Page:The Queens of England.djvu/470

 424 THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND. were months of unrestricted feasting and debauchery, varied but by visits to Tycho Brahe, whose astrology he reverenced, and laughed at his astronomy ; by marvelous revelations on the subject cf witchcraft ; and by scholastic disquisitions on predestination and freewill. The young queen having thus early foretaste of the life she was to look for in Scotland, uneasy thoughts of that impending future became soon her unwelcome companions ; and she, too, had her visits to as- trologers, in the hope of fathoming the years that were to come. They "flattered" her, says Carte the historian, with such computations of James's horoscope as promised his early death. He was to live till he was king of England, and was then to lose his senses and perish in prison. Already able with calmness to contemplate such a catastrophe, Anne of Denmark landed with James on the shore at Leith, on May- day, 1590- Her first experience in her new dominions was of her hus- band's poverty and unpopularity. Unwilling contributions, even to the loan of silver spoons, had to be levied for the feast of her coronation ; and unruly ministers of the kirk would have omitted that coronation ceremony which made her the Lord's anointed. Nevertheless she was anointed as well as crowned queen ; and fountains ran thin claret at the Edin- burgh Cross, and pageants were exhibited at the Nether Bow, and for her principal home she selected the palace of Dum- fermline ; and, not without sundry discontents and bitter per- sonal disputes, her dower was settled, her revenue, and her household. James meanwhile had completed bills of indict- ment against divers witches ; and three or four wretched old women, after torture to induce confession, were burnt for having conspired with witches in Norway to raise the storms that had delayed the queen's coming into Scotland. Elated ' by his success in this affair, he soon after wrote his Demono- logic. He could find no better use for the learning whipped into him by George Buchanan, than to help, by its means, to make the rest of the world as besotted with superstition as himself. In much later years, when, on inheriting the Eng- lish throne, he had given audience to one of the most ac- complished men of Elizabeth's court, the only record this able courtier could preserve of the interview might rather have concerned a witch-finder than a so-called learned sovereign. "His majesty did much press for my opinion touching the