CHAPTER II.

ENGLAND UNDER THE STUARTS: THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION (1603-1714).

I. THE FIRST TWO STUARTS.

1. Reign of James the First (1603–1625).

Union of the Crowns of England and Scotland. - The accession of the Stuart line brought England and Scotland under the same sovereign, though each country still retained its own parliament. James was the first to bear the title of "King of Great Britain." I The union of the two countries was symbolized by a new flag, upon which were blended the crosses of St. George and St. Andrew, the former the patron saint of England and the latter of Scotland.

The King. There was nothing royal in James's person or demeanor. An unfortunate weakness in his limbs gave him an awkward, shambling gait. He was equally weak in character, for which fault he was more responsible. He was conceited and obstinate, and was charged with drunkenness and buffoonery. He affected authorship, and wrote several books, one on witchcraft, in which he believed, and another on the use of tobacco, - just introduced by Raleigh, in which he did not believe. The sycophants of his court called him the "British Solomon," which drew from the French Duke of Sully the retort that he was the "wisest fool in Europe."

His full title was "King of Great Britain, France, and Ireland."

THE "DIVINE RIGHT" OF KINGS, ETC.

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He was constitutionally a coward, and would tremble at the sight of a drawn sword. His clothes were thickly padded as a precaution against assassination. This disposition inclined him to a peace policy, so that the history of his reign is signalized by no important wars. It also, in connection with his general femininity, earned for him the title of "Queen James," while his predecessor was alluded to as 66 King Elizabeth.”

The "Divine Right" of Kings and the "Royal Touch." James was a firm believer in the doctrine of the "divine right" of kings. He held that hereditary princes are the Lord's anointed, and that their authority can in no way be questioned or limited by people, priest, or parliament. His own words were, "As it is atheism and blasphemy to dispute what God can do, so it is high contempt in a subject to dispute what a king can do, or to say that the king cannot do this or that."

This doctrine found much support in the popular superstition of the "Royal Touch." The king was believed to possess the power a gift transmitted through the royal line of England from Edward the Confessor of healing scrofulous persons by the laying on of hands.' James's son Charles is said to have touched 100,000 persons during his reign. The testimony as to the genuineness of the cures effected is often very strong and seemingly unimpeachable.

It is the bearing of this strange superstition upon the doctrine of the divine right of kings that concerns us now. "The political importance of this superstition," observes Lecky, "is very manifest. Educated laymen might deride it, but in the eyes of the English poor it was a visible, palpable attestation of the indefeasible sanctity of the royal line. It placed the sovereignty entirely apart from the categories of mere human institutions."2

By bearing in mind this superstition, it will be easier for us to

1 Consult Lecky, A History of England in the Eighteenth Century, Vol. I. P. 73. The French kings were also supposed to possess the same miraculous power, inherited, as most believed, from Louis the Saint.

2 Ibid., Vol. I. p. 77.

understand how so large a proportion of the people of England could support the Stuarts in their extravagant claims, and could sincerely maintain the doctrine of the sinfulness of resistance to the king.

Arabella Stuart: Sir Walter Raleigh.

The very first year of

James's reign was disturbed by an attempt to place his cousin Arabella Stuart upon the throne. We notice the matter here only because the affair involved the fate of one of the great men whose career began under Elizabeth. This was Sir Walter Raleigh, who, on the unproved charge of having taken part in the conspiracy, was unjustly sentenced to die, but was reprieved and sent to the Tower, where he remained a prisoner for thirteen years. For the tedium of his long confinement he found relief in the composition of his History of the World'

The Gunpowder Plot (1605). In the third year of James's reign was unearthed one of the most fiendish plots imaginable. This was nothing less than a plan to blow up with gunpowder the Parliament Building, upon the opening day of the Session, when king, lords, and commons would all be present, and thus to destroy at a single blow every branch of the English Government.

