The History of England - Vols. 1 to 6 (348 page)

And, by this means, the whole tyranny of the inquisition, though without its order, was introduced into the kingdom.

But the clergy were not content with the unlimited jurisdiction, which they exercised in ecclesiastical matters: They assumed a censorial power over every part of administration; and, in all their sermons, and even prayers, mingling politics with religion, they inculcated the most seditious and most turbulent principles. Black,

minister of St. Andrews, went so far,u
in a sermon, as to pronounce all kings the devil’s children; he gave the queen of England the appellation of atheist; he said, that the treachery of the king’s heart was now fully discovered; and in his prayers for the queen he used these words;
We must pray for her for the fashion’s sake, but we have
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no cause: She will never do us any good.
When summoned before the privy council, he refused to answer to a civil court for any thing delivered from the pulpit, even though the crime, of which he was accused, was of a civil nature. The church adopted

his cause. They raised a sedition in Edinburgh.w
The king, during some time, was in the hands of the enraged populace; and it was not without courage, as well as dexterity, that he was able to extricate himself.
x
A few days after, a minister, preaching in the principal church of that capital, said, that the king was possessed with a devil; and, that one devil being expelled, seven worse had entered in his place.
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To which he added, that the subjects might lawfully rise, and take the sword out of his hand. Scarcely, even during the darkest night of papal superstition, are there found such instances of priestly encroachments, as the annals of Scotland present to us during that period.

By these extravagant stretches of power, and by the patient conduct of James, the church began to lose ground, even before the king’s accession to the throne of England: But no sooner had that event taken place, than he made the Scottish clergy sensible, that he was become the sovereign of a great kingdom, which he governed with great authority. Though formerly he would have thought himself happy to have made a fair partition with them of the civil and ecclesiastical authority, he was now resolved to exert a supreme jurisdiction in church as well as state, and to put an end to their seditious practices. An assembly had been summoned at Aberdeen;
z
but, on account of his journey to London, he prorogued it to the year following. Some of the clergy, disavowing his ecclesiastical supremacy, met at the time first appointed, notwithstanding his prohibition. He threw them into prison. Such of them as submitted, and acknowledged their error, were pardoned. The rest were brought to their trial. They were condemned for high treason. The king gave them their lives; but

banished them the kingdom. Six of them suffered this penalty.a

The general assembly was afterwards inducedb
to acknowledge the king’s authority in summoning ecclesiastical courts, and to submit to the jurisdiction and visitation of the bishops. Even their favourite sentence of excommunication was declared invalid, unless confirmed by the ordinary. The king recommended to the inferior courts the members whom they should elect to this assembly; and every thing was conducted in it with little appearance of choice and liberty.
c

By his own prerogative likewise, which he seems to have stretched on this occasion, the king erected a court of high commission,
d
in imitation of that which was established in England. The bishops and a few of the clergy, who had been summoned, willingly acknowledged this court; and it proceeded immediately upon business, as if its authority had been grounded on the full consent of the whole legislature.

But James reserved the final blow for the time when he should 13th June.

himself pay a visit to Scotland. He proposed to the parliament, which was then assembled, that they should enact, that, “whatever his majesty should determine in the external government of the church, with the consent of the archbishops, bishops, and a competent number of the ministry, should have the force of “law.”
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nomination was left entirely to the king: So that his ecclesiastical authority, had this bill passed, would have been established in its full extent. Some of the clergy protested. They apprehended, they said, that the purity of their church would, by means of this new authority, be polluted with all the rites and liturgy of the church of England. James, dreading clamour and opposition, dropped the bill, which had already passed the lords of articles; and asserted, that the inherent prerogative of the crown contained more power than was recognized by it.

Some time after, he called, at St. Andrews, a meeting of the 10th July.

bishops and thirty-six of the most eminent clergy. He there

declared his resolution of exerting his prerogative, and of establishing, by his own authority, the few ceremonies, which he had recommended to them. They entreated him rather to summon a general assembly, and to gain their assent. An assembly was accordingly summoned to meet on the 25th of November ensuing.

Yet this assembly, which met after the king’s departure from Scotland, eluded all his applications; and it was not till the subsequent year, that he was able to procure a vote for receiving his ceremonies. And through every step in this affair, in the parliament as well as in all the general assemblies, the nation betrayed the utmost reluctance to all these innovations; and nothing but James’s importunity and authority had extorted a seeming consent, which was belied by the inward sentiments of all ranks of people.

Even the few, over whom religious prejudices were not prevalent, thought national honour sacrificed by a servile imitation of the modes of worship practised in England.

And every prudent man agreed in condemning the measures of the king, who, by an ill-timed zeal for insignificant ceremonies, had betrayed, though in an opposite manner, equal narrowness of mind with the persons, whom he treated with such contempt. It was judged, that, had not these dangerous humours been irritated by opposition; had they been allowed peaceably to evaporate; they would at last have subsided within the limits of law and civil authority. And that, as all fanatical religions naturally circumscribe to very narrow bounds the numbers and riches of the ecclesiastics; no sooner is their first fire spent, than they lose their credit over the people, and leave them under the natural and beneficent influence of their civil and moral obligations.

