most distasteful to Elizabeth, and her ministers taxed their ingenuity to conceal their correspondence with him. Sir Robert Cecil, the secretary, and the chief manager of this affair, was one day riding with the queen when a courier delivered some despatches. "Whence are they?" said Elizabeth. "From Scotland, please your grace,” replied the courier. She ordered Cecil to open the packet. As he cut the string he affected to smell some offensive odor from the papers. The queen, always most sensitive on such points, bade him take the papers and have them fumigated before she saw them. She fell into a lethargic slumber and quietly expired, in the seventieth year of her age and the forty-fifth of her reign, March 24, 1603.

The annals of Elizabeth are adorned with some of the greatest names of English literature. The majesty of English prose was formed by the hand of Hooker; the harmony of English verse flowed from the lips of Spenser. The drama, the surest proof of an advanced civilization, had then its first beginnings, and was perfected by the immortal genius of Shakespeare; whilst Bacon opened up a new method of philosophy, whose practical fruits we may be said even now to gather.

In the peaceable succession of James VI. of Scotland as James I. of England, 1603-1625, we see the full establishment of the principle of legitimacy, as opposed to election or selection among members of the royal house, but not as overriding the constitutional liberties of the people.

The Scottish family who now wore the crowns of both divisions of Great Britain were descended from the great Anglo-Norman house of the Fitz-Alans. Walter Fitz-Alan was seneschal or steward of Scotland under David I., the contemporary of Stephen. The office became hereditary, and the title was used as a surname. Walter, the sixth high steward, one of Robert Bruce's bravest companions in arms, married the king's daughter, Marjory Bruce; and on the death of Bruce's only son, David II., their only child succeeded him as Robert II., 1371; and from him. the crown had been transmitted in the direct line of descent for eight generations. But the personal history of the Stuarts had been marked by strange misfortunes. Since Robert II. himself, there were only two who had not suffered a violent death; and they died broken-hearted-the one for his family troubles, the other for national disaster. Robert II.

died naturally, 1389; his son, Robert III., died of a broken heart, 1406; his son, James I., was murdered, 1435; his son, James II., was killed by the bursting of a gun, 1460; his son, James III., was assassinated, 1488; his son, James IV., fell on Flodden Field, 1513; his son, James V., died of a broken heart, 1542; his daughter, Mary, was beheaded, 1587; and her son, James VI., was born amidst national and domestic tumults, June 19, 1566, and placed on the throne as rival to his mother, July 24, 1567. He was carefully educated by the celebrated George Buchanan; and his real learning might have escaped the contempt of pedantry, had it been associated with manly qualities; but of these he was utterly destitute, and he even disgraced his lineage by personal cowardice. On assuming the government, at the age of fourteen, he gave himself up to worthless favorites; and he opposed to the turbulence of his nobles and the zeal of the reforming clergy a wretched cunning which he was pleased to call kingcraft, and which indeed had somehow helped him through formidable dangers, including two conspiracies the Raid of Ruthven, 1582, and the Gowrie Plot, 1600. He was married, in 1590, to Anne of Denmark, daughter of Frederick II., by whom he had two sons and a daughter: Henry, born Feb. 19, 1593; Charles, born at Dunfermline, Nov. 19, 1600; and Elizabeth, born Aug. 19, 1596, and married in 1612 to Frederick, the elector palatine. The children of this marriage were the princes Rupert and Maurice, so distinguished in the civil wars, and Sophia, who became electress of Hanover, and mother of George I.

James

A plot was discovered in which it is alleged that Sir Walter Raleigh was implicated. He was clapped into the Tower, where he wrote his notable "History of the World." He was subsequently sent to the block on a sentence fifteen years old. endeavored to reconcile the church and the Puritans, but failed. The Book of Common Prayer was slightly altered; and a beginning was made of that translation of the Bible which has ever since been used as the Authorized Version; a noble work, though in some respects inferior to the earlier translations.

James's first parliament met on March 19, granted the king duties of tonnage and poundage, and confirmed the edicts of Elizabeth against Jesuits and recusants of the king's supremacy. The House of

Commons also framed an "Apology made to the King touching their Privileges," showing that they held their privileges of right and not of grace, as James had proclaimed. Thus early began the conflict of the free people and parliament of England against that doctrine of

"The right divine of kings to govern wrong," which James left as a fatal legacy to his house. The Catholics had watched for the new reign with deep anxiety. Their hopes from the son of Mary Stuart were at first strengthened by James's promises of toleration. But when the first acts of the king and parliament taught them that he had neither the power nor the will to change the temper of the people towards them, certain fanatics planned that strange stroke of revenge known as the "Gunpowder Plot." The parliament was to reassemble, after several prorogations, on the 5th of November, 1605. On the 26th of October, Lord Mounteagle, a Catholic peer, waited upon Cecil, now earl of Salisbury, with an anonymous letter, which had been sent to warn Mounteagle from attending the parliament, which, the writer said, "shall receive a terrible blow, and yet they shall not see who hurts them."

