beggar notes not his gilt stirrops ?'* No one discerned so clearly as James himself that the tone of Elizabeth, the tone of Essex, Sydney, Raleigh, was gone from the English Court. There remained close to him only one of the conspicuous pillars of Elizabeth's state; and Salisbury, shrewd statesman as he was, had been the meanest in face and figure, the most prosaic in fancy, of the Elizabethan magnates. James had to begin his reign by recognising all the consequences of this change in the atmosphere around the throne, and by preparing himself to constantly meet them.

Some efforts he made or allowed to be made to bring back the old régime. Careless in money matters by disposition, and besides afraid of being considered miserly, he went into the extreme of profusion. In expenditure, in luxurious feasting, his Court far outstripped Elizabeth's. But the whole thing was always heavy and flat. Queen Anne might deck herself and her maids of honour for masque after masque. The King himself felt the oppressive collapse, and would have preferred to be at his hunting-seat. His own worst shortcomings were due to his original lack of what were held to be, and in England were, the established signs of good breeding. Awkwardness and a consciousness of awkwardness were congenital in him. The strictest investigations lead one little further. His mind was coarse but not vicious, his character apprehensive but not cowardly. He was not of attractive, neither was he of contemptible parts. He strove to the utmost to be a just King; he was a benevolent man. On small and on great occasions he showed himself capable of generosity, even of magnanimity. But when he became King of England he was already thirtyseven years of age, too old and too downright to think of breaking up his Northern habits.

Times of peace and plenty are trying times for a Court. The whole general community, a thoughtless householder, not seeming in want of stores, leaves its finest and choicest fruits on the tree and in the sun. Through the long calm spell of autumn weather they are never gathered. They are shaken down and smashed in the stormy presence of the winter, over-ripe, rotten, gone to ruin. For, indeed (one is tempted to say it when one turns to past history), great colonial positions or frequent foreign wars are necessary to keep the aristocracy, the wealthy and intelligent class of the nation, however named, in pure and wholesome vigour. In the absence of other calls, the upper and

*Nugæ Antiquæ,' i. 393.

Mr. Gardiner's Introduction, p. ix., etc. Parliamentary Debates in 1610. Camden Society, 1862.

the

the official nobility are bound, more almost than the very person of the Sovereign, to the household and the Court, and, in reigns such as that of James, are peculiarly sensitive and responsive to Royal demeanour and Royal manners. In those about the monarch, who tried to suit themselves to him, who belonged not to his literary and learned, but to his hunting and dining set, or who gave the word to a larger, sprightlier society into which he himself comparatively seldom entered, the change he brought in was a most distinctly bad one in morals as well as in manners.

And then, that enthusiasm which had in Elizabeth's time been irresistible, was necessarily transient. It could not be otherwise. The uncertainty of the succession, the reign of an unmarried queen, unprotected except by her people, the fury of the Papacy and of the Continent manned with Spanish mercenaries, had kept the universal national estimate, and specially amongst the foremost ranks of society the personal aspect, of manhood and womanhood, of duty, degree and responsibility, at the highest level. James might advance faces, which made fortunes, a penniless page or a pushing fair; but he could make no centre for the old peerless cluster of brave men and sweet women, the warm ideals of Spenser and Shakespeare. Majesty could give no longer the remembered frank and stately entertainment. And now, the poetry of English public and domestic life had, for a generation, retired, like the greatest of English poets, into the country.

Favouritism was at the beginning of the seventeenth century a received institution according to a recognised and customary law of Europe. It was a form of artificial extension of the family of a prince, which had become an accepted part of the State-machinery. It was means of keeping in existence, during the minority or the undisciplined youth of the heir, a dynastic secret. If his rivalry were feared or his succession disliked, his too close initiation into politics might be prevented. Or if a break of line or succession was imminent, it was thus possible to equip an opposition and qualify it to hold on to and carry forward the principles it had known at work. It was a convenience which had been devised and developed in the nest of modern political cunning in Italy, and it had been at Rome brought to perfection under the example and by the name of Nepotism. It had been promoted in each pontificate a step further by the bishops of Rome of King James's own period. In James's lifetime, the Peretti, the Aldobrandini, the Borghesi, the Ludovisi, the Barberini had received a substantial benediction in the sight of the city and the world from a Papal relative, and had become the schoolmen of a new discipline, the masters of diplomacy.

diplomacy. The art was at its best. Its greatest disciple, in whom it culminated, the pupil of the Barberini, the man to be known hereafter as Cardinal Mazarin, was about two and twenty years of age when James died. In Spain the favourite was as to date an older permanent establishment than in Italy, and there too he was regarded as essential to the security of the monarchy. In France the Italian faction was every day gaining ground, and the conflict between the noble houses and the favourite or minister was settling itself with a steady determination toward the triumph of the new craft. We might trace the introduction of this instrument of a new science of government in the history of the German Courts, in which, at this epoch, the influences of Italian and Spanish maxims are unusually prominent.