At the same time that James shocked, in so violent a manner, the religious principles of his Scottish subjects, he acted in opposition to those of his English. He had observed, in his progress through England, that a judaical observance of the Sunday, chiefly by means of the puritans, was every day gaining ground throughout the kingdom, and that the people, under colour of religion, were, contrary to former practice, debarred such sports and recreations as contributed both to their health and their amusement.
f
Festivals, which, in other nations and ages, are partly dedicated to public worship, partly to mirth and society, were here totally appropriated to the offices of religion, and served to nourish those sullen and gloomy contemplations, to which the people were, of themselves, so unfortunately subject. The king imagined, that it would be easy to infuse chearfulness into this dark spirit of devotion. He issued a proclamation to allow and encourage, after divine service, all kinds of lawful games and exercises; and, by his authority, he endeavoured to give sanction to a practice, which his subjects regarded as the utmost instance of profaneness and impiety.
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XLVIII

Sir Walter Raleigh’s expedition — His execution — Insurrections in Bohemia — Loss
of the Palatinate — Negociations with Spain — A parliament — Parties — Fall of
Bacon — Rupture between the king and the commons — Protestation of the commons
At the time when Sir Walter Raleigh was first confined in the 1618. Sir Walter

Tower, his violent and haughty temper had rendered him the

Raleigh’s expedition.

most unpopular man in England; and his condemnation was

chiefly owing to that public odium, under which he laboured. During the thirteen years imprisonment which he suffered, the sentiments of the nation were much changed with regard to him. Men had leisure to reflect on the hardship, not to say injustice, of his sentence; they pitied his active and enterprizing spirit, which languished in the rigours of confinement; they were struck with the extensive genius of the man, who, being educated amidst naval and military enterprizes, had surpassed in the pursuits of literature even those of the most recluse and sedentary lives; and they admired his unbroken magnanimity, which, at his age and under his circumstances, could engage him to undertake and execute so great a work as his History of the World. To encrease these favourable dispositions, on which he built the hopes of recovering his liberty, he spread the report of a golden mine, which he had discovered in Guiana, and which was sufficient, according to his representation, not only to enrich all the adventurers, but to afford immense treasures to the nation. The king gave little credit to these mighty promises; both because he believed, that no such mine as the one described was any–where in nature, and because he considered Raleigh as a man of desperate fortunes, whose business it was, by any means, to procure his freedom, and to reinstate himself in credit and authority. Thinking, however, that he had already undergone sufficient punishment, he released him from the Tower; and when his vaunts of the golden mine had induced multitudes to engage with him, the king gave them permission to try the adventure, and, at their desire, he conferred on Raleigh authority over his fellow-adventurers. Though strongly solicited, he still refused to grant him a pardon, which seemed a natural consequence, when he was intrusted with power and command. But James declared himself still diffident of Raleigh’s intentions; and he meant, he said, to reserve the former sentence, as a check upon his future behaviour.

Raleigh well knew, that it was far from the king’s purpose to invade any of the Spanish settlements: He therefore firmly denied that Spain had planted any colonies on that part of the coast where his mine lay. When Gondomar, the ambassador of that nation, alarmed at his preparations, carried complaints to the king, Raleigh still protested the innocence of his intentions: And James assured Gondomar, that he durst not form any hostile attempt, but should pay with his head for so audacious an enterprize. The minister, however, concluding, that twelve armed vessels were not fitted out without some purpose of invasion, conveyed the intelligence to the court of Madrid, who immediately gave orders for arming and fortifying all their settlements, particularly those along the coast of Guiana.

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When the courage and avarice of the Spaniards and Portuguese had discovered so many new worlds, they were resolved to shew themselves superior to the barbarous heathens whom they invaded, not only in arts and arms, but also in the justice of the quarrel: They applied to Alexander VI. who then filled the papal chair; and he generously bestowed on the Spaniards the whole western, and on the Portuguese the whole eastern part of the globe. The more scrupulous protestants, who acknowledged not the authority of the Roman pontiff, established the first discovery as the foundation of
their
title; and if a pirate or sea-adventurer of their nation had but erected a stick or stone on the coast, as a memorial of his taking possession, they concluded the whole continent to belong to them, and thought themselves intitled to expel or exterminate, as usurpers, the ancient possessors and inhabitants. It was in this manner that Sir Walter Raleigh, about twenty-three years before, had acquired to the crown of England a claim to the continent of Guiana, a region as large as the half of Europe; and though he had immediately left the coast, yet he pretended that the English title to the whole remained certain and indefeazable. But it had happened in the mean time, that the Spaniards, not knowing or not acknowledging this imaginary claim, had taken possession of a part of Guiana, had formed a settlement on the river Oronooko, had built a little town called St. Thomas, and were there working some mines of small value.

To this place Raleigh directly bent his course; and, remaining himself at the mouth of the river with five of the largest ships, he sent up the rest to St. Thomas, under the command of his son, and of captain Keymis, a person entirely devoted to him. The Spaniards, who had expected this invasion, fired on the English at their landing, were repulsed, and pursued into the town. Young Raleigh, to encourage his men, called out,
That this was the true mine, and none but fools looked for any other;
and advancing upon the Spaniards, received a shot, of which he immediately expired. This dismayed not Keymis and the others. They carried on the attack; got possession of the town, which they afterwards reduced to ashes; and found not in it any thing of value.

Raleigh did not pretend, that he had himself seen the mine, which he had engaged so many people to go in quest of: It was Keymis, he said, who had formerly discovered it, and had brought him that lump of ore, which promised such immense treasures.

Yet Keymis, who owned that he was within two hours’ march of the place, refused, on the most absurd pretences, to take any effectual step towards finding it; and he returned immediately to Raleigh, with the melancholy news of his son’s death, and the ill success of the enterprize. Sensible to reproach, and dreading punishment for his behaviour, Keymis, in despair retired into his cabin, and put an end to his own life.