On Nov. 4 the lord chamberlain made a cursory examination of the vaults under the House of Lords, and observed a large stock of coals and wood in a cellar, where they found "a very tall and desperate fellow," who called himself the servant of Mr. Percy. A second visit was made soon after midnight, when the same man was seized with slow matches and touchwood and a dark lantern. He proved to be Guido or Guy Fawkes, the son of a notary at York.

The reign of James I. witnessed the foundation of England's colonial empire. In 1607 a permanent settlement was effected at Jamestown in Virginia, Raleigh's settlement having been abandoned. In 1610 a charter was granted for the colonization of Newfoundland; and in 1620 a band of Nonconformist exiles, the celebrated "Pilgrim Fathers," sailed from Holland and landed at Massachusetts Bay, and there formed the germ of the New England States. The charter granted by Elizabeth, 1600, for fifteen years to the East India Company was renewed in perpetuity, 1609, a factory was established at Surat, and their trade was extended to Java and Sumatra, 1611. In the same year an English adventurer, Sir

Thomas Sherley, arrived as ambassador from the shah of Persia, and in 1615 an embassy was sent to the Great Mogul at Agra.

Nearer home a pronounced step was taken towards the civilization of Ireland, by the formation of a company in London for the colonization of Ulster. To provide funds for its defence, the new order of "Baronets" was founded, May 22, 1611.

James, with his favorites, especially George Villiers, duke of Buckingham, led a most profligate life, his example being followed by his court. James's second parliament met April 5, 1614; and set the great example of declining to grant supplies till the illegal impositions and other grievances were redressed. This is the first clear and direct use of the constitutional "power of the purse," by which the commons ultimately secured the whole direction of legislation. James was equally eager to assert his authority in religious as in civil matters, and he dealt with both in the same petty and ineffectual manner. By issuing a proclamation allowing of public sports on Sundays after divine service, he irritated the Puritans to no purpose, and exposed himself to a rebuff from Archbishop Abbot, who forbade the reading of the proclamation in churches, 1618. The year before, James had revisited his native country for the first time, only to impose episcopacy upon a people who had cast it off, 1617. Scottish preachers soon began to declaim against prelacy, though it was reserved for the next reign to reap the fruits of all these measures. The foreign policy of James was equally unsatisfactory. To crown all his provocations James issued a prociamation "forbidding any of his subjects to discourse of state matters, either foreign or domestic."

The great Lord Bacon was impeached by the commons for venality in office, and found guilty. His own reflection on his fall was this:-"I was the justest judge that was in England these fifty years; but it was the justest censure in parliament that was there these two hundred years."

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James, who had already made a treaty with Spain for the marriage, and for the toleration of Popery, April 27, 1620, wrote to the Speaker, commanding the House not to meddle with any matter which concerned his government or the mysteries of state, as things far above their reach and capacity! To their renewed claim of liberty of speech, he replied that their privileges were derived from the grace

and permission of his ancestors and himself. Upon this the commons drew up their celebrated Protestation, asserting that "the liberties, franchises, privileges, and jurisdictions of parliament are the ancient and undoubted birthright and inheritance of the subjects of England," Dec. 18, 1621. James sent for their journals and tore out the record with his own hand. In the spring of 1625 the king caught an ague, and died March 27, in the twentythird year of his reign over England, and the fiftyninth of his age. His better qualities were neutralized by the overweening conceit of his own wisdom and his royal authority.

The growing intercourse with Italy gave a new direction to art under the Stuarts; and the style of architecture which Palladio had invented from the classical models, was cultivated in England by Inigo Jones. His great design was the new palace of Whitehall, a vast edifice, of which the Banquetinghouse was the only part completed. It now forms the Chapel Royal. The wealthy merchant, Sir Hugh Myddelton, led the way in civil engineering, by the construction of the New River for supplying London with water. Hudson, Baffin, and other intrepid navigators, opened a new path of maratime enterprise in the Arctic regions.

Charles I. began his reign by the payment of his father's debts through the sacrifice of the royal forests. He quarelled with his first parliament on their refusal of adequate supplies for the war in support of his brother-in-law, the elector Palatine. He demanded the money as a tribute due to him; the commons had learned to resist such claims, and to contribute to the public exigencies in the way only of a free gift, and not without consideration of such grievances as they wished to have redressed. Engaged to his allies, the king, dissolving the parliament, issued warrants for raising money by compulsory loans. A new parliament was found equally uncomplying, and evinced its jealousy of the king by the impeachment of his minister, Buckingham, whose pride and power were every day becoming more offensive; Charles avenging the insult by imprisoning two members of the House of Commons. A quarrel, thus begun, received continual addition from new causes of offence. The levying money from the subject was enforced by billeting soldiers on those who refused to lend to the crown; and some were even imprisoned on that account.

