that it required no fierce attack of sickness to carry him off. He had always had a strong repugnance to doctors and physic, but now the court physicians were hurried to his bedside. At this moment appeared the mother of Buckingham with an infallible specific, a plaster and a posset obtained from an Essex quack, named Remington. These were pronounced marvellous in the cure of ague; and though the physicians protested against their use, they were applied. They did not delay, if they did not accelerate the catastrophe. On the eleventh day of his illness, James received the sacrament in the presence of Charles, Buckingham, and the court attendants, in a mood of zealous devotion that is said to have drawn tears from all eyes. Williams, bishop and lord-keeper, preached his funeral sermon, and said, that having told the king "that holy men in holy orders in the church of England doe challenge a power as inherent in their functions, and not in their person, to pronounce and declare remission of sins to such as being penitent, doe call for the same, he had answered suddenly, 'I have ever believed there was that power in you that be in orders in the church of England, and therefore I, a miserable sinner, doe humbly desire Almighty God to absolve me my sinnes, and you, that are his servant in that high place, to affoard me this heavenly comfort.' And after the absolution read and pronounced, he received the sacrament with that zeal and devotion, as if he had not been a fraile man, but a Christian cloathed with flesh and blood."
On Sunday, the 27th of March, the fourteenth day of his illness, Charles was hastily called before daylight to go to him, but before he reached the chamber the king had lost the power of speech. He appeared extremely anxious to communicate something to him, but could not, and soon after expired. He was in the fifty-ninth year of his age, and the twenty-third of his reign. Two only of his seven children, three sons and four daughters, Charles and the ex-queen of Bohemia, survived him.
The character of James has been pretty clearly portrayed in the relation of the events of his reign. Had he been born to a private station, he might have passed through life with the reputation of a learned, shrewd, amiable, and even able man: but the whole caste of his mind was superficial; and his intense vanity meeting with none of the checks which it would have done in a private station, converted him at once into a ridiculous boaster and a pitiless tyrant. He deemed that all men ought to bow to his superior judgment, especially in learning and theology, and he could bear no question of his infallibility. Those who ventured to have a will, an opinion, or a conscience of their own, he brow-beat, insulted without mercy or delicacy, and persecuted to the death. As there was no depth or breadth in the constitution of his mind, he could not penetrate into the strong under-current of the age; he could not even perceive the ominous agitation of its surface; but with an obstinacy which at once indicated his shallow genius and the intensity of his egotism, he struggled against the rising tide of liberty and free thought, as if they were but a temporary over-flowing of a petty stream, which he might almost turn aside with his foot, but which in the end swept away his race.
James was not naturally inhuman, though in his rage against heresy, he perpetrated such atrocities against the lives and properties of catholics and puritans. He was amiable in his family, constant to his wife, and too indulgent to his children. But his good feeling unfortunately demonstrated itself too commonly in lavish favours and fortunes on the base. He was, like all weak monarchs, perpetually surrounded by favourites, base, rapacious, and profligate, who absorbed his wealth, and insulted and oppressed his subjects. His manners were often coarse, and not seldom disgusting. His language in moments of passion was at once violent, despicable, and obscene. In his fury he would scream and foam at the mouth, and when the paroxysm had passed, he descended to the opposite extreme of self-abasement and repentance. At such moments, whether raging with ire, or offering recompense to injustice, he was most undignified and unkingly. On one occasion, he demanded of Gibb, the messenger, some papers which should have been delivered to his care. Gibb, on his knees, protested that he had never received them. James, in his fury, cursed and kicked him, and Gibb, in a just indignation, left the court. It was soon afterwards found that the papers had been intrusted to another person, whereupon James sent for Gibb to do him right; but instead of confessing his error, and his regret for the wrong, he fell on his knees and implored his pardon.
That he had considerable learning, is evidenced by the works which he has left; but they evince the same want of profundity as his actions, the same lack of temper and genuine philosophy. Buchanan, his tutor, being reproached for having made such a learned simpleton of him, replied that "if they had known the mind he had to work on, they would have wondered that he made of him anything at all." Sully, the French minister, described him with the most perfect accuracy, when he said he was the most learned fool in Christendom. Unfortunately, his descendants had to pay the penalty of his folly.
CHAPTER III.
REIGN OF CHARLES I.
Within a quarter of an hour after the decease of James, Charles was proclaimed by the knight-marshal, Sir Edward Zouch, at the court-gate at Theobalds. He was in his twenty-fifth year, and so far as the admission of his title, the substantial prosperity of the kingdom, and the relations to foreign states, was an earnest, few monarchs have mounted the throne with more favourable auspices. True, the territories of his brother-in-law, the palsgrave, were in the enemy's hands, his sister was a queen without a realm, an electress without an electorate; but even the condition
