ESTIMATES OF THE ENGLISH KINGS.
L
EVERY one who attempts to draw a picture of James Stuart must feel a great difficulty in the fact that a master-hand has anticipated him, and that after the remarkable portrait in Sir Walter Scott's "Fortunes of Nigel," any sketch by other hands must appear faint and colourless. All that we can do is to place before our readers the salient features of a character of which the popular mind has already a tolerably correct impression.
As to the more prominent and superficial characteristics of James, there can be little fear of going astray, either in the direc- tion of caricature or flattery. They are to be gathered from the pages of nearly every ivriter of the period, and they are presented in unmistakable features under the hand of the King himself, in his printed works and in his familiar correspondence. All that there can be any hesitation or dispute about is whether certain ambiguous and questionable transactions have or have not a deeper moral significance, and do or do not imply a greater capa- bility for evil. On these points, however, the evidence we possess is so inadequate and so perplexing, that anyone in forming a decision must rely to a considerable extent on his favourable or unfavourable prepossessions, and it is more prudent to confine ourselves to a statement of the difficulty, and to suspend a decided judgment.
James VI. of Scotland ascended the throne of England in the thirty-seventh year of his age. His character therefore, whatever it was, might in any case be supposed to have been fully matured, and events had in his case precipitated this development. Any- thing more unfavourable than the training of early circumstances which be underwent can hardly be imagined. The accredited child of a marriage terminated by a tragedy which has cast a deep stain of suspicion on the memory of one parent ; with the taint of possible illegitimacy attaching itself to his own birth ; at first the involuntary supplanter and then the successful rival of his own mother, be was from his earliest years placed in a position from which few characters indeed could have escaped without serious detriment, and from which his own peculiar character was especially likely to suffer. His sympathies, de- prived by the necessities of his position of even the power of expansion afforded by the relations of the family circle, were from the first turned inwards on himself, and the domestic ties which he afterwards formed, as husband and father, im- plying deference to his superior wisdom and will, were only such as to exaggerate this egotism of thought and feeling. When he reached years of intelligence, he found himself in the hands of ambitious statesmen jind fierce factions, by whom his person was used as an instrument of authority for purposes as to which his own wishes were scarcely ever consulted. While thus he was made to feel the significance and importance of the royal name and authority more and more, and in the downfall of each of his successive masters saw a lesson of the instability of usurped and illegitimate power, he was naturally led to place a dispropor- tionate value on the exercise of his own free-will, and to regard any suspension of this as equivalent to a condition of public instability and anarchy. As time rolled on, opportunities of temporary self-assertion presented themselves more frequently in the rivalries of contending parties, and almost insensibly his personal feelings gained more influence over the course of events. In proportion as the restraints frequently imposed on his authority and wishes had been unduly severe, so the licence which was every now and then afforded to his prejudices and caprices was dangerously great. Whenever he was at all a free agent, be was so absolutely and without restriction. How he availed him- self of these opportunities the records of Scotland during that period tell us too plainly. Afraid of trusting himself to any man of established position or commanding talents, lest he should find in him only another master, James threw himself into the hands of favourites, who owed all their fortunes to his bounty, and whom on that account he could complacently regard as the crea- tures of his will, and the mere ministers of his wishes. These men were not worse in character than most of the actors in the events of those days, but they possessed the disqualification of being by the very nature of their position destitute of sympathies with the nation, and mere exponents and agents of a strictly personal policy. By them the King's natural weakness of character was fostered and aggravated, and the petty tyranny which his foolish fondness en- abled each in turn to exercise over him was exercised to the advantage not of the nation at large, but of the favourite himself and his personal connections. Meanwhile the great religious movement which had for the first time created a really national life in Scotland suffered in tone and mode of expression from the low and selfish in- fluences with which it was thus brought into collision, and the mantle of John Knox descended on men who imitated his uncom- promising and uncourtly bluntness of manner, without maintain- ing his high purposes and his lofty principle. They could beard and insult the King in his palace and denounce him from the pulpit, but they shared eventually the fate of those who intrude into a sphere of action which lies apart from the centres of their natural strength, and partook of the vicissitudes of Court intrigue, instead of controlling the currents of popular sentiment. They alienated thoroughly the mind of the King from all sympathy with their religious cause, by associating it with constant antagonism to all that he cherished and desired, and with insolence to his own person. Thus to the other delights of the Promised Land, which his succession to the throne of England offered to James, were added the hope of being able there to gratify his secret but in- grained loathing of Presbyterianism and Presbyterians, and the joy of making the Bishops who governed the Church, as he made the ministers who governed the State. Every restraint, indeed, that he suffered from in Scotland increased his desire to attain to the Southern elysium, and