abolition of Episcopacy. In 1594 he also found it neces sary to reduce the Catholic lords of the north of Scotland, but in 1597 he deemed it prudent to balance the influence of the Presbyterians, and also to flatter the hopes of the Catholics of England by securing the revocation of the forfeiture of the estates of the banished nobles, and permit ting them to return. Previous to this his action against the preacher of a sermon in which Elizabeth was attacked as an atheist led to a " No Popery" riot in Edinburgh. The breach between him and the Presbyterians was still further widened by the statute of 1599, appointing a certain number of ministers to a seat in parliament with the title of bishop, and by his publication in the same year of his Basilicon Doron, in which he promulgated his views in regard to the divine right of kings. With the exception, however, of his peculiar experiences in connexion with the mysterious Gowrie conspiracy at Perth (August 5, 1600), the remainder of his reign in Scotland until his succession to the English throne in 1603 was quiet and uneventful; and the only fact of notable importance connected with his subsequent government of that kingdom is his suspension of the meetings of the General Assembly, until by the banishment and imprisonment of Melville and its principal leaders he was able in 1610 to convene an Assembly which agreed to the organization of a modified Episcopacy. The peculiar union of talents and defects which constituted the character of James made him perhaps the most unfit successor of Elizabeth that could have been chosen. His strutting pomposity was rendered strangely ludicrous by a personal appearance the several defects of which were heightened by their contrast with each other, and it was also constantly interfered with by his want of a proper sense of decorum. If he displayed great cleverness in avoiding immediate political difficulties and in gaining for the moment his own ends, he was incapable of adapt ing himself mentally to his new position as sovereign of England, and his fussy self-importance made it almost in evitable that he should mortally offend the political tem perament then in England so peculiarly sensitive. Indeed, the traditional policy which the circumstances of Scotland had rendered almost a second nature to the Stuarts was repugnant to the susceptibilities of England, and utterly alien to her political constitution, and in the case of James all the worst defects of this policy were exaggerated. Thus his seeming shrewdness in small matters, and his witty and terse political axioms, only secured hirn the reputation of being the "wisest fool in Christendom;" and, while his absurd personality cast ridicule on his kingly pretensions, the general character of his political procedure estranged from him every party in the state, and called into action influences which in the subsequent reign wrought the overthrow of the monarchy whose prestige he had almost hopelessly tarnished. Having narrowly escaped a plot of the Catholics to seize his person shortly after his arrival in London, James resolved to flatter their hopes by grant ing them toleration, but his proclamation in February 1604 against the Jesuits revealed the hollowness of his professions and led to the futile gunpowder conspiracy of November 1605. Its discovery dissipated for the time the alienation already begun between him and the Commons on account of his imprudent assertion of