James VI of Scotland and I of England

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Introduction to A Royal Rhetorician: A Treatise on Scottis Poesie, A Counterblaste to Tobacco, etc. etc. by King James VI and I

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SOURCE: Rait, Robert S. Introduction to A Royal Rhetorician: A Treatise on Scottis Poesie, A Counterblaste to Tobacco, etc. etc. by King James VI and I, edited by Robert S. Rait, pp. ix-xlvii. Westminster: A. Constable and Co., 1900.

[In the following essay, Rait offers an overview of King James's literary, political, and theological works.]

‘Your Inheritance consists as much in the workes of your Father's Royall Vertues, as in the wealth of his mighty Kingdomes.’ So wrote the courtier Bishop of Winchester in his ‘Epistle Dedicatorie to the Thrice Illustrious and most Excellent Prince, Charles, the Onely Sonne of Our Soveraigne Lord the King’—an epistle prefixed to the Bishop's edition of King James's Works, published in 1616. The goodly folio1 volume of some six hundred pages may have seemed to the prelate and his master to justify the compliment, or the sentence may have served for taking up the wager of battle against those who held that writing became not the majesty of a king, and to whose confutation the editor devoted a ‘Preface,’ wherein he appealed to ‘the King of Kings, God Himselfe, who, as he doth all things for our good; so doeth he many things for our Imitation. It pleased his Divine wisdome to bee the first in this Rancke, that we read of, that did ever write. Hee wrote, and the writing was the writing, saith Moses, of God.’

We have fallen heirs to this portion of Prince Charles's inheritance; but it can scarcely be said that any generation, later than King James's own, has received its heritage with the Bishop's triumphant cry: ‘God hath given us a Solomon.’ Yet it would be matter of regret if King James, as an author, were to pass into complete oblivion. We are, of course, not dealing with literature in any true sense. But, in the King's writings, we have, in the first place, the work of one of the best educated men of his time. Brought up under the care of the greatest living humanist, he was, if a pedant, none the less a scholar. ‘Thay wald haif me learn Latin before I can speik Scots,’ he had scrawled on the margin of his copy-book in his strange, dreary, motherless boyhood in Stirling Castle, and George Buchanan had allowed no whipping-boy to bear vicarious suffering for the shortcomings of the Lord's Anointed. By nature, too, he was shrewd and capable, seeing clearly if not far. His mind was precisely fitted to appreciate the intricacies of Formal Logic, and his thought naturally ran in syllogisms. He revelled in the hard, logical, and crude discussions on Divinity, which could bear no mystery, and found superstition congenial and mysticism impossible. The opinions of such a man are better fitted than writings which bear even faint traces of unusual intellectual force, to picture for us the attitude of the men of his time. The political theses which the King impugns and supports, throw an interesting sidelight upon English history and go far to explain the tragedy of his House. But, above all, these interminable treatises are interesting as bringing into relief the personality of perhaps the oddest figure in our national history. James was not a great king; in some respects he was a fool. But, as Henry IV. remarked about him, he was the wisest fool in Christendom. The cautious shrewdness which was ever waging war against the pride of Kingship and the arrogance of intellectual self-confidence; the simpleness and naïveté which strove in vain to hide themselves under an affectation of cunning statecraft and an assertion of fierce wrestlings with the evil spirits of ignorance and heresy; the quaint humour, now unconscious, and now scoring an obvious or verbal point, but rarely affording salvation from the worst errors that lack of humour can bring; the worldly-wisdom which only at times rose above the level of garrulous advice; the piety which honestly strove to be unaffected, and which succeeded in clothing the royal prejudices in language of unctuous and suspicious sanctity; the rashness of a mind filled with but one idea and of an ambition which sought vainglory in good and evil alike, mingled with a keen moral sense and with that cowardice which ‘would not play false and yet would wrongly win’; the humility, genuine enough in its way, which boasted that even kings must acknowledge God—all these and a thousand other incongruities make this king real to us in his own pages.