exaggerated to his imagination the extent of the emancipation from control which he would there secure. The real conditions under which the Tudors had exercised such almost unlimited power, his mind—even had its early disci- pline been less] unfortunate—would never have been capable of grasping, far less of being guided by in his rules of action. He never could have been brought to see that the reason why that astute line of Sovereigns were subjected to so little control from the people whom they governed, was because they had the art and wisdom of so much controlling themselves where national feelings were concerned, and of making themselves the exponents of the national will, instead of setting up any per- sonal policy of their own as its ostentatious antagonist. To the mind of James there was no medium between being browbeaten by insolent nobles and presuming preachers, and being able to indulge to the utmost, without regard to any external circum- stances, his own unbridled fancies. Order with him was another name for licence in the Ruler, just as Anarchy was for licence in the subject. Had he been capable of interpreting rightly anything that he saw, the minute knowledge of the real state of affairs in England during the latter years of Elizabeth, which his frequent communications with the leading statesmen and aspiring politi- cians of that kingdom offered to him, ought to have instructed him on this point. But his mind was quite unequal to looking at more than one point at a time, and he almost invariably confined him- self to those which were most insignificant and irrelevant. Of the power of combining ideas and forming a just deduction from them he was quite destitute. Little side-channels con- stantly attracted his notice and excited his curiosity so forcibly, that he exhausted all his shrewdness and the resources of a miscel- laneous and ill-digested stock of learning in exploring their by- ways and in fathoming the supposed depths of their shallows, while the main stream which led straight to the desired bourne passed by him, though stretched before his eyes, unheeded and unknown. In little things he could be very shrewd, both in word and deed. But his shrewdness instinctively failed him exactly where its exercise was of most importance. Like most persons who are great in small things, he had an overweening opinion of his own wisdom and sagacity. He seriously believed that he could easily deal with questions which had baffled or
perplexed Elizabeth, and command where she had been content to temporize and persuade. He could so little estimate a really great crisis that, instead of feeling any difficulty or doubt as to its solu- tion, he unconsciously lowered its proportions to the standard of his own mind, and felt himself fully master of the situation. His real qualifications, such as they were, served to increase this delu- sion. He had been crammed with the ponderous learning of the -day, and he had the insatiate craving for more food of this description which is felt by those who read without digesting, and acquire a vast stock of knowledge without adding, except in an infinitesimal degree, to the treasures and capacity of their own mind. The wisdom which was scattered through the pages which he perused passed into his mind in the concrete shape of aphorisms and astute generalities, which were ever in his mouth, and might give a superficial impression of a superior understanding. A dry and somewhat sarcastic sense of humour even suggested a still greater penetration. But he had never really mastered the mean- ing of what he read so as to be able to apply it,—it formed no part .of his practical rule of conduct, and was as useless for any practical 'purpose as if he had been a dunce instead of a pedant. His *occasional humorous sayings were, after all, the expression of mere superficial and transient perceptions, and implied no actual insight into the relations of things. The real motive and explana- tion of his actions generally lay somewhere else, in some rooted prejudice, in some vain self-conceit, in some passing passion, or in a careless good-nature. His faith in his own capacity for govern- ment, and his ambition to emulate the great kings whose reputa- tion he admired and whose axioms were his common-places, joined to an easy, good-natured, and kindly temperament, made him *disposed to govern well, and to promote the happiness and prosperity of his people. But this general purpose was proof against no temptation of personal selfishness or idle caprice, and of little practical value in a prince who had no power of looking ibayond immediate circumstances, and no capacity of sympathy with anything which did not lie within his own narrow circle of ideas, or which did not, to his limited understanding, palpably concern his own interests. Ile had learned so long to consider these interests as the centre of everything that was important, that die could not conceive of anything which lay, or seemed to lie, 'beyond their sphere being worthy of consideration. Neither 'national sentiment nor the welfare of an individual subject *entered into the constituent elements of his decisions, except in the form of a fear to be guarded against or an adversary to be dis- armed. Both his mind and heart were shallow. His anger was eriolent and unseemly in its manifestation, but quickly evanescent ; and his resentments, though they were not easily entirely eradi- cated, were rather recurring than chronic in their symptoms, and were easily superseded, at least for the time, by passing impres- sions and incidental feelings. As a rule, he rather cherished a grievance than resented injuries. A few things and a few persons, indeed, he bated with an intenser feeling, almost unaccountable in fits disproportionate strength. He detested the use of tobacco, and he bated its great patron, Raleigh—the first theoretically, the second instinctively, from a consciousness of the natural antagonism of Auch a nature (both in its good and evil points) to his own—but while no amount of reason would have convinced him of error in the 'former case, his own interests (when he could be made to see them) mould be sufficient to disarm for the time his active resentment Against the latter.
