those who served the cure; which had been reserved 10 sign to car farther. But as they assumed at their first setting up little With a demore authority than that of a constant president of ry matters the presbyters, so they met with much rough opposition. The king intended to carry on a conformity in matters of religion with England, and he begun to buy in from the grantees many of the estates that belonged to the bishoprics. It was also enacted, that a form of prayer should be drawn for Scotland and the king was authorized to appoint the habits in which the divine offices were to be performed. Some of the chief holydays were ordered to be observed. The sacrament was to be received kneeling, and to be given to the sick. Confirmation was enacted; as also the use of the cross in baptism. These things were first past in general assemblies, which were composed of bishops and the deputies chosen by the clergy, who sat all in one house and in it they reckoned the bishops only as single votes. Great opposition was made to Errors of Prince Henry was all these steps: and the whole force of the government was strained to carry elections to those meetings, or to take off those who were chosen; in which it was thought that no sort of practice was omitted. It was pretended, that some were frighted, and others were corrupted. The bishops themselves did their part very ill. They generally grew haughty: they neglected their functions, and were often at court, and lost all esteem with the people. Some few that were stricter and more learned did lean so grossly to popery, that the heat and violence of the reformation became the main subject of their sermons and discourses. King James grew weary of this opposition, or was so apprehensive of the ill effects that it might have, that, what through sloth or fear, and what by reason of the great disorder into which his ill conduct brought his affairs in England in his latter years, he went no further in his designs on Scotland. He had three children. His eldest, prince Henry, believed to was a prince of great hopes; but so very little like be poisoned. his father, that he was rather feared than loved by 11 him. He was so zealous a protestant, that, when his father was entertaining propositions of marrying him to popish princesses, once to the archduchess, and at another time to a daughter of Savoy, he in a letter that he wrote to the king on the twelfth of that October in which he died, (the original of which sir William Cook shewed me,) desired, that if his father married him that way, it might be with the youngest person of the two, of whose conversion he might have hope, and that any liberty she might be allowed for her religion might be in the privatest manner possible. Whether this aversion to popery hastened his death or not, I cannot tellh. Colonel Titusi assured me that he had from king Charles the first's own mouth, that he was well assured he was poisoned by the earl of Somerset's means. It is certain, that from the time of the gunpowder plot, king James was so struck with the terror of that danger he was then so near, that ever after he had no mind to provoke the Jesuits; for he saw what they were capable of. powder And since I name that conspiracy which the pa- The gunpists in our days have had the impudence to deny k, plot. and to pretend it was an artifice of Cecil's to engage some desperate men into a plot, which he managed so that he could discover it when he pleased, I will mention what I my self saw, and had for some time in my possession. Sir Everard Digby died for being of the conspiracy: he was the father of the famous sir Kenelm Digby. The family being ruined upon the death of sir Kenelm's son, when the executors were looking out for writings to make out the titles of the estates they were to sell, they were directed by an old servant to a cupboard that was very artificially hid, in which some papers lay, that she had observed sir Kenelm was oft reading. They looking into it found a velvet bag, within which there were two other silk bags: (so carefully were those relics kept :) and there was within these a collection of all the letters that sir Everard writ during his imprisonment. In these he expresses great trouble, because he heard some of their friends blamed their undertaking: he highly magnifies it; and says, if he had many lives, he would willingly have sacrificed them all in carrying it on. In one paper he says, they had taken that care that there were not above two or three worth saving, to whom they had not given notice to keep out of the way: and in none of those papers does he express any sort of remorse for that which he had been engaged in, and for which he suffered. Upon the discovery of that plot, there was a geof the Jeneral prosecution of all papists set on foot: but king James was very uneasy at it: which was much increased by what sir Dudly Carlton told him upon 12 his return from Spain, where he had been ambassadorm; (which I had from the lord Hollis, who said to me, that sir Dudly Carlton told it to himself, and was much troubled when he saw it had an effect contrary to what he had intended.) When he came King James was afraid suits. 1 At Gothurst, near Newport Pagnell, in Bucks. Cole's MS. note on Burnet's History. m Query if sir Dudley Carlton was ever sent ambassador into Spain. Lord Clarendon, vol. i. p. 64. 65, mentions his being sent ambassador to Vi- home, he found the king at Theobald's hunting in a very careless and unguarded manner: and upon that, in order to the putting him on a more careful looking to himself, he told the king he must either give over that way of hunting, or stop another hunting that he was engaged in, which was priest hunting: for he had intelligence in Spain that the priests were comforting themselves with this, that if he went on against them, they would soon get rid of him: queen Elizabeth was a woman of form, and was always so well attended, that all their plots against her failed, and were never brought to any effect but a prince who was always in woods or forests would be easily overtaken. The king sent for him in private to inquire more particularly into this and he saw it had made a great impression on him but wrought otherwise than as he intended. For the king, (who) resolved to gratify his humour in hunting, and in a careless and irregular way of life, did immediately order all that prosecution to be let fall. I have the minutes of the council books of the year 1606, which are full of orders to discharge and transport priests, sometimes ten in a day. From thence to his dying day he continued always writing and talking against popery, but acting for it. He married his only daughter to a protestant prince, one of the most zealous and sincere of them all, the elector palatine; upon which a great revolution happened in the affairs of Germany. The eldest The elector palatine's branch of the house of Austria retained some of the marriage. impressions that their father Maximilian II. studied to infuse into them, who, as he was certainly one of the best and wisest princes of these latter ages, so he was unalterably fixed in his opinion against per .X |