The present selection2 from the works of King James comprises his Treatise on Scottish Poesie, and his more widely-known Counterblaste to Tobacco. The former was written as a preface to a volume of Essayes of a Prentise in the Divine Art of Poesie, printed at Edinburgh in 1585, when the royal author was eighteen years of age. These Essayes, with His Majesty's Poetical Exercises at Vacant Houres (published in 1591), some sonnets, and ‘The Psalms of KING DAVID translated by KING JAMES,’ constitute the whole of the king's production of verse. They possess little interest of any sort.3 It is otherwise with the Schort Treatise, which, if it proves the king's words that ‘if Nature be not the chief worker in this art, Rules will be but a bond to Nature,’ remains valuable, not only as showing the æsthetic and intellectual fibre of the writer, but also as the only work of its kind in existence. It is a schoolboy's essay, and it represents the fruit of George Buchanan's teaching. James himself thus apologised for his early work: ‘I composed these things in my verie young and tender yeares: wherein Nature (except shee were a monster) can admit of no perfection’; and, fortunately for our enjoyment of the Treatise, he never revised it. ‘Being of riper yeares, my burden is so great and continuall, without anie intermission, that when my ingyne and age could, my affaires and fasherie would not permit mee to remark the wrong orthography committed by the copiars of my unlegible and ragged hand, far less to amend my proper errours.’ The present editor has added a glossary and a few notes to the Treatise and to the Counterblaste. The latter will explain itself. It was published, anonymously, shortly after King James's accession to the English throne, and the authorship was first openly avowed in 1616. It shows King James in a lighter vein. He calls it ‘but a toy,’ and ‘the fume of an idle braine’; and in Bishop Montagu's Latin translation of his works, which appeared in 1619, it is described as ‘Misocapnus, sive De Abusu Tobacci Lusus Regius.’ But it is a case of Pegasus on stilts, and the humour is, for the most part, unconscious, although the pamphlet might have warranted the Bishop in applying to the royal rhetorician the title of ‘Doctor Subtilis.’

Of King James's remaining writings, the most interesting is his Basilikon Doron, or book of advice to his eldest son, Henry, afterwards Prince of Wales. It deals with a king's duty towards God, his duty in his office, and his behaviour in things indifferent. A fierce attack upon Presbytery and ‘the proud Puritanes’ explains why it was necessary, in 1599, to limit the first edition to a secret issue of seven copies. ‘Paritie is the mother of confusion, and enemie to Unitie, which is the mother of order. … Take heede therefore (my sonne) to such Puritanes, verie pestes in the Church and Common-weale, whom no deserts can oblige, neither oathes nor promises binde, breathing nothing but sedition and calumnies, aspiring without measure, railing without reason, and making their owne imaginations (without any warrant of the word) the square of their conscience.’ The English succession had removed all need of hiding such sentiments from the Church of Scotland, but the sentence throws a light upon James's religious policy in England and the consequent separation of the Puritans from the Church. James never failed more egregiously to understand men's minds than when he confused English Puritanism with Scottish Presbytery. We find, too, an anticipation of James's Irish policy in his advice regarding the Scottish Highlands:—‘As for the Hie-lands, I shortly comprehend them all in two sorts of people: the one, that dwelleth in our maine land, that are barbarous for the most sorte, and yet mixed with some shewe of civilitie; the other that dwelleth in the Iles, and are all uterly barbares, without any sort or shew of civilitie. For the first sort, put straitly to execution the Lawes made alreadie by me against their Over-lords, and the chiefes of their Clannes, and it will be no difficultie to danton them. As for the other sort, follow forth the course that I have intended, in planting Colonies among them of answerable In-land subjects, that within short time may reforme and civilize the best inclined among them; rooting out or transporting the barbarous and stubborne sort, and planting civilitie in their roomes.’ The transference of King James's energies to England reserved the suppression of the clan-system for the government of George II. And, again, we are reminded of the Book of Sports, when James urges, as a means of preventing people from speaking ‘rashly of their Prince,’ the appointment of ‘certaine dayes in the yeere, for delighting the people with publicke spectacles of all honest games, and exercise of armes; as also for conveening of neighbours, for entertaining friendship and heartlinesse, by honest feasting and merrinesse: For I cannot see what greater superstition can be in making playes and lawfull games in Maie, and good cheere at Christmas, than in eating fish in Lent, and upon Fridayes, the Papists as well using the one as the other.’4

