church of England." But before the book was published, the king died.

These advances of the court-divines towards Popery, made most of the people fall in with the Puritans, who, being constant preachers, and of exemplary lives, wrought them up by their awakening sermons to an abhorrence of every thing that looked that way.* Many of the nobility and gentry favoured them. Lady Bowes, afterward lady Darcy, gave 1,000l. per annum, to maintain preachers in the north, where there were none, and all her preachers were silenced Nonconformists. Almost all the famous practical writers of this reign, except bishop Andrews, were Puritans, and sufferers for nonconformity, as Dr. Willet, Mr. Jer. Dyke, Dr. Preston, Sibbs, Byfield, Bolton, Hildersham, Dod, Ball, Whately, and others, whose works have done great service to religion. The character of these divines was the reverse of what the learned Seldent gives of the clergy‡ of these times, in his "History of tithes," where he taxes them with ignorance and laziness; and adds, "that they had nothing to support their credit but beard, title, and habit; and that their learning reached no farther than the postils and the polyanthia." Upon the whole, if we may believe Mr. Coke, the Puritan party had gathered so much strength, and was in such reputation with the people, that they were more in number than all the other parties in the kingdom put together.

With regard to king James himself, it is hard to draw his just character, for no prince was ever so much flattered who so little deserved it. He was of a middle stature, not very corpulent, but stuffed out with clothes, which hung so

* Rothwell, p. 69, annexed to his General Martyrology. + In Preface, p. 1. second edit. 1618.

Bishop Warburton severely censures Mr. Neal for applying the words of Selden as if spoken of the episcopal clergy. "Here (says he) is another of the historian's arts; Selden speaks of the Puritan clergy." Not to urge in reply, that Selden can be understood as speaking of those clergy only, to whom his doctrine of tithes would be offensive, who could not be the Puritan clergy; it is fortunate for our author, that his interpretation of Selden's words is sanctioned by Heylin; who represents Selden's work as the execution of "a plot set on foot to subvert the church, in the undoing of the clergy. The author (he ́adds) was highly magnified, the book held unanswerable, and all the clergy looked on but as pigmies to that great Goliah." And then to shew, that the reproach cast on the clergy was not well founded, he ap peals to the answers given to Selden by Nettles, fellow of Queen's college, Cambridge, Dr. Montague, and archdeacon Tillesly. By which (says Heylin) he found that some of the ignorant and lazy clergy were of as retired studies as himself; and could not only match, but overmatch him too, in his philology." If Mr. Neal misrepresented Selden, so did Heylin. Heylin's Hist. of Presb. p. 391.—ED.

loose, and being quilted, were so thick, as to resist a dagger. His countenance was homely, and his tongue too big for his mouth, so that he could not speak with decency. While he was in Scotland he appeared sober and chaste, and acquired a good degree of learning; but, upon his accesion to the English crown, he threw off the mask, and by degrees gave himself up to luxury and ease, and all kinds of licentiousness. His language was obscene, and his actions very often lewd and indecent. He was a profane swearer, and would often be drunk, and when he came to himself would weep like a child, and say, he hoped God would not impute his infirmities to him. He valued himself upon what he called kingcraft, which was nothing else but deep hypocrisy and dissimulation in every character of life, resulting from the excessive timorousness of his nature. If we consider him as a king, he never did a great or generous action throughout the course of his reign,† but prostituted the honour of the English nation beyond any of his predecessors. He stood still while the Protestant religion was suppressed in France, in Bohemia, in the Palatinate, and other parts of Germany. He surrendered up the cautionary towns to the Dutch for less than a fourth part of the

*"His learning (observes Dr. Warner) was not that of a prince, but a pedant; and made him more fit to take the chair in public schools than to sit on the throne of kings." He was one of those princes" who (as bishop Shipley expresses it) were so unwise as to write books." The only thing that does him honour as an author is, that Mr. Pope pronounced his version of the psalms the very best in the English language. Warner's Eccles. Hist. vol. 2. p. 508.-ED.

+ To this, Dr. Grey opposes his bounty to the church of Ripon in Yorkshire, in which he founded a dean and chapter of seven prebendaries; and settled 2471. per ⚫ annum of crown-lands for their maintenance. The doctor also quotes from Fuller, Wilson, and Laud, warm encomiums of his liberality. But it ought to be considered, whether a liberality, which did not, as Dr. Warner says, "flow from reason or judgment but from whim, or mere benignity of humours," deserved such praises. Besides, Mr. Neal evidently refers to "such great and generous actions," as advance the interest and prosperity of a kingdom, and add to the national honour. This cannot be said of favours bestowed on parasites and jovial companions; or on a provision made that a few clerical gentlemen may loll in stalls.-ED.