1 Raleigh was finally set at liberty, but not pardoned. There was much of the romantic and adventurous in his nature, and he now proposed to mend his broken fortunes by imitating the undertakings of Cortez and Pizarro. One of his dreams was, that somewhere in South America there existed a sort of El Dorado, and he fitted out an expedition at his own expense to search for it. The expedition was very unfortunate. It sailed far up the great river Orinoco, but found nothing corresponding to Raleigh's dream, and did nothing save capture and burn a little Spanish settlement. For this act the Spanish court demanded, upon Raleigh's return to England, that he be punished as a pirate. James yielded to the demands of Spanish vengeance, and Raleigh was condemned to die, not, however, on the charge of piracy, but on the old charge for which he had suffered the long imprisonment. The old warrior's calmness was not disturbed by the near approach of death. When on the scaffold, he lifted the ax, and feeling the edge with his thumb, said, "This is a sharp medicine, but it will cure all diseases" (1618).

Such was the unworthy fate of Sir Walter Raleigh, who, notwithstanding all his faults, must be numbered among England's most illustrious sons.

COLONIES AND TRADE SETTLEMENTS.

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This conspiracy, known as the Gunpowder Plot, was entered into by some Roman Catholics, because they were disappointed in the course which the king had taken as regards their religion. The leader of the conspiracy was Guy Fawkes. Thirty-six barrels of gunpowder were secreted in one of the cellars beneath the chamber occupied by the lords, and then the conspirators quietly awaited the assembling of Parliament.

The timely discovery of the plot was brought about by means of a letter of warning from one of the conspirators to a Catholic lord (his brother-in-law), begging him to absent himself from the opening of Parliament. "God and man," ran the mysterious message, "have concurred to punish the wickedness of this time; . . . for, though there be no appearance of any stir, yet, I say, they will receive a terrible blow this Parliament, and yet they shall not see who hurts them."

The closing lines of the letter awakened a suspicion as to the nature of the plot; the vaults beneath the Parliament House were searched, and the terrible secret was discovered. Fawkes, who was keeping watch of the cellar, was arrested, and after being put to the rack, was executed. His chief accomplices were also seized and punished. The alarm created by the terrible plot led Parliament to enact some very severe laws against the Roman Catholics.

Colonies and Trade Settlements. The reign of James I. is signalized by the commencement of that system of colonization which has resulted in the establishment of the English race in almost every quarter of the globe.

In the year 1607 Jamestown, so named in honor of the king, was founded in Virginia. This was the first permanent English settlement within the limits of the United States. In 1620 some Separatists, or Pilgrims, who had found in Holland a temporary refuge from persecution, pushed across the Atlantic, and amidst heroic sufferings and hardships established the first settlement in New England, and laid the foundations of civil and religious liberty in the New World.

Besides planting these settlements in the New World, the English during this same reign established themselves in the ancient country of India. In 1612 the East India Company, which had been chartered by Elizabeth in 1600, established their first factory at Surat. This was the humble beginning of the gigantic English Empire in the East.

In this connection must also be noticed the Plantation of Ulster in Ireland. The northern part of that island having been desolated by the Tyrone Rebellion, and large tracts of land having been forfeited to the English crown, this land was now given by royal grant to English and Scotch settlers. Some of the Celtic clans were removed bodily, and assigned lands in other parts of the island. Thus all this portion of the country became thoroughly Anglicized. The injustice and harshness of the treatment they received - which was very like the treatment of the Indians in the New World at the hands of the colonists there — awakened among the Irish a spirit of bitter hostility to the new comers, which, intensified by fresh wrongs, has embittered all the relations of Ireland and England up to our own day.

Contest between James and the Commons. We have made mention of James's idea of the divine right of kingship. Such a view of royal authority and privileges was sure to bring him into conflict with Parliament, especially with the House of Commons. He was constantly dissolving Parliament and sending the members home, because they insisted upon considering subjects which he had told them they should let alone.

The chief matters of dispute between the king and the Commons were the limits of the authority of the former in matters touching legislation and taxation, and the nature and extent of the privileges and jurisdictions of the latter.

As to the limits of the royal power, James talked and acted as though his prerogatives were practically unbounded. He issued proclamations which in their scope were really laws, and then enforced these royal edicts by fines and imprisonment as though they were regular statutes of Parliament. Moreover, taking advantage