If it were not for evidence that James was as unconscious .of his physical as he was of his mental deficiencies, we might 'have been inclined to suppose that he placed an undue value on the little wit he did possess, from a feeling that he could lay claim to no respect on the score of his personal appearance or bodily accomplishments. The son of a very handsome mother, and the accredited son of a handsome father, he resembled neither Of them in physical appearance. Scandal said that his want of ,good looks and ungainliness were additional proofs of the paternity which it assigned to him. Perhaps the most minute description of his person in later years which is free from satirical animus is that given by the Court physician, Sir Theodore Mayerne, in his memo- rials of his professional attendance on the King. Sir Theodore (as quoted by Sir Henry Ellis) says that his Majesty's legs were slender, scarcely strong enough to carry his body ; that his jaw was narrow, and rendered swallowing difficult, a defect which he in- herited both from his mother and from his grandfather, King James V.; that in moist weather and winter he had usually a cough ; that his skin was soft and delicate, but irritable ; that he never ate bread, always fed on roast meat, and seldom or never ate of boiled, sinless it was beef ; that he was very clumsy in his riding and hunting, and frequently met with accidents ; that he slept ill, waked often in the night, and called his chamberlains, nor could sleep be again easily induced, unless some one read to him ; that he was passionate, but that his wrath quickly subsided ; that he had naturally a •good appetite, and a moderately fair diges- tion; that he was very often thirsty, drank frequently, and mixed his liquors, being very promiscuous in the use of wines. Sir Theodore, however, adds that his head was strong, and never affected by the sea, by drinking wine, or riding in a chariot. Till 1613 he had never taken medicine, and like his predecessor, was always averse to it. Towards the close of his life the King suffered under a complication of disorders, atone, gout and gravel. Sir Theodore dwells particularly on the grief of the King for the deaths of Prince Henry and the Queen ; the latter was followed by a severe illness at Royston. Another friendly writer, Fuller, says that (after his accession to the English throne) "his Scotch tone he rather affected than declined, and though his speaking spoiled his speech in some English ears, let the masculine worth of his set orations commanded reverence, if not admiration, in all judicious hearers ; but in common speaking, as in his hunting, he stood not upon the clearest, but the nearest way. He would never go about to make any expressions." Unfriendly writers give little more than a malicious amplification of the above particulars. We learn from them that the King was of middle stature, moderately corpulent ; his eyes large and always rolling, and his beard thin, his tongue so much too large for his mouth that be drank in an unseemly manner. His legs were weak, and his walk circular. This weakness caused him to lean on other men's shoulders, and was the source of the unseemly lolling on his favourites which was so much remarked. He was constant in his apparel, usually dressing in the same fashion, and delighting to wear his clothes till they came to rags. His doublet was quilted for stiletto-proof. His dress is described as of bright green. He never washed his hands, but only rubbed his fingers slightly with the wetted end of a napkin. That he was a great drinker of wine we have seen already on indisputable evidence ; whether he was often overcome by it is a matter of doubt. The physician's account proves that he was not intoxicated easily, but we know from distinct evidence that he was certainly so occasionally. Other accounts tell us that he took very little at a time, but that the wine was very strong, and that he took it very frequently ; so that probably, without being often visibly overcome by it, he was always to some extent under its influence, and that in his later years, when he often suffered from acute pain, he drank more copiously at a time, and the effects were more evident.