These were the Brill and Flushing, with some other places of less note; and Dr. Grey, to screen the reputation of James from Mr. Neal's implied reflection, observes, that the Dutch had pawned these towns to queen Elizabeth for sums of money which she lent them, when they were distressed by the Spaniards. The sum borrowed on this security was eight millions of florins; and they were discharged for ten millions seven hundred and twenty-eight thousand florins, though eighteen years' interest was due. Ip equity and by stipulation the Dutch had a right, on repaying the money, to reclaim the towns they had mortgaged. This Dr. Grey must be understood as insinuating, by setting up the fact of the mortgage in defence of James's character. Yet, in all just estimation, his character must ever suffer by his surrender of these towns. He restored them without an equivalent, and without the advice or consent of parliament, to raise money to VOL. II.

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value, and suffered them to dispossess us of our factories in the East Indies. At home he committed the direction of all affairs in church and state to two or three favourites, and cared not what they did if they gave him no trouble. He broke through all the laws of the land, and was as absolute a tyrant as his want of courage would admit.* He revived the projects of monopolies, loans, benevolences, &c. to supply his exchequer, which was exhausted by his profuseness towards his favourites, and laid the foundation of all the calamities of his son's reign. Upon the whole, though he was flattered by hungry courtiers as the Solomon and phoenix of his age, he was, in the opinion of bishop Burnet, "the scorn of the age, a mere pedant, without true judgment, courage, or steadiness, his reign being a continued course of mean practices."

It is hard to make any judgment of his religion; for one while he was a Puritan, and then a zealous churchman; at first a Calvinist and Presbyterian, afterward a Remonstrant or Arminian, and at last a half, if not an entire, doctrinal Papist. Sir Ralph Winwood, in his Memoirs, says, that as long ago as the year 1596, he sent Mr. Ogilby, a Scots baron, to Spain, to assure his Catholic majesty he was then ready to turn Papist, and to propose an alliance with that king and the pope against the queen of England; but for reasons of state the affair was hushed. Rapin says, he was neither a sound Protestant, nor a good Catholic, but had formed a plan of uniting both churches, which must effectually have ruined the Protestant interest, for which indeed he never expressed any real concern. But I am rather of opinion that all his religion was his boasted kingcraft. He was certainly the meanest prince that ever sat on the British throne. + England never sunk in its reputation nor was

lavish on his favourites. And by this step he lost the dependance those provinces before had on the English crown. See this matter fully stated in Rapin's History, vol. 2. p. 122. and 191, 192; and by Dr. Harris in his Life of James 1. p. 162-167. -ED.

*In his book, entitled, "The true law of free monarchy," he asserted, that "the parliament is nothing else but the head court of the king and his vassals; that the laws are but craved by his subjects; and that, in short, he is above the law." This is a proof that his speculative notions of regal power were, as Mr. Granger expresses it, as absolute as those of an eastern monarch." Secret History of Charles II. vol. 1. Introduc. p. 20. the note.-ED.

To Mr. Neal's character of James, Dr. Grey particularly opposes that drawn of him by the pen of Spotswood, who was preferred by him to the archbishopric of

so much exposed to the scorn and ridicule of its neighbours, as in his reign. How willing his majesty was to unite with the Papists, the foregoing history has discovered; and yet in the presence of many lords, and in a very remarkable manner, he made a solemn protestation, "that he would spend the last drop of blood in his body before he would do it; and prayed, that before any of his issue should maintain any other religion than his own [the Protestant] that God would take them out of the world." How far this im precation took place on himself, or any of his posterity, I leave, with Mr. archdeacon Echard, to the determination of an omniscient Being.*

CHAP. III.

FROM THE DEATH OF KING JAMES I. TO THE DISSOLUTION OF THE THIRD PARLIAMENT OF KING CHARLES I. IN THE YEAR 1628.

BEFORE We enter upon this reign, it will be proper to take a short view of the court, and of the most active ministers under the king for the first fifteen years.

King Charles I. came to the crown at the age of twentyfive years, being born at Dumferling in Scotland, in the year 1600, and baptized by a Presbyterian minister of that country. In his youth, he was of a weakly constitution, and

St. Andrews. "In this, Dr. Harris (says Grey) did not quite so right. For courtbishops, by some fate or other, from the time of Constantine, down at least to the death of James, and a little after, have had the characters of flatterers, panegyrists, and others of like import; and therefore are always to have great abatements made in the accounts of their benefactors; it being well known that such they endeavour to hand down to posterity under the notion of saints, as they always blacken and deface their adversaries." Life of James I. p. 246, 247.-ED.