A war was undertaken against France at Buckingham's instigation, a sufficient cause of its unpopu larity; and it ended, as we have already shown, in a fruitless attempt on Rochelle. The king again dissolved his parliament, 1626. A new parliament exhibited a spirit of determined resistance. A Petition of Right, called the Second Great Charter of the people of England, was passed by both houses, which declared the illegality of raising money without their sanction, or enforcing loans from the subject, annulled all taxes imposed without consent of parliament, and abolished the exercise of the martial law. Charles was obliged, with much reluctance, to give his assent to this great retrenchment of prerogatives sanctioned by the usage of the most popular of his predecessors.

On

The taxes of tonnage and poundage had usually been continued from one reign to another. this ground the king conceived he was warranted to levy them without a new grant; and a member of the House of Commons was imprisoned on refusal to pay them. This arbitrary measure excited an outrageous ferment in that assembly, and the consequence was a new dissolution of the parliament, 1629. It was now a measure of necessity to make peace with France and Spain. The king persevered in levying the tonnage, poundage, and shipmoney; and high fines were imposed for various offences, without trial, by authority of the Star Chamber.

Passing over innumerable details of this despotic government, we come to the great act of opposition which has immortalized the name of John Hampden. Having been rated at twenty shillings, as ship-money, for his estate in Buckinghamshire, Hampden refused to pay the tax as illegal. His example was followed by others. The recusants were cited into the Exchequer Chamber, where, after an argument which lasted for six weeks, the twelve judges, with two exceptions, gave their sentence for the crown; "which judgment," says Clar endon, "proved of more advantage and credit to the gentlemen condemned than to the king's service," June 12, 1637. In the same year the press was placed under the most rigorous surveillance by a decree of the Star Chamber, July 1; and a proclamation, April 30, restricting emigration to America seemed to shut out the oppressed from the last sad refuge of voluntary exile.

At length a crisis was brought on by Charles's determination to force the English ecclesiastical system upon Scotland. Though never recognized as the head of the Scottish church, and without consulting the General Assembly, he issued a set of canons, and a liturgy, slightly varied from that of the Church of England. On Sunday, July 23, 1637, the liturgy was appointed to be read for the first time in the cathedral of St. Giles at Edinburgh; but the dean no sooner appeared in his surplice than his voice was drowned by the cries of, "A pope! a pope! Antichrist! Stone him!" When the bishop mounted the pulpit to appease the tumult, a stool was thrown at his head; and the magistrates could scarcely disperse the congregation. The nobility and gentry, for the most part, made common cause with the people; and when they found the king inflexible, they organized a provisional government, consisting of four "Tables," the nobility, gentry, ministers, and burgesses. The Tables drew up the celebrated instrument called the Covenant, which contained a renunciation of popery, and an engagement for mutual defence in resisting religious innovations, March 1, 1638. Το maintain this violent procedure, the Scottish reformers took up arms; and, after seizing and fortifying the most important places of strength in the kingdom, boldly marched into the heart of England.

It was now absolutely necessary to assemble a parliament; and the king at length saw that the torrent was irresistible, and resolved, though too late, to give it way. All the rights which the king, in imitation of his father, and through an ignorance of the true spirit of the English constitution, had arrogated to himself, were denounced as usurpations; a bill passed for abolishing the tonnage and poundage without consent of parliament, and received the royal assent. Monopolies of every kind were abolished. A parliament was agreed to be summoned every third year. Unsatisfied with these concessions, the commons impeached the Earl of Strafford, the king's first minister, of high treason, together with Laud, archbishop of Canterbury, and they were charged, as the chief counsellors of the crown, with a design of subverting the laws and constitution of the realm. The fate of Strafford, whose trial by his peers would have terminated in his acquittal, was secured by a bill of attainder, to

which the king was, with the greatest reluctance, forced to give his assent. The commons seized that moment of anguish to obtain his consent to a decisive measure a bill which rendered the parliament perpetual, by declaring that it should not be dissolved or adjourned but by its own decree, 1641. Strafford and Laud were both beheaded.

This last measure of the commons evinced a determined purpose to overturn the constitution. Their proceedings hitherto had the show of justice, and most of them might be vindicated on the principles of true patriotism. But from this moment their conduct was treason to their country and its government. The last bill destroyed the equal balance of the constitution of England, and any subsequent measure was a step towards its entire annihilation.

