Page:Public School History of England and Canada (1892).djvu/93

 CHAPTER XV.

CROWN AND PARLIAMENT.

1. James I.—Elizabeth was no sooner dead than Cecil, the minister of her old age, sent for James VI. of Scotland, the son of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, to be king of England. No one objected, and James came down from Scotland to London and was crowned on the sacred stone of Scone in Westminster. So the old prophecy was fulfilled, and a Scotch king reigned in England under the title of James I.

James was the first of the Stuart line, and, like all his race in England, was obstinate, self-willed, and filled with the notion that he ruled by “Divine Right”; that is, he believed he held the throne from God directly, and not from his Parliament and people. To this belief he added another, viz., that bishops were divinely appointed, and that the kingship was not secure unless the Church was governed by bishops. As he said, “No Bishop, no King.” Perhaps he got this idea from the fact that when king in Scotland he had to endure a good many restraints and rebukes from the Presbyterian clergy of that nation. At any rate, as soon as he reached England he cast his lot in with the English Church and left the Presbyterian body to which he had formerly belonged.

James had a few good qualities and a great many bad ones. He was well educated, and had read much on church history and theology. He loved to show his learning, and to that end wrote pamphlets against smoking (which was becoming fashionable) and witchcraft, and in favor of the “Divine Right of Kings.” He had a canny Scotch wit and humour, and said many shrewd and pithy things. Nevertheless, he was a foolish king: “the wisest fool in Christendom,” as a French statesman called him. Le was easily ruled by favourites, and his court was often the scene of drunkenness and low debauchery. James himself was given to gluttony and drunkenness, and as in dress he was slovenly, and in person awkward and ungainly, he made himself contemptible and ridiculous by his actions. The English people had been accustomed to dignified kings and queens, and the change from the queenly Elizabeth to the ricketty James did not tend to make them quietly