The king's personal advice is not less interesting than his political maxims. Prince Henry should ‘not marry for money, but marry where money is.’ For ‘beautie increaseth your love to your wife, and riches and great alliance doe both make her the abler to be a helper unto you.’ In things indifferent, he was to be wise and discreet:—

In the forme of your meate-eating, bee neither uncivill like a grosse cynicke, nor affectatlie mignarde, like a daintie dame; but eate in a manlie, round, and honest fashion. … Be also moderate in your raiment, neither over superfluous, like a deboshed waster, nor yet over base, like a miserable wretch … but in your garments be proper, cleanely, comely and honest, wearing your clothes in a careless yet comely forme.5 … Especially eschew to be effeminate in your cloathes, in perfuming, preening [pinning] and such like, and make not a foole of yourselfe in disguising or wearing long haire or nailes. … In your language be plaine, honest, naturall, comely, cleane, eschewing both the extremities, as well in not using any rusticall corrupt leide [language], as booke language, and pen and inke-horne termes, and least of all mignard and effeminate termes … not taunting in Theologie, nor alleadging and prophaning the Scripture in drinking purposes [conversations], as over many doe. … If yee would write worthily, choose subjects worthie of you, that bee not full of vanitie, but of vertue, eschewing obscuritie, and delighting ever to be plaine and sensible. And if yee write in Verse, remember that it is not the principall part of a Poeme to rime right, and flow well with many pretie wordes: but the chief commendation of a Poeme is, that when the verse shall be shaken sundrie in prose, it shall bee found so rich in quicke inventions, and poetick flowers, and in faire and pertinent comparisons, as it shall retaine the lustre of a Poeme, although in Prose. And I would also advise you to write in your owne language: for there is nothing left to be saide in Greeke and Latine alreadie, and ynew [enough] of poore schollers would match you in these languages; and beside that, it best becommeth a king to purifie and make famous his owne tongue; wherein he may goe before all his subjects, as it setteth him well to doe in all honest and lawfull things. And amongst all unnecessarie things that are lawfull and expedient, I think exercises of the bodie most commendable to be used by a young Prince, in such honest games or pastimes, as may further abilitie and maintaine health … but from this count I debarre all rough and violent exercises, as the foote-ball, meeter for laming then making able the users thereof. … But the exercises that I would have you to use are running, leaping, wrastling, fencing, dancing, and playing at the caitch or tennise, archerie, palle maille, and such like other faire and pleasant field-games. And the honourablest and most commendable games that yee can use, are on horseback, for it becommeth a Prince best of any man, to be a faire and good horseman. … I cannot omit heere the hunting, namely with running hounds, which is the most honourable and noblest sorte thereof: for it is a theevish forme of hunting to shoote with gunnes and bowes, and greyhound hunting is not so martiall a game. … When ye are wearie of reading, or evill disposed in your person, and when it is foule and stormie weather; then, I say, may ye lawfully play at the cardes or tables. For as to dicing, I thinke it becommeth best deboshed souldiers to play at, on the head of their drums, being onely ruled by hazard, and subject to knavish cogging. And as for the chesse, I think it over fond, because it is over-wise and Philosophicke a toy. For where all such light playes are ordained to free men's heades for a time, from the fashious thoughts on their affaires; it by the contrarie filleth and troubleth men's heades, with as many fashious toyes of the play, as before it was filled with thoughts on his affairs.

So he rambles garrulously on, playing with keen zest the part of Polonius (which his future subject must about the same time have been creating). It is all wise and shrewd, and the language redeems the commonplace of the thought. He refers now and again to the circumstances of his youth and the troubles of his mother's reign, describing his uncle, the Regent Murray, as ‘that bastard, who unnaturally rebelled, and procured the ruine of his owne Soverane and sister,’ and urging the destruction of ‘such infamous invectives as Buchanan's or Knoxes Chronicles.’ In command of Scriptural quotation the king cannot have been surpassed by any of the hated Presbyterians who ‘claiming to their Paritie, and crying, “Wee are all but vile wormes,” yet will judge and give Law to their king, but will be judged nor controlled by none.’ It is with them in mind that he advises the prince to study well the Psalms of David ‘for teaching you the forme of your prayers. … So much the fitter are they for you then for the common sort, in respect the composer thereof was a king: and therefore best behoved to know a king's wants, and what things were meetest to be required by a king at God's hand for remedie thereof.’ The sentence seems to resound with the echoes of ecclesiastical controversies, and it reveals the storehouse from which King James borrowed his armour when he went forth to face Andrew Melville himself.

