first Parliament, they took into consideration several grievances, such as purveyance, a supposed right in the officers of the court to seize what provisions they pleased, at any price, or at no price; another was the right of granting monopolies, which had become a source of revenue to the court by cheating the country, certain persons having the monopoly of certain manufactures and articles of domestic consumption, which they were allowed to furnish at their own prices. The Commons likewise remonstrated against all pluralities in the church, and against a new set of canons which the king and the church tried to force on the nation without their consent. In 1614 they threatened to postpone any supply till their grievances were redressed. The king, in his turn, threatened to dissolve them if they did not immediately grant a supply; and they allowed him to take his course, which did not fill his coffers. These, and many other instances of bold resistance, should have given warning to the court. They were the shadows of coming events, and attention to them might have saved the bloodshed and confusion of the succeeding reign.
English literature, which first made a decisive advance in the reign of Elizabeth, continued to be cultivated with great success in the reign of King James. The excellence of the language at this time as a medium for literature, is strikingly shown in the translation of the Bible now executed. It is also shown in the admirable dramatic writings of Shakspeare, and in the valuable philosophic works of Bacon. The inductive philosophy, made known by the last writer—namely, that mode of reasoning which consists in first ascertaining facts, and then inferring conclusions from them—reflects peculiar lustre on this period of British history. Very great praise is also due to Napier of Merchiston, in Scotland, for the invention of logarithms, a mode of calculating intricate numbers, essential to the progress of mathematical science.
CHARLES I—HIS CONTENTIONS WITH THE HOUSE OF COMMONS
King James died in March 1625, in the fifty-ninth year of his age, and was succeeded by his son Charles, now twenty five years of age. One of the first acts of the young king was to marry the Princess Henrietta Maria, daughter of Henry IV of France, and a Catholic. This was an unfortunate step for the House of Stuart, for the two eldest sons of the king and queen, though educated as Protestants, were influenced in some measure by the religious creed of their mother, so that they ultimately became Catholics; and this, in the case of the second son, James II, led to the family being expelled from the British throne.
After breaking off the proposed match with the Princess Mary of Spain, Britain eagerly threw itself into a war with that country, which was still continued. To supply the expenses of that contest, and of a still more unnecessary one into which he was driven with France, the king applied to Parliament, but was met there with so many complaints as to his government, and such a keen spirit of popular liberty, that he deemed it necessary to revive a practice followed by other sovereigns, and particularly Elizabeth, of compelling his subjects to grant him gifts, or, as they were called, benevolences, and also to furnish ships at their own charge, for carrying on the war. Such expedients, barely tolerated under the happy reign of Elizabeth, could not be endured in this age,
