King James

in the interest of England.

infused such a jealousy of him into all their party in Scotland, that both nobility and clergy were much alarmed at it.

But king James learnt early that piece of kingcraft, of disguising, or at least denying every thing that was observed in his behaviour that gave offence.

The main instance in which the French management appeared was, that he could not be prevailed on to enter into any treaty of marriage. It was not safe to talk of marrying a papist; and as long as the duke of Guise lived, the king, though then three and twenty, and the only person of his family, would hearken to no proposition for marrying a protestant.

But when the duke of Guise was killed at Blois, and that Henry the third was murdered soon after, so that Henry the fourth came in his room, king James was no more in a French management: so presently after he married a daughter of Denmark, and ever after that he was wholly managed by queen Elizabeth and her ministers. I have seen many letters among Walsingham's papers that discover the commerce between the house of Guise and him (king James); but the most valuable of these is a long paper of instructions to one sir Richard Wigmore, a great man for hunting, and for all such sports, to which king James was out of measure addicted. The queen affronted him publicly. Upon

c A mean expression, often made use of by king James the first; though little to the reputation of his integrity or understanding, but suitable to the pedantic education they had given him in his youth; which

the earl of Marr told me was done designedly, to make him contemptible both at home and abroad and that George Buchanan said, he would take care to make him the lively image of his mother. D.

which he pretended he could live no longer in England, and therefore withdrew to Scotland. But all this was a contrivance of Walsingham's, who thought him a fit person to get into that king's favour: so that affront was designed to give him the more credit. He was very particularly instructed in all the proper methods to gain upon the king's confidence, and to observe and give an account of all he saw in him: which he did very faithfully. By these instructions it appears that Walsingham thought that king was either inclined to turn papist, or to be of no religion. And when the court of England saw that they could not depend on him, they raised all possible opposition to him in Scotland, infusing strong jealousies into those who were enough inclined to receive them.

of Spots

tory.

This is the great defect that runs through archbi- 8 shop Spotswood's history, where much of the rude A censure opposition that king met with, particularly from the wood's hisassemblies of the kirk, is set forth; but the true ground of all the jealousies they were possessed with is suppressed by him. After his marriage, they studied to remove these suspicions all that was possible; and he granted the kirk all the laws they desired, and got his temporal authority to be better established than it was before: yet as the jealousies of his fickleness in religion were never quite removed, so they gave him many new disgusts: they wrought in him a most inveterate hatred of presbytery, and of the power of the kirk; and he fearing an opposition in his succeeding to the crown of England, from the papist party, which, though it had little strength in the house of commons, yet was very great in the house of lords, and was very con

studied to

gain the papists.

siderable in all the northern parts, and among the body of the people, employed several persons who were known to be papists, though they complied outwardly. The chief of these were Elphinston, secretary of state, whom he made lord Balmerinoch; and Seaton, afterwards chancellor, and earl of DunKing James fermling. By their means he studied to assure the papists that he would connive at them. A letter was also writ to the pope by him, giving assurance of this, which when it came to be published by Bellarmin, upon the prosecution of the recusants after the discovery of the gunpowder plot, Balmerinoch did affirm, that he out of zeal to the king's service got his hand to it, having put it in the bundle of papers that were signed in course, without the king's knowing any thing of itd. Yet when that discovery drew no other severity, but the turning him out of office, and the passing a sentence condemning him to die for it, (which was presently pardoned, and he was after a short confinement restored to his liberty,) all men believed that the king knew of the letter, and that the pretended confession of the secretary was only collusion to lay the jealousies of the king's favouring popery, which still hung upon him, notwithstanding his writing on the Revelation, and his affecting to enter on all occasions into controversy, asserting in particular that the pope was antichrist.

And to secure the succession

As he took these methods to manage the popish party, he was much more careful to secure to himself the body of the English nation. Cecil, afterEngland. wards earl of Salisbury, secretary to queen Eliza

to the

crown of

d See the life of king James in the complete history of Eng

land, vol. ii. page 666, in the note thereto. ONSLOW.

beth, entered into a particular confidence with him: and this was managed by his ambassador Brucee, a younger brother of a noble family in Scotland, who carried the matter with such address and secrecy, that all the great men of England, without knowing 9 of one another's doing it, and without the queen's suspecting any thing concerning it, signed in writing an engagement to assert and stand by the king of Scots right of succession. This great service was rewarded by making him master of the rolls, and a peer of Scotland: and as the king did raise Cecil and his friends to the greatest posts and dignities, so he raised Bruce's family here in England.

errors in

When that king came to the crown of England That king's he discovered his hatred to the Scotish kirk on governmany occasions, in which he gratified his resentment ment. without consulting his interests f. He ought to have put his utmost strength to the finishing what he but faintly begun for the union of both kingdoms, which was lost by his unreasonable partiality in pretending that Scotland ought to be considered in this union as the third part of the isle of Great Britain, if not more. So high a demand ruined the design. But when that failed, he should then have studied

e Robert Cecil, great-grandson to the first earl of Salisbury, told me that his ancestor inquiring into the character of king James; Bruce's answer was, "Ken ye a John Ape? en I's have him, he'l bite en you's have him, he'l bite D. (Compare Ralph's Hist. of England, I. 499. in a note, where lord Burleigh's name instead of that of his son the earl of Salisbury is brought

66

"me."

you:

forward on this occasion.)

f The earl of Seafield told me that king James frequently declared that he never looked upon himself to be more than king of Scotland in name, till he came to be king of England; but now, he said, one kingdom would help him to govern the other, or he had studied kingcraft to very little purpose from his cradle to that time. D.

He set up

episcopacy

to keep the affections of that nation firm to him: and certainly he, being secure of that kingdom, might have so managed matters, as to have prevented that disjointing which happened afterwards both in his own reign, and more tragically in his son's. He thought to effect this by his profuse bounty to many of the nobility of that kingdom, and to his domestic servants: but as most of these settling in England were of no further use to him in that design, so his setting up episcopacy in Scotland, and his constant aversion to the kirk, how right soever it might be in it self, was a great error in policy; for the poorer that kingdom was, it was both the more easy to gain them, and the more dangerous to offend them. So the terror which the affections of the Scotch nation might have justly given the English was soon lost, by his engaging the whole government to support that which was then very contrary to the bent and genius of the nation.

But though he set up bishops, he had no revenues in Scotland. to give them, but what he was to purchase for them. During his minority, all the tithes and the church lands were vested in the crown: but this was only in order to the granting them away to the men that bore the chief sway. It is true, when he came of age, he, according to the law of Scotland, past a general revocation of all that had been done in his infancy and by this he could have resumed all those grants. He, and after him his son, succeeded in one part of his design: for by act of parliament a court was erected that was to examine and sequester a third part of the tithes in every parish, and so make a competent provision out of them to