Next in interest to the Basilikon Doron is a treatise on Daemonologie, in Forme of a Dialogue, which also saw the light in 1599. James is well known as a persecutor of witches, and here we have his Apologia. It was written ‘not in any wise to serve for a shew of my learning and ingine,’ but as a protest ‘against the damnable opinions of two principally in our age, whereof the one called Scot,6 an Englishman, is not ashamed in publike Print to deny, that there can be such a thing as witchcraft: and so maintaines the old errour of the Sadduces in denying of spirits; the other called Wierus, a German Physitian, sets out a publike Apologie for all these craftsfolkes, whereby, procuring for their impunitie, he plainely bewrayes himselfe to have bene one of that profession.’ The interlocutors are Philomathes, the willing disciple, and Epistemon, the wise instructor. Epistemon begins by proving (largely by means of the Witch of Endor) the possibility of magic, and then proceeds to divide it into Necromancie and Sorcerie or Witchcraft.

PHI.:
What difference is there between Necromancie and Witchcraft?
EPI.:
Surely, the difference vulgare put betwix them is very merry, and in a manner true; for they say, that the Witches are servants onely, and slaves to the divel; but the Necromanciers are his masters and commanders.
PHI.:
How can that be true, that any men being specially addicted to his service can be his commanders?
EPI.:
Yea, they may be: but it is onely secundum quid; for it is not by any power that they can have over him, but ex pacto allanerlie; whereby he obliges himselfe in some trifles to them, that he may on the other part obteine the fruition of their body and soule, which is the onely thing he huntes for.

After a discussion of the use of charms, we come to the ‘difference between God's miracles and the Divel's’:—

God is a creatour, what he makes appeare in myracle, it is so in effect. As Moyses Rod being casten downe, was no doubt turned into a naturall serpent; whereas the divel (as God's ape) countersetting that by his magicians, made their wandes to appeare so, onely to men's outward senses: as kythed [was shown] in effect by their being devoured by the other; for it is no wonder that the divel may delude our senses, since we see by common proofe, that simple jugglars will make an hundredth things seeme both to our eyes and eares otherwayes then they are.’ Passing now to witchcraft, Epistemon declines to believe that witches can travel to their diabolical conferences in the shape of a little beast or fowl, but thinks it credible that they can be ‘caried by the force of the spirit which is their conducter, either above the earth, or above the Sea swiftly, to the place where they are to meete: which I am persuaded to be possible in respect that as Habakkuk was carried by the Angel7 in that forme, to the den where Daniel lay; so thinke I, the divell will be readie to imitate God as well in that as in other things: which is much more possible to him to doe, being a Spirit, then to a mighty wind, being but a naturall meteore.

The idea of witchcraft naturally suggests a question which gives King James an opportunity for one of his most characteristic sentences:—

PHI.:
What can be the cause that there are twentie women given to that craft, where there is one man?
EPI.:
The reason is easie, for as that sexe is frailer then man is, so is it easier to be intrapped in these grosse snares of the divell, as was overwell prooved to be trew by the serpent's deceiving of Eva at the beginning, which makes him the homelier with that sex sensine.

The discussion on witchcraft ends with a reminiscence of ‘the Logicks’:—

EPI.:
Doubtlesse who denieth the power of the Divell would likewise denie the power of God, if they could for shame. For since the Divel is the very contrarie opposite to God, there can bee no better way to know God, then by the contrarie; as by the one's power (though a creature) to admire the power of the great Creatour: by the falshood of the one to consider the trewth of the other: by the injustice of the one to consider the justice of the other: and by the cruelty of the one, to consider the mercifulnesse of the other, and so foorth in all the rest of the essence of God, and qualities of the Divell. But I feare indeed, there bee over many Sadduces in this world, that denie all kinds of Spirits: for convicting of whose errour, there is cause enough if there were no more, that God should permit at sometimes Spirits visibly to kyith.