But if nature had given James an unprepossessing personal appearance and an ungraceful carriage, he increased the effects of both by his careless and unbecoming habits. If his person had little in it to inspire reverence, by his demeanour he often pro- duced a more active feeling of disgust and contempt. The reports of the French ambassadors at the English Court are to be received, no doubt, with caution, since James was regarded by them as an enemy, in consequence of his Spanish lean- ings ; but they record certain phases of character which are so much in harmony with the impression left by nearly all contemporary accounts, and by James's own correspond- ence, that they can hardly be very far from the actual truth. "When he wishes to assume the language of a king,' they observe, "his tone is that of a tyrant ; and when he con- descends, he is vulgar." And again, they tell us that the King "was yesterday a little disturbed by the populace, which ran together from all sides to see him. He fell into such anger upon this, that I was quite unable to appease him ; he cursed every one he met, and swore that if they would not let him follow the chase at his pleasure he would leave England,—words of passion which meant no harm, but calculated to draw upon him great contempt and inextinguishable hate from the people." By thus neglecting so simple a means of obtaining popularity as a little courtesy and affability on a chance occasion such as this, James threw away wantonly one of the great props of the power of his predecessor, and reduced himself for the support of his administration to the bare theory of monarchy, stretched in an ostentatious manner to its utmost extent. No theory, however good, could stand so per- petual an appeal to its unsupported authority. Instead of accept- ing the constitution of England as he found it established, and making it, as Elizabeth had done, the instrument of his own pur- poses by always displaying sympathy with the predominant and most cherished feelings of the nation, James fretted under its restraints, and was always trying in some manner more or less direct to remove its safeguards and undermine, its foundations. "The King of Spain," he observed bitterly to Gondomar, the Spanish ambassador, "has more kingdoms and subjects than I
have, but there is one thing in which I surpass him. He has not so large a Parliament. The Cortes of Castile are composed of little more than thirty persons. In my kingdom there are nearly five hundred. The House of Commons is a body without a head. The members give their opinions in a disorderly manner. At their meetings nothing is heard but cries, shouts, and confusion. I am surprised that my ancestors should ever have permitted such an institution to come into existence. I am a stranger, and I found it here when I came, so I am obliged to put up with what I cannot get rid of." Such being the spirit in which James regarded his Parliament, it can hardly be wondered at that the disagreements between them were frequent and serious. But so far from merely putting up with what he found, James, after attempts to encroach on the privileges of that assembly, found it necessary not only to recede, but to make greater concessions than Elizabeth had ever made, without gaining any of the credit for the act which she obtained. For he always yielded too late, and when all the grace of concession was over.
There was one feature in the character of James which was the source of much of his conduct. He was by nature more than timid, he was an abject coward, and nothing but some imminent fear in another direction could rouse him to anything manly either in thought or action. The terrors of the night in which David Rizzi° was murdered are supposed to have had something to do with this temperament, and James seems to be entitled quite as much to our compassion as to our contempt for this characteristic. It also was not without a certain beneficial effect in one respect on the mind of the English Nation, though it had a tendency to demoralize it in other ways. The enterprises of Elizabeth's sailors against the Spaniards in the West Indies, while they had materially assisted in raising the national reputation, and breaking down the power of Spain, had engendered a buccaneering and freebooting spirit in Englishmen of all classes, which, if left unchecked, might have materially lowered ere long the whole national character. The cowardice of James put a check to this, though at the expense of the national reputation and the national honour, and when the opportunity of action was again offered to the sailors of England, they made their expeditions under the influence of other and higher feelings, and the gallant semi-pirates Drake and Raleigh were succeeded by the equally gallant but high-souled and reli- gious Blake. James, from the very fear of fighting, was a peace- maker by nature, and whatever religious principle he had, de- veloped itself in nearly the only Christian maxim which he attempted to realize practically, "Blessed are the peacemakers !" Yet, in his hands, this maxim became a cover for all sorts of base and imbecile proceedings ; of course, he was not capable of grasping the real meaning of the sentiment, and conse- quently, while be every now and then violated both its letter and spirit by useless and fainthearted demonstrations of physical force, he preserved the letter and violated the spirit in a wanton abandon- ment of his duties as a King of England and a Prince of Europe. There may be differences of opinion at the present day as to the wisdom or impolicy of an armed intervention by England at that epoch in the affairs of the Continent—though the mere instinct of self-preservation appeared to demand it—but there can be none as to the shifty, vacillating course which James actually pursued. The victories of Gustavus Adolphus and the Revolution in England which placed Cromwell at the head of affairs saved us from much of the danger to which, humanly speak- ing, England had exposed herself from the great Catholic league, by the inaction and ill-directed action of James, and so have to a great degree cloaked his misconduct ; but even the most uncompromising advocates of a strictly pacific non-inter- vention and of patriotism in its narrowest sense, will shrink from committing themselves to praise of the policy of the Stuart King, which, pacific in name, was in fact a series of unnecessary humiliations.
