lix
him by the gods during his voyage to Denmark and in the happy issue of his marriage. Its chief property consisted of a movable ship, eighteen feet long, eight feet wide, and four feet high, which was elaborately decorated with sails of taffeta, ordnance, and rigging, and manned by Arion with his harp, Neptune, Thetis, and Triton, three sirens, six sailors, and fourteen musicians. The vessel approached the table, delivered the banquet, and departed at the close after the singing of the One Hundred Twenty-eighth Psalm. The whole entertainment, of which this was merely a part, and which extended over several days, illustrates the pleasure taken by the royal couple in gorgeous and costly spectacle.
These, however, were but the pastimes of idle moments. Of a much more serious character was the King's interest in the disputes of scholars over problems in theology and in what was at the time the closely allied subject of the theory of government. From his childhood his studies had been especially in these fields; as the French Ambassador, Boderie, remarks, theology was the subject which he knew best, and in the discussion of which he took the greatest pleasure.[1] The sermons and paraphrases in the stirring years of Spanish preparations against England have already been mentioned.[2] The Dæmonologie, a dialogue on witchcraft, directed especially against the damnable scepticism of Reginald Scott and the German physician Weirus, appeared in 1597; The Trewe Lawe of free [i.e. absolute] Monarchies,[3] in answer to the arguments of Buchanan, Hotman, Hubert Languet, and similar reformers, in 1598; and the Basilikon Doron, altogether the most original and pleasing of the King's writings, early in 1599.[4] The curiosity aroused by James's accession to the English throne led to the republi-
- ↑ Ambassades, ed. 1750, Vol. III, p. 190.
- ↑ Cf. p. xxxiv.
- ↑ "The bent of it was directed against the course of God's worke in our Kirk and ellis where, as rebellious to Kings." Calderwood, Historie of the Kirk of Scotland, Vol. V, p. 727.
- ↑ The first edition was limited to seven copies. Nicholson refers to the treatise in a letter written in October, 1598 (Cal. S. P. Sco., p. 759).
