From an agreeable interchange on the subject of London statues
in the House of Commons on Monday it emerges that James II, who is in store in some locality undisclosed wel be re-erected in some locality yet to be determined (his old location has been over-sprawled by the Admiralty) but that the proposal for a statue of James I in the vicinity of Whitehall is not smiled on. Now, that seems to me to be a pity. There is no ground for entertaining high respect for any of the Stuarts, but the first of them was by no means the worst of them. He was a patron of the arts, he had a lot to do with the Authorised version of the Bible ; he initiated university representa- tion in Parliament ; he united in his person the crowns of England and Scotland. All the other Stuarts are commemorated by statues in or around London. So are all the Hanoverians down to Edward VII. Why this harsh discrimination against the first of the Stuarts? It is true that there was a statue of him in Temple Bar, but Temple Bar has gone off to a private park in Essex.
Previous page
