marriage of the divorced wife with Somerset had been opposed by Sir Thomas Overbury, who on a frivolous charge was sent to the Tower, where he was poisoned by the Somersets. The truth came out two years later, and the Somersets were tried and found guilty. James pardoned, but dismissed them; and George Villiers, afterwards Duke of Buckingham, then took the place of royal favourite. His influence over the King and his second son, Charles, who was now heir to the Crown, was such that he soon became the wealthiest and most powerful peer in the kingdom. To raise money for his and other extravagances, James sold peerages at £10,000 a piece, and created baronets, each of whom paid £1000 for his patent.

But all three, James, Charles, and Buckingham, were more or less dupes in the hands of the Spanish ambassador Gondomar, who had the principal ministers of the Crown in his pay. To the end of his life Robert Cecil received a salary from Spain; what Spain got for it we do not know. We are all of us familiar with the saying that "the English are a nation of shopkeepers." The saying perhaps owes its currency chiefly to the first Napoleon, who, when he was irritated against the English, would exclaim, "They are a nation of shopkeepers; sono mercanti, as Paoli used to say." Paoli perhaps ought to know, for he ended his days in England as the pensioner of the British Government. But the saying is much older than Paoli's time. Gondomar, in writing home to Spain from the court of

James I., reported that the English could be bought and sold, just like so many shopkeepers.

James, who had expected to be in clover in wealthy England, found that Elizabeth had left him a heavy load of debt. In spite of his oppressive measures in raising money, he was always in difficulties, owing to his heedless extravagance. In 1614 he was obliged to call a second Parliament. In it Bacon, as M.P. for Cambridge, tried to mediate; but mediation was impossible. In it Pym appeared for the first time as M.P. for Calne; Sir Thomas Wentworth as M.P. for Yorkshire; and Sir John Eliot as M.P. for St. Germains. A House thus composed was not to be talked over. It would grant no money without redress of grievances; and James would concede nothing. It was dissolved after a few weeks of haggling. It was known as the Addled Parliament, because not a single egg of legislation was hatched. This led to the King's raising money at home by the highly unpopular device of benevolences; and to his attempting to get money from abroad, and from no other than the hereditary foe of England, Spain. James had long had a hankering for a Spanish alliance. He had the fine idea of getting the chief Catholic power to join with the chief Protestant power in compelling the rest of Europe to live in peace. Beati pacifici,

Blessed are the peacemakers," was one of the many excellent sayings which he was so frequently uttering, without in the least knowing the right way of carrying them into practice. In the case of the

Spanish project, he spoilt everything by his petty bargaining ways, and by turning the proposal into a device for filling his own pockets. He sent to Spain an offer of marriage between his son Charles and the Infanta, chiefly for the sake of the large dowry which would be paid with such a princess.1

This was the most unpopular act of his whole life, and in the eyes of his subjects he never recovered from it. From every point of view the proposal was hateful to them. (1) It would be an alliance with a detested country: the Armada of 1588 was still fresh in men's minds. (2) It would result in a Romanist from a bigoted and intolerant nation becoming Queen of England, who would use all her influence to strengthen Papalism in the kingdom. (3) It was an attempt to circumvent the constitution, by obtaining money, which had been refused by Parliament, from foreigners.

To no one was Spain more hateful than to Sir Walter Raleigh, shut up in the Tower since 1603 on an unproved charge of high treason. In 1615 he was released, on a promise to James that he would go and fetch gold from mines which were said to exist in South America near the Orinoco. The expedition inflicted some damage on the Spaniards in those parts, but brought home no gold. On the complaint of the Spanish ambassador, Raleigh

"I have seen the originals of about twenty letters which he wrote to the prince [Charles] and that duke [Buckingham] while they were in Spain, which show a meanness as well as a fondness that render him very contemptible" (Burnet, History of His Own Time, i. p. 32).

was arrested. And, as James did not dare to try a man in public for having inflicted a blow upon Spaniards, Raleigh was in 1618 put to death on the old sentence for high treason, pronounced years before. This made the idea of a Spanish alliance still more hateful to the nation. One of the most popular men in England seemed to have been sent to the scaffold simply to please the detested Spaniards.

But James had not yet reached the lowest depth of unpopularity with his subjects. This took place in the seven years of special folly which bring the reign to a close, 1618 to 1625. In 1618 the Thirty Years' War broke out, in which James's daughter Elizabeth and her husband, the Elector Palatine, seemed to stand out on the Continent as the representatives of deserted Protestantism. The Elector was defeated, and part of his dominions was seized by Spain. Englishmen were very indignant that their King should stand by and see his desired allies, the Spaniards, defeat and rob his daughter's husband. James sent ambassadors to various courts in Europe to endeavour to get other powers to interfere. But all this diplomacy effected nothing, and the whole of his foreign policy was regarded by the nation with the profoundest dislike and distrust.

Nor did his home government inspire less aversion or suspicion. The influence of the favourite Buckingham had almost supplanted the authority of the Crown, whether rightful or assumed. Men who wished for office or favour found that, in order to

succeed, they must cringe to a man who, when he first came to court, had to borrow the money to pay for a court suit. Moreover, to have Buckingham's goodwill was to be above the laws. His friends could not only obtain promotion over the heads of the deserving, but could defy justice. The extravagance of the royal expenditure was known to be largely his doing. And whereas the gaiety of Elizabeth's court had often been a distress to Puritans, the shameless indecency of the court in which Buckingham was the leading spirit, was such as to shock anyone who valued sobriety or modesty. In this respect the court of James I. was far worse than even the licentious court of Charles II.

But in the home government of James I., that which specially moved the indignation of his subjects was his attempts to tamper with the course of justice. Again and again he had got the judges to give decisions, of very questionable equity, in favour of the Crown. In 1616 he induced eleven of the twelve judges to promise that, if, in any case that was being tried before them, the King were to intimate that his interests were at stake, they would stay the proceedings, until he had consulted with them. The Chief Justice Coke would promise nothing of the kind, but merely that, whenever such a case should come before him, he would do what was fitting for a judge to do. For this he was censured by the Council, and in November he was told that he had ceased to be Chief Justice. The Royal prerogative