were polluted with infamous vices; and Drayton in "the Moon-calf," has elaborately drawn fulllength pictures of the lady and the gentleman of that day, which seem scarcely to have required the darkening tints of satire to be hideous-in one line the Muse describes" the most prodigious birth: "

"He's too much woman and She's too much man.

The trades of foppery, in Spanish fashions, suddenly sprung up in this reign, and exhibited new names and new things. Now silk and goldlace shops first adorned Cheapside, which the continuator of Stowe calls "the beauty of London; " the extraordinary rise in price of these fashionable articles forms a curious contrast with those of the preceding reign. Scarfs, in Elizabeth's time of thirty shillings value, were now wrought up to as many pounds; and embroidered waistcoats, which in the queen's reign no workman knew how to make worth five pounds, were now so rich and curious as to be cheapened at forty. Stowe has recorded a revolution in shoe-buckles, portentously closing in shoe-roses, which were puffed knots of silk, or of precious embroidery, worn even by men of mean rank, at the cost of more than five pounds, who formerly had worn gilt copper shoe-buckles.

mous wealth was often accumulated. An usurer died worth £400,000; Sir Thomas Compton, a citizen, left, it is said, £800,000, and his heir was so overcome with this sudden irruption of wealth, that he lost his senses; and Cranfield, a citizen. became the Earl of Middlesex.

The continued peace, which produced this rage "for dress, equipage, and magnificence, appeared in all forms of riot and excess; corruption bred corruption. The industry of the nation was not the commerce of the many, but the arts of moneytraders, confined to the suckers of the state; and the unemployed and dissipated, who were every day increasing the population in the capital, were a daring petulant race, described by a contemporary as "persons of great expense, who, having run themselves into debt, were constrained to run into faction; and defend themselves from the danger of the law." These appear to have enlisted under some show of privilege among the nobility; and the metropolis was often shaken by parties, calling themselves Roaring-boys, Bravadoes, Roysters, and Bonaventures. Such were some of the turbulent children of peace, whose fiery spirits, could they have found their proper vent, had been soldiers of fortune, as they were younger brothers, distressed often by their own relatives; and wards ruined by their own guardians; all these were clamorous for bold piracies on the Spaniards: a visionary island, and a secret mine, would often disturb the dreams of these unemployed youths, with whom it was no uncommon practice to take a purse on the road. Such felt in this plenty

In the new and ruinous excess of the use of tobacco, many consumed three or four hundred pounds a year. James, who perceived the inconveniences of this sudden luxury in the nation, tried to discountenance it, although the purpose went to diminish his own scanty revenue. Nor thatwas this attack on the abuse of tobacco peculiar to his Majesty, although he has been so ridiculed And fat of peace, our young men ne'er were for it; a contemporary publication has well described the mania and its consequences. "The To martial discipline, and our ships unrigg'd

smoak of fashion hath quite blown away the smoak of hospitalitie, and turned the chimneys of their forefathers into the noses of their children*." The king also reprobated the finical embarrassments of the new fashions, and seldom wore new clothes. When they brought him a Spanish hat, he flung it away with scorn, swearing he never loved them nor their fashions; and when they put roses on his shoes, he swore too," that they should not make him a ruffe-footed dove; a yard of penny ribbon would serve that turn."

train'd

Rot in the harbour.

MASSINGER.

The idleness which rusts quiet minds effervesces in fiery spirits pent up together; and the loiterers in the environs of a court, surfeiting with peace, were quick at quarrel. It is remarkable, that in the pacific reign of James I. never was so much blood shed in brawls, nor duels so tremendously barbarous. Hume observed this circumstance, and attributes it to "the turn that the romantic chivalry, for which the nation was formerly so renowned, had lately taken.” An

Five years of King James. Harl. Misc.
A. Wilson's List of James I. p. 28.

§ That ancient oppressive institution of the Court of Wards then existed; and Massinger, the great painter of our domestic manners in this reign, has made it the subject of one of his interesting dramas.

gallows.