The third book deals with Ghosts, which are explained as being evil spirits which ‘have assumed a dead bodie, whereinto they lodge themselves.’ The bodies of the righteous may be used for this purpose for ‘the rest of them that the Scripture speakes of, is not meaned by a locall remaining continually in one place, but by their resting from their travailes,’ and ‘there is nothing in the bodies of the faithfull, more worthie of honour, or freer from corruption by nature, nor in these of the unfaithfull, while time they be purged and glorified in the latter Day, as is daily seene by the wilde diseases and corruptions, that the bodies of the faithfull are subject unto.’ The story of the wer-wolf he rejects in a characteristically matter-of-fact way: ‘If any such thing hath beene, I take it to have proceeded but of a naturall super-abundance of melancholy, which as we reade, that it hath made some thinke themselves pitchers, and some horses, and some one kinde of beast or other, so suppose I that it hath so viciat the imagination and memory of some, as per lucida intervalla, it hath so highly occupied them, that they have thought themselves very woolfes indeed at these times … but as to their having and hiding of their hard and schelly fluiches, I take that to be but eiked [added], by uncertaine report, the author of all lies.’ The Brownies, on the contrary, are genuine, being evil spirits sent to haunt houses ‘without doing any evill, but doing as it were necessarie turnes up and downe the house,’ the more readily to deceive ignorant Christians in times of Papistrie and blindness, and make them account God's enemy their own particular friend. The ‘Phairie,’ again, are merely illusions, ‘objected’ by the devil to men's fantasie and not possessing any real existence, apart from the common herd of evil spirits. And so we reach the conclusion of the whole matter—the duty of suppressing, at any cost, the sin of witchcraft. Epistemon will not admit that there is any real difficulty in detecting guilt. If witchcraft cannot be absolutely proved in all cases, yet the accused are always sure to be ‘of a very evill life and reputation,’ and so no real injustice is done. ‘And besides that, there are two other good helps that may be used for their triall: The one is, the finding of their marke, and the trying the insensiblenes thereof: the other is their fleeting on the water … for it appears that God hath appointed … that the water shall refuse to receive them in her bosome that have shaken off them the sacred water of baptisme, and wilfully refused the benefite thereof: No, not so much as their eyes are able to shed teares (threaten and torture them as ye please) while [till] first they repent … albeit the womenkind especially be able otherwayes to shed teares at every light occasion when they will, yea although it were dissemblingly like the crocodiles.’ We are thus brought from comedy to tragedy, for the darkest stain on the wonderful history of seventeenth-century Scotland is the record of the cruel tortures and executions of many innocent old women whom an unfortunate combination of circumstances or the malice of personal enemies had accused of witchcraft.

King James's purely theological work8 consists of A Paraphrase upon the Revelation of S. John, dedicated to ‘the whole Church Militant,’ A Meditation upon 1 Chron. xv. 25-29, and a Declaration against the Dutch heretic, Vorstius,9 which bears the extraordinary inscription:—‘To the Honour of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ … in signe of Thankfulnes, His Most Humble and Most Obliged Servant, James, by the Grace of God, King of Great Britaine, France, and Irelande, Defender of the Faith, Doeth Dedicate and Consecrate this his Declaration.’ The Paraphrase was written before the king was twenty years of age, and the Meditation a little later, and they are just what might be expected from a clever boy who had received James's training and possessed his self-confidence. The Declaration is addressed to the States-General of the United Provinces, and its aim was to persuade them to deprive Vorstius, a follower of Arminius, of his office in the University of Leyden, and, if possible, to bring him to the stake. His main offence consisted in his Tractatus Theologicus de Deo, and his Exegesis Apologetica, in which he had argued that ‘nothing forbids us to say that God hath a Body, so as we take a Body in the largest signification,’ and had expressed similar and consequent tenets. James described him as ‘a wretched Heretique or rather Athiest,’ and used his whole diplomatic power to secure his ruin. He professed his readiness to have controverted Arminius in person; but ‘it was our hard hap not to heare of this Arminius before he was dead,’ and he had to content himself with warnings regarding the dangers of heresy in general, and the pernicious effect of the teaching of Vorstius in particular. The books in question were solemnly burned in London, Oxford, and Cambridge; and James, who was invited to act as umpire between Vorstius and his opponents in Leyden, succeeded in obtaining his expulsion from Leyden, and afterwards his banishment from the States. The Declaration shows considerable debating power, and a knowledge of orthodox Theology, and it proves that the Calvinistic teaching in which James was educated had not lost its hold upon his mind.

