Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 3.djvu/16

2 of loyalty, or, in other words, of self-interest, being, as we have seen. Sir Robert Carey, to whom the artifice of his sister, lady Scrope, had communicated the earliest news of the queen's decease. He reached Edinburgh four days before Sir Charles Percy and Thomas Somerset, who were despatched officially by the council. Meantime, on March 24th, 1603, Cecil assembled thirty-five individuals, members of council, peers, prelates, and officers of state, at Whitehall, and accompanied by the lord mayor and aldermen, proclaimed James VI. of Scotland James I. of England, first in front of the palace, and then at the High Cross, in Cheapside.

There were some who were apprehensive that the accession of James might be opposed by the noblemen who had been so active in the death of his mother. But these had taken care to make their peace with the facile James, whose filial affection was not of an intensity to weigh much in the scales with the crown of England. On the contrary, his accession was hailed with apparent enthusiasm by all parties, for all parties believed that they should reap decided advantages from his government. The persecuted catholics felt certain that the son of the queen of Scots would at least tolerate their religion, as he had many a time privately assured their agents. The puritans were equally confident that a king who had been educated in the strictest faith of Calvinism, would place them in the ascendant; and the episcopal church—as it deemed, on equally good grounds—rejoiced in the advent of a prince who had protested to its friends that he was heartily sick of a religion which had domineered over both his mother and himself with an iron rigidity. The populace, in the hope of a milder yoke than that of the truculent Tudors, gave vent to their joy in loud acclamations, by bonfires and ringing of bells, while Elizabeth was lying a corpse, scarcely cold, on her bier.

James, who was in his thirty-seventh year, was transported at the prospect of his escape from the poverty and religious restraint of Scotland, to the affluence of so much more extensive an empire, and one only impediment checked his flight southward—the want of money for the journey. He sent a speedy message to Cecil for the necessary funds, and also added a request for the transmission of the crown jewels for the adornment of his wife. The money was forwarded, but the jewels were prudently withhold till he reached his future capital. Once in possession of the means of locomotion, James did not conceal his pleasure at escaping from the control of his presbyterian clergy, and the haughty rudeness of his nobles, to an accession of wealth and power which he imagined would make him as absolute as Henry VIII., a condition for which he had an intense yearning. Now was the time for the English ministers to have taken from him a guarantee for the maintenance of the constitution, as secured by Magna Charta, and for the redress of the gross abuses which had accumulated under the Tudor government. But Cecil and his compeers were too much concerned for their own especial aggrandisement, to take any precautions for the public benefit; and the new monarch was suffered to enter on his functions as if there were no constitutional restraints at all, a neglect which soon led him to boast of his royal right to do whatever he pleased.

On the 5th of April James commenced his journey towards London, but however much he rejoiced in the prospect of his new kingdom, he was in no haste to reach the capital. The moment that he set foot in England he seemed to have realised the full luxury of his new sovereignty, and announced to those about him that they had indeed at last arrived at the Land of Promise. At Berwick he fired a piece of ordnance himself in his joy, which seemed for the moment to have raised him above his constitutional timidity; and he then sate down and wrote to Cecil, informing him of his progress, and of his intention to take York and other places on his way. As he intended to enter York and pass through other towns in state, he pressed on the obsequious minister the necessity of forwarding to him coaches, litters, horses, jewels, and all that was requisite for regal dignity, as well as a lord chamberlain; and he forthwith appointed to that office the lord Thomas Howard. He informed the minister that the jewels as well as dresses which he required were such as were necessary to enable his wife to appear as queen-consort in her new realm, which he again urged should be sent to York to await the arrival of her majesty, who did not accompany him, as she expected her confinement, but was to follow as soon as convenient. James, moreover, desired them not to delay the funeral of the late queen on his account,—it was a ceremony which he preferred being exempt from; and accordingly Elizabeth was deposited in Westminster Abbey without farther procrastination. James also ordered coins of gold and silver to be struck, after the manner of former English kings, against the day of his coronation, and proceeded lazily on his way, rarely passing a gentleman's house without taking up his quarters there, with his constantly increasing retinue, and hunting, and living on his host as long as there were the means. Many families did not recover the debt into which this plunged them, for ages. At Houghton Tower, near Blackburn in Lancashire, after remaining some time, on looking out of the window one day, and not observing a fine herd of cattle in the meadow below, which he had seen at his coming, he demanded of the owner where they were. His host replied that they were all killed and eaten by his majesty's followers. "Then," said James, "it is time to be going." He staid three days at York, and did not reach Newark till the 21st of the month. Cecil had met him at York, and accompanied his progress; and as he rode forward the people crowded around to welcome their new sovereign with the most hearty acclamations. To express his satisfaction to the gentry, he made almost every man of any standing who approached him a knight; so that by the time he reached London he is said to have created two hundred and fifty, and before he had been in England three months, seven hundred knights, a profusion which took away every value from the gift.

At Newark James startled the public by an act of absolutism. A pick-pocket was detected in the very act, who had accompanied the court all the way from Berwick, wearing the appearance of a gentleman, and had thus reaped a good harvest. James ordered him to instant execution without judge or jury, and when some one ventured to remark that this was not the English practice, he replied, "Do I not make the judges? do I not make the bishops? Then, God's wounds! I make what likes me, law and gospel." On the 3rd of May, having been nearly a month on the way, he arrived at Theobalds, the magnificent residence of Cecil, whither flocked to him numbers of the nobility and gentry, amongst the most zealous of whom appeared Francis Bacon, who was as thorough a courtier as he was a philosopher. He wrote to the earl of Northumberland a very flattering account of