purse of sylke containing forty jacobuses of the same." A most welcome gift we have no doubt to the needy monarch, who, we are told, used this obliging "Maiore and his brethren very graceouslye."
At this time James had been fourteen years in England, and was more than fifty years old. His eldest son and heir, Henry, was already dead in his prime, his Queen, Ann of Denmark, was a trouble to him, and the country was fermenting with the new religio-political emotion of Puritanism, made daily stronger by his prohibitions. Three years after this the May Flower left the coast of Holland for America; and while James was here receiving cups and purses of gold from the gracious Mayor and citizens, many of the noblest of his subjects were flying from his arbitrary rule to Holland and other places, and the great men who were to put the disjointed times right–Milton, Cromwell, and Hampden, were already ripening into manly life and deed. But James was no seer, and consequently, with "feast royall" and public church going, enjoyed himself in right kingly style here with his rattling retainers and the "merrie" citizens, he and they talking Armenian Theology and Universal Episcopacy in the calmer intervals of their noisy plays and pageantries.
In 1639 five hundred Irish soldiers were sent as a garrison to this castle, and remained here two years. The commotion in Scotland caused by the imposition of Bishops, etc., necessitated this precautionary movement. The great struggle was just commencing between king and people, which for more than ten years after this was to break nearly every sweet silence