But in truth, the motives of the action and inaction of James in this matter, though instigated and fostered by a love of peace, were not merely pacific. The country with which it was the wish of Englishmen, and to them, at any rate, seemed to be their duty, to go to war, was the representative of a principle of absolute power in kings, which had a charm for the imagination of James that largely increased his disinclination to become the enemy of its assertor. His elysium of autocracy was now trans- ferred from London to Madrid, and the representatives of the system of popular anarchy were now to his mind, the United Provinces of Holland, and the Palatine-King of Bohemia, whose cause he was asked to espouse. The only disturbing forces to this bias in favour of Spain and this antagonism to Continental Pro- testantism were the terrors of gunpowder plots at home, a royal jealousy of Papal supremacy, and a hankering after the flattering position of the acknowledged head of the Protestant interest in Europe. And it is by the alternate ascendancy of these conflict- ing sentiments, joined to an occasional dread of the indignation of his own people, that the vacillating and tortuous course of James's. foreign policy is mainly to be explained. Any other acts of his in. this department which may seem inexplicable are probably to be referred to the fussy restlessness of his nature, which made him a busy-body, though it could not nerve him to serious or decided. action.
The poverty of his exchequer, to which his policy of abstinence- from war has been sometimes speciously assigned, can hardly ba- its true explanation. James always found money to spend on. Court festivities and pleasures, and to lavish on his extravagant. favourites, and one great reason of his being unable to procure- more money from his Parliaments was the fact that he wasted that. which had been already bestowed on him in such objects, instead. of employing it for the furtherance of a great national policy. In. the cause of the Palatine, at any rate, if not in that of their commercial rivals, the Dutch Provinces, the purse-strings of the- English people would have been willingly undrawn. We come, then, to what must be our last point,—the relations between. James and his Favourites, and the questionable deaths of Prince- Henry and Sir Thomas Overbury. In the case of any one less- foolish than James, we must confess that we should be inclined,. from the evidence we possess, to draw the most unfavourable- inferences as to the nature of the unseemly familiarity which existed between this king and Carr and Villiers. But James ha& so little idea of dignity and decency of deportment, and was so- gross and prurient in his imagination, as distinguished from im- moral in act, that we hesitate to decide against him, and eve ll incline to the belief that he was innocent of the deeper charge. As to the- death of Prince Henry, if it were not a natural one,—on which. point we do not think our evidence enables us to pronounce an absolute opinion, though it seems rather to preponderate against the poisoning theory—we do not believe that James at the worst. can be accused of anything more than perhaps a guilty knowledge or suspicion that something against the life of the Prince had been contemp.lated,—probably in that case by some one who was too. dear to him, or too much in his secrets, for him to overcome a cowardly disinclination to interfere. Even this is very doubtful,. and nothing but the prying character and strange conduct of.- James himself would justify us in saying as much as this, even in. the case of so suspicious a death. Of the Overbury business we can speak still less decidedly, for it is enveloped in the most perplex- ing obscurity. It seems to us almost impossible to read the letters- of James to the Lieutenant of the Tower, when Somerset gave- vent to some threat of what he would do if he were brought to his- trial for the murder, without the gravest suspicion that James had some guilty knowledge, if not actual connivance in the affair_ No mere political secret seems to be an adequate explanation of his evident terror and consternation. It was clearly something strictly personal in its imputation, the disclosure of which the- King so fearfully dreaded ; and there is unfortunately nothing in. James's private character to place an absolute negative on the- unfavourable solution we have hinted at, though there is not. anything to Make the presumption overpowering.
Such, in the main features of his character appears to us to have- been James Stuart, one of the weakest, though perhaps not the- most worthless, of the Kings who had reigned in England since the- days of Henry III. Knowing just too much and thinking just too much to be a passive spectator of events, but with far too little- either of real knowledge or thoughtfulness to be fit for the direc- tion of any great affair, self-conceited rather than self-confident; or self-reliant, a philosopher and a Christian in theory, and a fool and an unscrupulous man in practice, he probably did as little. good, though perhaps also as little evil, as any man with such. stagnant good intentions and such active inclinations.
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