Some of the minor luminaries that set about the time of Bacon are not unworthy of mention. There was the unfortunate but all-accomplished Sir Walter Raleigh,statesman, historian, poet, and cavalier. Besides were Burton, author of the "Anatomy of Melancholy;" Jeremy Taylor, the Spenser of prose-writers, and the author of the "Golden Grove" and "Holy Living and Dying;" Harrington, who taught, in his "Oceana," that the natural element of power in states is property, became eminent a little later; as did also Hobbes, the Malmesbury philosopher, and Sir Thomas Browne, who wrote on "Urn-Burial" and "Vulgar Errors." But the age was most prolific in theological literature, consisting of a boundless. effusion of sermons and controversial tracts, all of which have passed into oblivion. The new or rather amended translation of the Bible has had a different fate. It was made at the instance of King James, and still continues the authorised version of the Holy Scriptures. rendering was based on Parker's, or the Bishop's Bible, which had been published nearly forty years before, and which had itself been founded on that of Cranmer, made under Henry VIII. Consequently the language of King James's Bible is not wholly that of Raleigh or Bacon, though partly modernised to that standard; but in the main belongs to an earlier period. However, the translation has been highly successful and satisfactory, probably from the general picturesque and antique beauty of the current version being most in keeping with the subject and the remote era and locality of the original writings.

The new

Little further remains to conclude the reign of King James. It is the misfortune of princes frequently to outlive the favourable impression with which they began to govern. To this fatality the king did not form an exception, though the term of his rule barely equalled one half

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that of Queen Elizabeth. Towards the close of his reign his unpopularity increased, partly from the wild and resultless Spanish adventures of Prince Charles, and, more seriously, from disagreements with the House of Commons. Early in 1622 parliament was abruptly dissolved, and its more popular leaders imprisoned. The House of Lords, too, had become refractory; two of its members, Oxford and Southampton, were imprisoned; and from this time the upper assembly began to assume the aspect of a regular opposition to the court. For two years after, no parliament was summoned; but on again meeting, the king's urgencies appear to have induced a more humble tone. No proclamation was issued against the people meddling with "state mysteries," and the Commons were invited to advise with the king on public affairs, especially the marriage of his son. On the vital question of supplies the Commons continued stringent, as before, and conceded only half the king's demands; and over these they resorted to the unusual expedient of appointing managers to receive them and direct their appropriation.

The king did not long survive these annoyances. He died in March 1625 in his 59th year, his death probably hastened by vexation, gout, and dietary indulgences. It closed a reign of rather ignoble features, without grandeur or magnanimity, degraded, in its leading public character, by mendacity, insincerity, and corruption; and with little higher to animate general society than theological wrangling and sectarian bitterness. It had one compensating advantage in its peaceful tenor, tending to augment the productive capital of the country, and thereby the growing importance of the middle orders. The general improvement had extended to the labouring classes, who, from the ample measure of comfort and in

dependence that they enjoyed beyond that of any former period, had come to be an object of political consideration. The awakening powers of the Reformation, and the energies of action and enterprise fostered under the vigorous sway of Elizabeth, had diffused a new spirit of life through all grades of the community but to the highest, which had declined. "The force by which our kings in former times were troubled, is," says the talented Raleigh, "vanished away. But the necessities remain; the people therefore, in these latter ages, are no less to be pleased than the peers before."

CHAPTER IX.

CHARLES I. AND THE CIVIL WAR.

Defects of Charles's Character. - Leading Events of his Reign. Merits of the Question between the King and Parliament. - Battle of Edgehill; Military Spirit evinced on both Sides, despite of a long Peace.-Character of the War; did not materially interrupt Social Progress.—Triumph of the Independents and Republicans. — King's Errors. Relative Character of Political Claims under the Stuarts and at Present. Increase of Riches among the Lords and Commons.

CHARLES, the son and successor of James, was more gentlemanly in his tastes and accomplishments than his erratic predecessor. He was fond of the fine arts, made no pretension to the pedantic learning, and was exempt from the pusillanimous spirit, of the late king. In other respects, neither in character nor principles, he did not evince any superiorities. He cherished the like disastrous notion of the illimitable prerogatives of the kingly office. He was wilful, passionate, and infirm in judgment. In

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choice of time, place, and person, he was mostly wrong. His ministers were chosen not for their fitness, but for their subserviency to his humours and arbitrary maxims of government. Buckingham was a reckless profligate; Laud a bigoted high churchman; Strafford a libertine and hireling of the court,—a man of ability, but ambitious and void of principle, the iron man, in short, who "despised danger and laughed at labour."

The king was ruined by his friends. But if this was weakness in him, he had other traits of character that demand harsher appellations. Writers agree that he was a dissembler, void of truth and sincerity. These odious traits are evinced by his equivocal acceptance of the Petition of Rights; by the favour he showed the papists after a solemn engagement to enforce the penal laws against them; his faithless negotiation at the close of the civil war with the Scots, the Presbyterians, and Independents; and his shuffling abandonment of his purchased instrument, Strafford.

The great events of the reign of Charles may be thus classed. 1. The war with Spain, with which the king was embroiled on his accession; and the war with France, into which he entered to gratify the private spite of Buckingham, and in both of which he reaped only disgrace and disappointment. 2. His disputes with parliament, also in part inherited from his predecessor, but aggravated by the pecuniary difficulties arising out of the wars; and when the House of Commons felt more disposed to impose checks on misrule, than grant supplies for its wasteful support. 3. His long effort to govern like an absolute monarch, without parliamentary control; this he did for eleven years, levying taxes, and even imposing new ones by royal mandate only. Such stretch of prerogative was unquestionably as great a departure from

constitutional forms, as the deviation of the Commons to the other extreme in their attempt to govern without a king. 4. His bigoted and impolitic efforts to impose on Scotland, contrary to the national faith, the English liturgy and episcopal government. Lastly, the great Civil War, which originated in the conflicting claims of the crown and the liberties of the people, and which terminated in the discomfiture of the king and his public execution.

The merits of this memorable civil conflict have been the frequent topic of controversy, and upon which men must continue divided so long as they differ on the derivation and chief end of governments. Charles Stuart considered the prerogatives of the crown not as a trust for public benefit, but as an inheritance for his individual indulgence. Hence in his struggles with parliament, he looked upon them as little better than audacious brigands, who sought to rob him of the patrimony inherited from his ancestors, and which he ought to transmit unimpaired to his posterity.

On both sides there was probably a semblance of legal justice. In favour of the king were the practices of the Tudors, not uniformly exercised, or without question acquiesced in. In favour of parliament were the written principles of the government, as set forth in Magna Charta and other statutes. In addition to these great authorities were many subordinate guarantees of freedom. 1. In actual precedents or examples of liberty, often, it is true, mixed up with contrary precedents and examples, but sufficient to legitimise and support parliamentary claims. 2. In institutions and customs, as the jury trial, the right of assembling in public, of being armed, and in the independence of magistrates and municipal bodies. Lastly, the peculiarity of the times required a stand to be made