* The reader will be pleased to hear the sentiments of a learned foreigner on the reign and character of king James. The same bias will not be imputed to him as to Mr. Neal. "In the year 1625 died James I. the bitterest enemy of the doctrine and discipline of the Puritans, to which he had been in his youth most warmly attached ; the most inflexible and ardent friend of the Arminians, in whose ruin and condemnation in Holland he had been singularly instrumental; and the most zealous defender of episcopal government, against which he had more than once expressed himself in the strongest terms. He left the constitution of England, both ecclesiastical and civil, in a very unsettled and fluctuating state, languishing under intestine disorders of various kinds." Mosheim's Ecclesiastical History, translated by Maclaine, sécond edit. vol. 4. p. 517, 518.—ED.

stammering speech; his legs were somewhat crooked, and he was suspected (says Mr. Echard) to be of a perverse nature. When his father [king James] came to the English crown, he took him from his Scots tutors, and placed him under those who gave him an early aversion to that kirk, into which he had been baptized, and to those doctrines of Christianity which they held in the greatest veneration. As the court of king James leaned towards Popery + and arbitrary power, so did the prince, especially after his journey into Spain; where he imbibed not only the pernicious maxims of that court, but their reserved and distant behaviour. He assured the pope by letter, in order to obtain a

* The expression here, whether it be Mr. Neal's own or that of any writer of the times, is inaccurate, improper, and proceeds upon a wrong notion of the design of baptism. This rite, resting solely on the authority of Christ, refers not to the peculiar sentiments of the church, or the particular party of Christians, amongst whom a person may happen to have it administered to him. It expresseth a profession of Christianity only, and refers exclusively to the authority of its Author, acting in the name of God the Father, and having his ministry sealed by the gifts of the Holy Spirit. The notion of being baptized into the kirk of Scotland, or into the church of England, is entirely repugnant to the reasoning of Paul in 1 Cor. i. who, as Dr. Clarke expresses, "we find was very careful, was very solicitous, not to give any occasion to have it thought, that there was any such thing as the doctrine of Paul, much less any such thing as the doctrine of the church of Corinth or Rome, or of any other than Christ only-in whose name only we were baptized." Clarke's Sermons, vol. 4. p. 95. 8vo.-ED.

+ Dr. Grey controverts this assertion of Mr. Neal, and calls it "groundless;" with a view to confute it, he quotes Rymer, Clarendon, and bishop Fleetwood. The first and last authorities go to prove only the king's firm adherence to Protestantism and the church of England, so far as concerned his own personal profession of religion; the former alleges that the attempt of the court of Spain to convert him to Popery was inefficient; the latter is only a pulpit eulogium to the memory of Charles on the S0th of January. The quotation from lord Clarendon, apparently proves more than these authorities; for it asserts, "that no man was more averse from the Romish church than he [i. e. king Charles] was." But, to be consistent with himself, his lordship must be understood with a limitation; as speaking of his remoteness from a conformity to Popery in his own belief and practice; not of his disposition towards that religion, as professed by others. Dr. Harris has produced many proofs, that the king was not a Papist himself. But he has also evinced, by many authorities, that professed Papists were favoured, caressed, and preferred at court. The articles of the marriage-treaty, to which he signed and solemnly swore, sanctioned the profession of that religion in his kingdom. The clergy, who enjoyed the smiles of the court, preached in favour of the practices and tenets of Popery. And Popish recusants were not only tolerated, but protected by this prince. See Harris's Life of Charles I. p. 198 to 2004, and from p. 204 to 208. The facts of this nature are also amply stated in "An essay towards attaining a true idea of the character and reign of king Charles I." chap. 9. On these grounds Mr. Neal is fully vindicated; for he speaks, it should be observed, not of the king's being a Papist, but of his "leaning towards Popery." But it might be sufficient to quote, against Dr. Grey, even lord Clarendon only, who tells us, "that the Papists were upon the matter, absolved from the severest parts of the law, and dispensed with for the gentlest. They were looked upon as good subjects at court, and as good neighbours in the country; all the restraints and reproaches of former times being forgotten." His lordship expatiates largely on the favours they received, and on the boldness they assumed. History of the Rebellion, vol. 1. p. 148, 8vo. edit. of 1707.-ED.

In confutation of this assertion, Dr. Grey quotes Rushworth; who says, that at the court of Spain "prince Charles gained a universal love, and earned it, from first