The king went to Scotland, where he made large popular concessions, conformed to the Presbyterian worship, and received several covenanters into the privy council. Meanwhile a terrible rebellion broke out in Ireland. The disbanded soldiers of Strafford's army joined, with the discontented Catholics in a rising which began in Ulster, Oct. 23, 1641, and soon spread over the whole country, even the Catholics of the "English Pale" joining in it. The other English settlers were almost exterminated. The number that perished is estimated at 40,000, and Dublin was the only spot of Irish soil preserved to England. To extinguish this rebellion, Charles consigned to the parliament the charge of the war, which they interpreted into a transference to them of the whole military powers of the crown. Under this authority a great force was levied, and supplied with arms from the royal magazines.

When Charles returned from Hampton Court to keep the Christmas of 1641 at Whitehall, several reduced officers and gentlemen of the inns of court offered themselves as his body-guard; and daily conflicts ensued between them and rioters of the popular party, especially the London apprentices. The latter, from their close-cut hair, were nicknamed Roundheads by their opponents, who called themselves Cavaliers; and these terms were soon applied to the two parties in the coming conflict. In these riots the bishops were so repeatedly insulted that they were hindered from attending in parliament; and on Dec. 28, twelve bishops joined in a protest against all acts passed in their absence as illegal.

They were at once impeached by the commons and committed to the Tower, Dec. 30.

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The patience of Charles was exhausted. caused to be impeached five of the commons. went in person to the House to arrest the five members, who were not present, and his retiring was accompanied by loud cries of "Privilege! Privilege!" The king made a last concession by assenting to a bill excluding the bishops from the House of Lords; and then escorted the queen to Dover, whence she passed over to Holland, carrying with her the crown jewels, which she pawned to buy arms for the king.

A new bill of the commons, naming the commanders of all the fortified places, who should be responsible to parliament alone, was understood to be a declaration of war, for it was a direct invasion of the royal prerogative. The next step was to assume the whole legislative power, by declaring it a breach of privilege to dispute the law of the land declared by the lords and commons. But the former were a mere name, being entirely under the control of the latter.

After some fruitless proposals for peace, and denunciations of treason by each party against the adherents of the other, the king marched southwards at the head of his army and gave the signal of Civil War, by unfurling his standard at Nottingham, a ceremony which was equivalent to the proclamation of martial law, Aug. 22, 1642.

It is impossible to do more than indicate the leading points of the conflict which ensued; most lamentable in itself, but yet glorified by the chivalrous loyalty of the one party, and the devoted patriotism of the other. On the side of the king were most of the nobility and principal gentry, who viewed his cause and theirs as one, all of the clergy who had adopted high church principles and feared the growth of Presbyterianism and other forms of dissent, and the fiery youth of the upper classes, together with many adventurers of profligate character and broken fortunes.

The people in general favored the cause of the parliament, whose strength lay in the great towns, and especially in the sturdy trained bands of London. At a time when standing armies were not yet formed, the militia were a very effective infantry. In cavalry the army of the parliament was much the weaker. Some gentlemen, such as Hampden, raised troops from the young farmers on their es

tates; others, like Oliver Cromwell, who now began his military career as a captain of horse, were careful to "raise such men as had the fear of God before them, as made some conscience of what they did." But for the rest, he thus described them: "Your troops are most of them old decayed serving men, and tapsters and such kind of fellows; and their troops are gentlemen's sons, younger sons, and persons of quality: do you think that the spirits of such mean and base fellows will ever be able to encounter gentlemen that have honor, and resolution, and courage in them." John Milton's mighty pen. labored for the cause of the parliament. In relig ion, the great mass of the people were still attached to the Church of England, and it was only the re-. fusal of moderate reforms that led to the triumph first of Presbyterianism and then of Independency. From Nottingham the king sent proposals to the parliament, but they would listen to no terms till he should furl his standard, and give them the command of the militia.

On Sept. 9, they published a declaration of the causes of the war, and on the same day the Earl of Essex marched from London with the trained bands, to take the command of the army at Northampton, which now numbered 15,000 men. The king retreated to Shrewsbury, where his army mustered 10,000 men, under the command of the Earl of Lindsay. The cavalry were under Prince Rupert, who had already opened the campaign by seizing Worcester, and routing a party of the parliamentary horse. Advancing again towards the capital, Charles encountered Essex in a bloody but indecisive battle at Edgehill in Warwickshire, where Lord Lindsay was mortally wounded, Sunday, Oct. 23, 1642. Essex retired to Warwick, and the king advanced to Oxford, which was entirely devoted to him, and became his headquarters for the most part of the war. Marching on towards London, he seized Reading, and defeated a parliamentary detachment at Brentford, Nov. 12; but Essex, who had reached Londor by hasty marches, met him at Turnham Green witi superior forces, and the king retired to Oxford Nov. 29.

After fruitless negotiations for peace, Essex began the campaign of 1643 by taking Reading, April 27; but the war languished in the south, the only action worth recording being a mere skirmish at Chalgrove in Oxfordshire, June 18, which is mem