But, while extortion and monopoly prevailed among the monied men, and a hollow magnificence among the gentry, bribery had tainted even the lords. All were hurrying on in a stream of venality, dissipation, and want; and the nation, amid the prosperity of the kingdom in a long reign of peace, was nourishing in its breast the secret seeds of discontent and turbulence.

inference probably drawn from the extraordinary who rarely consented to shed blood, condemned duel between Sir Edward Sackville, afterwards an irascible lord to suffer the ignominy of the Lord Dorset, and the Lord Bruce. These two gallant youths had lived as brothers, yet could resolve not to part without destroying each other; the narrative, so wonderfully composed by Sackville, still makes us shudder at each blow received and given. Books were published to instruct them by a system of quarrelling, "to teach young gentlemen when they are before-hand and when behind-hand ;" thus they incensed and incited those youths of hope and promise, whom Lord Bacon, in his charge on duelling, calls, in the language of the poet, Aurora filii, the sons of the morning, who often were drowned in their own blood! But, on a nearer inspection, when we discover the personal malignity of these hasty quarrels, the coarseness of their manners, and the choice of weapons and places, in their mode of butchering each other, we must confess that they rarely partake of the spirit of chivalry. One gentleman biting the ear of a templar, or switching a poltroon lord; another sending a challenge to fight in a saw-pit; or to strip to their shirts, to mangle each other, were sanguinary duels, which could only have fermented in the disorders of the times, amid that wanton pampered indolence which made them so petulant and pugnacious. Against this evil his Majesty published a voluminous edict, which exhibits many proofs that it was the labour of his own hand, for the same dignity, the same eloquence, the same felicity of illustration embellish the state-papers+; and to remedy it, James,

* It may be found in the popular pages of the Guardian; there first printed from a MS. in the library of the Harleys.

+"A publication of his Majestie's edict and seuere censure against private combats and combatants, &c. 1613." It is a volume of about 150 pages. As a specimen of the royal style, I transcribe two passages.

"The pride of humours, the libertie of times, the conniuencie of magistrates, together with a kind of prescription of impunity, hath bred ouer all this kingdome, not only an opinion among the weakest, but a constant beleefe among many, that desire to be reputed among the wisest, of a certain freedome left to all men vpon earth by nature, as their birth-right to defend their reputations with their swords, and to take reuenge of any wrong either offered or apprehended in that measure, which their owne inward passion or affection doth suggest without any further proofe; so as the challenge be sent in a civil manner, though without leave demanded of the sovereign," &c.

The king employs a bold and poetical metaphor to describe duelling-to turn this hawk into a

From the days of Elizabeth to those of the Charleses, Cabinet transmitted to Cabinet the caution to preserve the kingdom from the evils of an overgrown metropolis. A political hypochondriacism: they imagined the head was becoming too large for the body, drawing to itself all the moisture of life from the middle and the extremities. A statute against the erection of new buildings was passed by Elizabeth; and from James to his successors proclamations were continually issued to forbid any growth of the city. This singular prohibition may have originated in their dread of infection from the plague, but it certainly became the policy of a weak and timid government, who dreaded, in the enlargement of the metropolis, the consequent concourse of those they designated as "masterless men,”-sedition was as contagious as the plague among the many. But proclamations were not listened to nor read; houses were continually built, for they were in demand,—and the esquires, with their wives and daughters, hastened to gay or busy London, for a knighthood, a marriage, or a monopoly. The government at length were driven to the desperate "Order in Council" to pull down all new houses within ten miles of the metropolis-and further, to direct the Attorney-General to indict all those sojourners in town who had country houses, and mulct them in ruinous fines. The rural gentry were "to abide in their own counties, and by their housekeeping in those parts were to guide and relieve the meaner people according to the ancient usage of

singing-bird, clip its wings, and cage it. "By comparing forraine mischiefes with home-bred accidents, it will not be hard to judge into what region this bolde bird of audacious presumption, in dealing blowes so confidently, will mount, if it bee once let flie, from the breast wherein it lurkes. And therefore it behoveth justice both to keep her still in her own close cage, with care that she learn neuer any other dittie then Est bene; but withall, that for preuention of the worst that may fall out, wee clippe her wings, that they grow not too fast. For according to that of the proverb, It is labour lost to lay nets before the eyes of winged fowles," &c. p. 13.

