Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 3.djvu/17

1603.] James, yet clearly indicating his faults. "Your lordship," says Bacon, "shall find a prince the furthest from vain-glory that may be, and rather like a prince of the ancient form than of the latter time. His speech is swift and cursory, and in the fullest dialect of his nation; and in speech of business short, in speech of discourse large. He affecteth popularity by gracing them that are popular, and not any fashions of his own. He is thought somewhat general in his favours, and his virtue of access is rather that he is much abroad and in press, than that he giveth easy audience; he hasteth to a mixture of both kingdoms and nations, faster, perhaps, than policy will bear."

The truth was that James, who made himself very free and easy in his immediate circle, greatly disliked exposure to the mob, and dealt about his smiles and knighthoods to get rid of his throngers as soon as possible. By the time he had reached Berwick he had knighted three persons; at Darlington he knighted eleven, at York thirty-one, at Worksop in Nottinghamshire eighteen, at Newark eight, on the road thence to Belvoir Castle four, at Belvoir forty-five. Yet gracious as he was and agreeable as he wanted to make himself, his new subjects did not behold his person and manner without considerable astonishment. The fright which his mother had received before his birth by the murder of Rizzio, is supposed to have had a mischievous effect on both his physical and moral constitution, and the absurd practice of swathing children in that age, from which large numbers perished, added, it is imagined, its untoward influences to his gait and carriage; for this son of the beautiful queen of Scots is described by a contemporary, "as of a middle stature, more corpulent through his clothes than in his body, his clothes being ever made large and easy; the doublets quilted for stiletto proof, his breeches in great plaits and full stuffed. He was naturally of a timorous disposition, which was the greatest reason of his quilted doublets. His eyes large, ever rolling after any stranger who came into his presence, in so much as many for shame left the room, as being out of countenance. His beard was very thin; his tongue too large for his mouth, which made him drink very uncomely, as if eating his drink, which came out into the cup on each side of his mouth. His skin was as soft as taffety sarcenet, which felt so because he never washed his hands, only rubbed his fingers slightly with the wet end of a napkin. His legs were very weak, having had, as was thought, some foul play in his youth, or rather before he was born, that he was not able to stand at seven years of age; that weakness made him ever leaning on other men's shoulders." His ungainly person and his equally uncouth dialect, no little amazed the stately courtiers of Elizabeth, who, however, paid him the most devoted homage, as the dispenser of the honours and good hoped for.

At Theobalds Cecil had the opportunity of studying James's character and of ingratiating himself with him. A new council was formed, and whilst James introduced six of his own countrymen, Cecil recommended six of his partisans to balance them. Whilst he had corresponded with James he had managed to fix in his mind a deep and ineradicable aversion to the men whom he himself regarded with jealous and hostile feelings—Raleigh, Cobham, and Grey. It was in vain that they paid their court, they were treated with coldness, and Raleigh, instead of receiving the promotion to which he aspired, was even deprived of the valuable office of the warden of the Stannaries. It is supposed that Cecil had represented these statesmen as having made overtures to Spain for the support of another candidate for the throne. Northumberland was equally the object of Cecil's dislike, but Bacon was warmly in his favour, and the king received him graciously. The Scotchmen who received immediate admission to the royal council were the duke of Lennox, the earl of Mar, the lord Hume, Sir George Hume, Bruce of Kinloss, and secretary Elphinstone; the Englishmen were Cecil, the earls of Nottingham and Cumberland, the lords Henry and Thomas Howard, and the barons Zouch and Borough.

On the 7th James set out for his capital, and at Stamford Hill was met by the lord mayor and aldermen of London in their scarlet robes, followed by a great crowd, and with these he entered the city, and proceeded to the Charter-House. He immediately caused a proclamation to be made that all licences and monopolies granted by Elizabeth, and which had excited so much discontent, should be suspended till they had been examined by the council; that all protections from the crown to delay the progress of justice in the courts of law should cease, as well as the abuses of purveyance, and the oppressions of saltpetre makers and officers of the household.

These announcements wore calculated to inspire the hope of a reign of justice, but with the peculiar art which James possessed of neutralising his favours, they were quickly followed by an injunction against all persons whatever killing the king's deer or wild-fowl; James being passionately fond of hunting and sporting, and apprehensive that during the absence of the prince inroads would be made on his beloved game.

From the Charter-House he proceeded, according to routine, to the Tower, and thence to Greenwich and back to Whitehall, at every step making more knights and creating peers. He had sent for the earl of Southampton to meet him at York, and he now restored both him and the son of his friend the earl of Essex to their honours and estates. Mountjoy and three of the Howards were raised to the rank of earls; nine new barons were created, amongst them Cecil, who was made lord Cecil, and afterwards viscount Cranbourne, and finally earl of Salisbury. Buckhurst and Egerton were promoted; and eventually, besides his seven hundred spick-and-span new knights, he added sixty-two fresh members to the peerage. So extravagant was his distribution of honours that a pasquinade was affixed to the door of St. Paul's, offering to teach weak memories the art of recollecting the titles of the nobility. The people, moreover, were disgusted to hear the new monarch, who claimed to be a man of first-rate learning, speak with contempt of the talents and character of their late queen. Elizabeth had in her last days fallen deeply in public opinion by her treatment of the earl of Essex, who had been in secret alliance with James, but they were not prepared to hear her disparaged for ability by her successor. Had he condemned her memory, which he might with justice, as the oppressor and murderess of his mother, little could be objected, though his own exertions to save that mother had not been of a very energetic kind, and he had been wiling to become the pensioner of the royal assassin; but his treatment of her memory as of a weak and mediocre ruler only tended to revive the acknowedgmentacknowledgement [sic] of her remarkable intellectual and diplomatic powers.

Whilst James was receiving the welcome of his English subjects, he was not free from domestic trials, of no trivial