Carr or Ker, a young Scotchman of good family, had attracted the king's attention and regard, was speedily taken into the highest favour, and was made successively Viscount Rochester and Earl of Somerset. He had gained the affections of the beautiful but depraved Frances Howard, countess of Essex; and to gratify his minion, James exerted all his influence to promote her divorce from her husband, and was at last successful by a process which covered both the king and the countess with indelible infamy. Her marriage to Somerset took place in 1613, and was solemnized at Whitehall with greater magnificence than had ever been witnessed in England at the espousals of a subject. Retribution, however, speedily overtook the guilty pair, and the fall of the favourite was still more rapid than his rise. The murder of Overbury, the friend of Somerset, who had strenuously exerted his influence to prevent the marriage; the discovery of the crime; and the trial and condemnation of the murderers and their accomplices—followed in rapid succession. (See Overbury, Sir Thomas.) Somerset and his countess were pardoned, to the great scandal of public justice; and the agitation of James during the trial, and his whole conduct in connection with this shocking affair, leave no doubt that the king himself was in one way or other compromised in it, and that Somerset was in possession of some secret deeply affecting the honour of James, and which he was anxious should at all hazards be concealed. In 1617 James, moved as he said by a salmon-like instinct, paid a visit to his native country, and succeeded, though not without difficulty, in inducing the parliament and the general assembly to give their assent to several very obnoxious changes in the constitution and rites of the Scottish church, for the purpose of bringing it more closely to the episcopal model. His subserviency to the Spanish court now made him as unpopular among his English subjects, as his ecclesiastical policy had done in Scotland. His cruel and disgraceful execution of Sir Walter Raleigh at the instigation of the Spanish ambassador, and his mean and pusillanimous refusal to assist his son-in-law, the elector palatine, when driven from his dominions by the combined arms of Austria and Spain, roused popular indignation to the highest pitch. A considerable portion of the odium which the king incurred towards the close of his reign was no doubt due to the influence of the new favourite, the notorious Buckingham, who fomented the quarrel between him and the house of commons, broke off the Spanish match on which James had long set his heart, and ultimately involved the country in a war with Spain, which was followed by no beneficial results. In the midst of these untoward events James died, after a short illness, on the 27th of March, 1625, in the fifty-ninth year of his age, having reigned nearly fifty-eight years in Scotland, and upwards of twenty-two in England.
The personal appearance of James was by no means prepossessing. In stature he was about the middle size, somewhat corpulent, his face full and ruddy, his eyes large and rolling, his beard thin, his hair light-brown, his tongue too large for his mouth, his legs weak, and his gait ungainly. He was possessed of considerable shrewdness, as well as literary talent and learning. Sully termed him the wisest-fool in christendom; but his tastes and habits were low and vulgar. He was timorous, insincere and treacherous, slothful and sensual, much addicted to drinking, buffoonery, and profane swearing; and his egregious vanity, pedantry, and cowardice, and total want of dignity, made him contemptible even in the eyes of his courtiers and worthless favourites. He had high notions of his prerogative, prided himself on his king-craft, and yet was constantly worsted in his quarrels with his parliaments, and by his unconstitutional and arbitrary proceedings sowed the seeds of that great civil contest with his son, in which the monarchy was overthrown.
James was a voluminous author both in prose and verse. A full account of his writings has been given by Dr. Irving in his Lives of the Scottish Poets, vol. ii. A collected edition of the prose works of the king was published in folio in 1616. He had by his queen, Anne of Denmark, seven children, of whom, however, only two survived him—Charles, his successor, and Elizabeth, the wife of the elector palatine, whose youngest child, the Electress Sophia, was the mother of George I.—J. T.
James II. of England, born in the year 1633, was the second surviving son of Charles I., and had reached the age of sixteen when his father died on the scaffold. A short time before this, the duke of York—as he was then called—had escaped to Holland, and taken the command of the English fleet there till the arrival of his brother Charles. He afterwards resided chiefly with his mother, Henrietta Maria, at Paris, where his connection with the French court, and his training in the Roman catholic faith, laid the foundation of the principal errors and calamities which clouded his subsequent career. His education otherwise was not unsuited to the prospects still entertained by the exiled family; nor did he manifest any want of activity and resolution. Having received a commission in the French army, he served with credit under Marshal Turenne; and when the renewal of friendly relations between England and France compelled him to quit the latter kingdom, he sought employment under the standard of Spain in the Low Countries. The Restoration in 1660 having placed his brother on the British throne, James returned to his native land, and in the course of the same year married Anne Hyde, daughter of the chancellor, afterwards earl of Clarendon. Of the eight children who sprung from this union, all died in early life, except the two daughters who came in succession to the throne—Mary, who was married in 1677 to the prince of Orange; and Anne, who became in 1683 the wife of Prince George of Denmark. He had also several illegitimate children, chiefly by Arabella Churchill, sister to the duke of Marlborough; and of these James Fitzjames, afterwards Marshal Berwick (see Berwick), gained a place in European history as one of the ablest military commanders of that period. It may be noticed here, that the James who was subsequently known as the Chevalier de St. George and the first Pretender, was the offspring of a second marriage which the duke of York contracted with Mary, daughter of the duke of Modena, in 1673, two years after the death of Ann Hyde, and which produced five other children, all of whom died young. The duke was neither destitute of the acquirements, nor averse to the labours necessary to discharge the office of lord high-admiral, which was conferred upon him, along with the wardenship of the Cinque Ports, at the Restoration. He had a relish for the study of maritime affairs, and he did not long want opportunities of proving his courage and energy as a naval commander. War was declared against Holland in 1664; and in the following year an English squadron which he led in person gained, near Lowestoffe, a signal victory over the Dutch admiral, Opdam, who fell in the engagement. Hostilities being renewed in 1672, the duke again took personal part in the struggle; and on the coast of Suffolk, though little aided by his French allies under D'Estrees, he maintained an obstinate conflict against the celebrated De Ruyter, who deemed it prudent to retire after night had separated the combatants. The general results of the war, however, were adverse to England, while the expense of it was felt to be a heavy burden; and these successes rather increased than diminished the duke's unpopularity among his countrymen, the majority of whom disliked the alliance with an ambitious catholic power against a struggling protestant nation. Accordingly the parliament of 1673, besides refusing further supplies, passed the test act, which compelled James to resign his office at the admiralty. His marriage with Mary of Modena in the close of the same year, in addition to his previous public profession of popery, strengthened the prejudices against him; and these became so formidable in the national ferment which Oates awakened, that he was under the necessity of retiring to the continent. During his absence an attempt was made to exclude him from the succession to the throne, and the dissatisfied tone of public feeling began to threaten him with a dangerous rival in the duke of Monmouth, a natural son of the king. He returned in the close of 1679; but Charles deemed it requisite to remove him again from court, by conferring upon him the direction of affairs in Scotland, where the battle of Bothwell Bridge had recently crushed the hopes of the covenanters. The cruel persecutions which followed that event, and the other acts of misgovernment under which the northern part of the kingdom then groaned, have cast a dark shadow on the memory of James. Meanwhile the bill of exclusion was again introduced, and twice carried in the house of commons; but the opposition of the lords in the first instance, and the prorogation of parliament on the second occasion, frustrated the design of its supporters. Charles still clung to his brother's interests, and the closing years of that unhappy reign displayed the evil effects of the duke's presence and predominant influence in the royal councils.
At the death of Charles in 1685, James assumed the sovereignty, and hastened to disarm the opposition which he apprehended, by proclaiming his resolution to maintain the Church of England, and respect the liberties of the people. According to