La Boderie resided at our court from 1606 to 1611, and his 'Ambassades," in 5 vols are interesting in English history. The most satirical accounts of the domestic life of James, especially

"And now, I confess, that when I looked before in his unguarded hours of boisterous me ciment,

THE KING'S PRIVATE LIFE IN HIS OC- DISCREPANCIES OF OPINION AMONG THE CASIONAL RETIREMENTS.

THE king's occasional retirements to Royston and Newmarket have even been surmised to have borne some analogy to the horrid Capræa of Tiberius; but a witness has accidentally detailed the king's uniform life in these occasional seclusions. James I. withdrew at times from public life, but not from public affairs; and hunting, to which he then gave alternate days, was the cheap amusement and requisite exercise of his sedentary habits: but the chase only occupied a few hours. A part of the day was spent by the king in his private studies; another at his dinners, where he had a reader, and was perpetually sending to Cambridge for books of reference; state-affairs were transacted at night; for it was observed, at the time, that his secretaries sat up later at night, in those occasional retirements, than when they were at London*. I have noticed, that the state-papers were composed by himself, that he wrote letters on important occasions without consulting any one; and that he derived little aid from his secretaries. James was probably never indolent; but the uniform life and sedentary habits of literary men usually incur this reproach from those real idlers, who bustle in a life of nothingness. While no one loved more the still-life of peace than this studious monarch, whose habits formed an agreeable combination of the contemplative and the active life, study and business-no king more zealously tried to keep down the growing abuses of his government, by personally concerning himself in the protection of the subject t.

are found in the correspondence of the French ambassadors. They studied to flavour their dish, made of spy and gossip, to the taste of their master. Henry IV. never forgave James for his adherence to Spain and peace, instead of France and warlike designs.

Hacket's Scrinia Reserata, Part I. p. 27. + As evidences of this zeal for reform, I throw into this note some extracts from the MS. letters of contemporaries. Of the king's interference between the judges of two courts about prohibitions, Sir Dudley Carleton gives this account :“The king played the best part in collecting arguments on both sides, and concluded that he saw much endeavour to draw water to their several mills; and advised them to take moderate courses, whereby the good of the subject might be more respected than their particular jurisdictions. The king sat also at the Admiralty, to look himself into certain disorders of government there: he told the lawyers, he would leave hunting of hares, and hunt them in their quirks and subtilities,

DECRIERS OF JAMES THE FIRST.

LET us detect, among the modern decriers of the character of James I., those contradictory opinions, which start out in the same page; for the conviction of truth flashed on the eyes of those who systematically vilified him, and must often have pained them; while it embarrassed and confused those, who, being of no party, yet had adopted the popular notions. Even Hume is at variance with himself; for he censures James for his indolence, "which prevented him making any progress in the practice of foreign politics, and diminished that regard which all the neighbouring nations had paid to England during the reign of his predecessor," p. 29. Yet this philosopher observes afterwards, on the military character of Prince Henry, at p. 63, that "had he lived, he had probably promoted the glory, perhaps not the felicity, of his people. The unhappy prepossession of men in favour of ambition, &c., engages them into such pursuits as destroy their own peace, and that of the rest of mankind." This is true philosophy, however politicians may comment, and however the military may command the state. Had Hume, with all the sweetness of his temper, been a philosopher on the throne, himself had probably incurred the censure he passed on James I. Another important contradiction in Hume deserves detection. The king, it seems, "boasted of his management of Ireland as his masterpiece." According to the accounts of Sir John Davies, whose political works are still read, and whom Hume quotes, James I." in the space of nine years made greater advances towards the reformation of that kingdom than had been effected in more than four centuries;" on this Hume adds that the king's

with which the subject had been too long abused."" -MS. Letter of Sir Dudley Carleton.

In Winwood's Memorials of State there is a letter from Lord Northampton, who was present at one of these strict examinations of the king; and his language is warm with admiration: the letter, being a private one, can hardly be suspected of court flattery. "His majesty hath in person, with the greatest dexterity of wit and strength of argument that mine ears ever heard, compounded between the parties of the civil and ecclesiastical courts; who begin to comply, by the king's sweet temper, on points that were held to be incompatible."-Winwood's Mem. iii. p. 54. In his progresses through the country, if any complained of having received injury from any of the court, the king punished, or had satisfaction made to the wronged, immediately.