In a modified form James availed himself of the prevalent manner among monarchs. But when we look closely into the innovation, as he made it, we get evidence sufficient how cautious he was, and we perceive the checks he had kept in reserve. The favourite was to rule the Court, not the Council. The favourite's position, his behaviour in his place, his foundation in his master's affections, were to be the principal topic for the men and women of fashion. This new phenomenon would serve for a mark or target, constantly shifting and never quite settled, in general conversation. The anterooms of politics would be maintained in perpetual motion and expectation, and would find this tempting food always close at hand. The favourite himself was to be as much as possible in the public eye, was to have opportunities of forwarding his friends, was to make marriages for his relations; he was to be pressed on by his own clique, he was to hear also the threats of those overborne by him, he was to be, throughout, trying for foot-hold and on the verge of the precipice, over which he might have to be flung. James prided himself with justice on his power of seizing on the meaning of an unguarded gesture or a stray remark; appearances might look otherwise, but from an interview he generally took away with him what he had come or waited for ; he excelled at a tête-à-tête. The favourite was to have the private ear of the King; it was his especial privilege to be able to see the King alone; he was to come straight out of the crowd into the King's chamber. Vain, passionate creatures like Somerset or Buckingham, speaking out of their panting hopes and fears, echoing the cries of their partisans and the criticisms of their foes, detailing the scandal they would have to hush up or to brave in London and in the country houses, or among the lawyers and the merchants,--were worth all the price, he paid for them, to that queer, shrewd connoisseur, their gossip and patron.

patron. It was they who gave to the King (whose own tastes lay over sea with negociations and difficulties there) that intimacy with England, which it was not easy nor agreeable to him to acquire for himself; with which he could not altogether harmoniously associate his person; but outside of which he could not, without manifest danger, pursue his career. In England, as abroad, one use of the favourite was to be the breaking down of the old aristocracy, and the substitution,-in England this could not be worked with any considerable success for absolutist purposes, of 'novi homines.' The king warned his favourites, and those who in their rise rose with them, to be heedful. Countenance and protection should be granted them to the furthest social limits, but let them never get within the clutches of a legal tribunal. There was the den of lions, out of which he would not be able nor willing to deliver them. The famous prosecutions of the reign bear witness to James's sense of the majesty of the law. Favourite or Chancellor, if he came to trial, had to take his chance; James would not prevent, he was not easily brought to mitigate, a sentence. The Spanish, French, or Italian favourite, powerful all round, was ordinarily the chief minister of foreign affairs; the English favourite was, after all, little more than a reporter on certain sides of political society at home. Just at the end, it is true, of James's reign a somewhat different state of things is exhibited. But Buckingham, as playing the prime minister was Prince Charles's nominee, was no favourite of King James. Had the King lived a little longer, and felt himself strong enough to take up again the reins of government, his first act would probably have been to disgrace and dismiss the duke.

'Those,' says Mr. Pattison (p. 361), whose impressions of character have been chiefly derived from modern histories, will find that, as they become better acquainted with the contemporary memoirs, their estimate of James's abilities will be raised.' We altogether endorse, we are ready to take a long stride beyond Mr. Pattison's eulogy. In the first place we would urge our readers to notice the sagacity and insight displayed by the King in the selection of ambassadors. We doubt whether any British Sovereign was ever served by abler diplomatists, and whether any British Sovereign was ever served by diplomatists who could feel more assured that their exertions were closely and studiously scanned and conned by an anxious, vigilant, and accurately experienced master. Mr. Motley has spoken disparagingly of the statesmen who served James, but we, for our part, know not when England was represented abroad by more capable envoys than in this reign. Where, we would

ask,

ask, shall we match a time when Winwood or Carleton was at the Hague, Weston at Brussels, Wake at Venice, Anstruther in the North, Digby in Spain, Roe at Constantinople, Herbert (later Lord Herbert of Cherbury) and Carlisle were at Paris, Chichester and Davies in the Irish plantations? The preservation of peace was James's chief care; but had he been forced into the heat of conflict, it would have been found that he could act with effect, that he had the secret, and could touch the spring of a most nicely organised international combination.* In view of the war in progress and prospect, and in view of the whole future of British enterprise and commerce, the position of, for instance, Sir Thomas Roe at Constantinople is most noteworthy and instructive. Sir Thomas Roe, like so many of the best servants of the Crown during this reign, had been knighted (we have in such promotions a hint to light up another branch of King James's statecraft) shortly after the King's coming into England. Soon after his advancement Roe went for Prince Henry to the West Indies; in 1609 Roe had been in Guinea and on the Amazon; in 1614 he was taking part in the debates of the House of Commons; then, in 1615, he travelled as far as the Court of the Emperor Jehanghir at Agra, to further the English East India Company, yet in its first infancy,—it was established in the first year of the century;-after so many commercial and diplomatic missions he had been sent as British minister to the Porte. There he was the Stratford de Redcliffe of his time, for years the one unchanging power in Turkey. He relates himself, how 'in the first fifteen months of his embassy he had seen three emperors† of the Turks, seven prime visiers, two captain bassas, five agas of the Janissaries, three great treasurers, six bassas of Cairo, and other changes in proportion.' He made the most of himself and his position. He did his best to secure jewels and rarities of classical antiquity for the Duke of Buckingham and the Earl of Arundel; he claimed and he took precedence before all other ambassadors; he assumed the protectorate over the Greek Church; from the centre of Islam he carried on an active antagonism to the cabals of Rome; he procured the expulsion of the Jesuits from the

*Charles's whisper, during the debates of 1624, would have come true enough of a great war in the last ten years of James, after he had secured himself. 'My father has a long sword. If it is once drawn, it will hardly be put up again.'Gardiner, England under the Duke of Buckingham and Charles I., vol. i. p. 30.

In his detailed description of one of these revolutions we have some very fine reflections: 'Thus a man despised, naked, taken from a pit, at first only begging a little water, was in a moment made one of the greatest monarchs in the world. He that was now in the jaws of death-starved and dying of thirst, is become the emperor, and may drink gold or the blood of men.'

Ottoman