"vanity in this particular was not without foundation." Thus in describing that wisest act of a sovereign, the art of humanising his ruder subjects by colonisation, so unfortunate is James, that even his most skilful apologist, influenced by popular prepossessions, employs a degrading epithet-and yet he, who had indulged a sarcasm on the vanity of James, in closing his general view of his wise administration in Ireland, is carried away by his nobler feelings.—“Such were the arts," exclaims the historian, " 'by which James introduced humanity and justice among a people who had ever been buried in the most profound barbarism. Noble cares! much superior to the vain and criminal glory of conquests." Let us add, that had the genius of James the First been warlike, had he commanded a battle to be fought and a victory to be celebrated, popular historians, the panders of ambition, had adorned their pages with bloody trophies; but the peace the monarch cultivated; the wisdom which dictated the plan of civilisation; and the persevering arts which put it into practice these are the still virtues which give no motion to the spectacle of the historian, and are even forgotten in his pages.

vilifying a sovereign, who had made them prosperous at the price of making himself contemptible! I shall notice another writer, of an amiable character, as an evidence of the influence of popular prejudice, and the effect of truth.

66

When James went to Denmark to fetch his queen, he passed part of his time among the learned; but, such was his habitual attention in studying the duties of the sovereign, that he closely attended the Danish courts of justice; and Daines Barrington, in his curious "Observations on the Statutes," mentions, that the king borrowed from the Danish code three statutes for the punishment of criminals. But so provocative of sarcasm is the ill-used name of this monarch, that our author could not but shrewdly observe, that James "spent more time in those courts than in attending upon his destined consort. Yet this is not true: the king was jovial there, and was as indulgent a husband as he was a father. Osborne even censures James for once giving marks of his uxoriousness! But while Daines Barrington degrades, by unmerited ridicule, the honourable employment of the "British Solomon," he becomes himself perplexed at the truth that flashes on his eyes. He expresses the most perfect admiration of James the First, whose statutes he declares 'deserve much to be enforced; nor do I find any one which hath the least tendency to extend the prerogative, or abridge the liberties and rights of his subjects." He who came to scoff remained to pray. Thus a lawyer, in examining the laws of James the First, concludes by approaching nearer to the truth: the step was a bold one! He says, "It is at present a sort of fashion to suppose that this king, because he was a pedant, had no real understanding, or merit." Had Daines Barrington been asked for proofs of the pedantry of James the First, he had been still more perplexed; but what can be more convincing than a lawyer, on a review of the character of James the First, being struck, as he tells us, by "his desire of being instructed in the English law, and holding frequent conferences for this purpose with the most eminent lawyers,-as Sir Edward Coke, and others!" Such was the monarch whose character was perpetually reproached for indolent habits, and for exercising arbitrary power! Even Mr. Brodie, the vehement adversary of the Stuarts, quotes and admires James's prescient decision on the character of Laud in that remarkable conversation with Buckingham and Prince Charles recorded by Hacket †.

What were the painful feelings of Catharine Macaulay, in summing up the character of James the First. The king has even extorted from her a confession, that "his conduct in Scotland was unexceptionable," but "despicable in his Britannic government." To account for this seeming change in a man who, from his first to his last day, was always the same, required a more sober historian. She tells us also, he affected "a sententious wit ;" but she adds, that it consisted " only of quaint and stale conceits." We need not take the word of Mrs. Macaulay, since we have so much of this "sententious wit" recorded, of which probably she knew little. Forced to confess that James's education had been "a more learned one than is usually bestowed on princes," we find how useless it is to educate princes at all; for this "more learned education" made this prince "more than commonly deficient in all the points he pretended to have any knowledge of." This incredible result gives no encouragement for a prince, having a Buchanan for his tutor. Smollett, having compiled the popular accusations of the "vanity, the prejudices, the littleness of soul," of this abused monarch, surprises one in the same page by discovering enough good qualities to make something more than a tolerable king. "His reign, though ignoble to himself, was happy to his people, who were enriched by commerce, felt no severe impositions, while they made considerable progress in their liberties." So that, on the whole, p. 493. the nation appears not to have had all the reason + Brodie's History of British Empire, vol. ii. they have so fully exercised in deriding and p. 244, 411.

See "Curiosities of Literature," 11th Edit.