Two further treatises deal with the relation of Church to State, and they may be next described. A Defence of the Right of Kings against an oration of the Most Illustrious Cardinal of Perron10 arose out of a speech made by the Cardinal in the Chamber of the Third Estate in France, at the meeting of the States-General in 1614 (the last instance of their being convened till the Assembly of 1789). The assassination of Henry III. in 1589, when under a Papal sentence of excommunication, and the murder of Henry IV. in 1610 (of which the Jesuits were, probably unjustly, suspected to have been the instigators), had drawn attention to the ever-recurring question of the relation of a monarch to the Papacy. A motion was under discussion which was intended, as King James puts it, to disavow the sentiment that ‘the Pope may tosse the French King his Throne like a tennis ball,’ and the Cardinal's speech, which turned the current of opinion in a Papal direction, was printed with the Pope's recommendation, and a copy was sent to King James ‘by the Author and Orator himselfe; who presupposed the reading thereof would forsooth drive me to say, “Lord Cardinall, in this high subject your Honour hath satisfied me to the full.”’ The main portion of the argument is occupied with a discussion of historical instances adduced by the Cardinal to show the powers which had been exercised by Popes over Kings in the past, and James disputes the ground inch by inch. As regards wider considerations, he observes that, while the Cardinal had asserted the Pope's power of deposing a king only in cases of Apostasy, Heresy, and persecution of the Church, these powers had, in fact, been claimed on a very much wider scale, and ‘Heresy’ may include anything whatsoever. ‘Among the crimes which the Councel of Constance charged Pope John XXII. withall, one was this, that hee denied the immortalitie of the soule … Now if the Pope shall be caried by the streame of these or the like errours, and in his Hereticall pravitie shall depose a king of the contrary opinion, I shall hardly bee persuaded, the said king is lawfully deposed.’ He points out also the evil effects likely to follow from the authorisation of such teaching by the Roman Church, and makes a profession of tolerance, which was probably justified as far as Roman Catholicism was concerned:—

As for myselfe, and my Popish Subjects, to whom I am no lesse then an heretike forsooth; am I not by this doctrine of the Cardinall, pricked and whetted against my naturall inclination, to turne clemencie into rigour; seeing that by his doctrine my subjects are made to believe, they owe me subjection onely by way of proviso, and with waiting the occasion to worke my utter destruction and finall ruine. … Who seeth not here how great indignitie is offered to me a Christian King, paralleld with Infidels, reputed worse then a Turke, taken for an usurper of my kingdomes, reckoned a Prince, to whom subjects owe a forced obedience by way of provision, untill they shall have meanes to shake off the yoke, and to bare my temples of the Crowne, which never can be pulled from the sacred Head, but with losse of the head itselfe? … The plotters and practisers against my life are honoured and rewarded with a glorious name of Martyrs: their constancie (what els?) is admired, when they suffer death for treason. Wheras hitherto during the time of my whole raigne to this day (I speake it in the word of a king, and trewth itselfe shall make good the king's worde) no man hath lost his life, no man hath indured the Racke, no man hath suffered corporall punishment in other kinds, meerely or simply, or in any degree of respect, for his conscience in matter of religion; but for wicked conspiring against my life, or estate, or Royall Dignitie; or els for some notorious crime, or some obstinate and wilfull disobedience.

James was acute enough to see the weakness of the Cardinal's admission that ‘the Church abhorreth sudden and unprepensed murders [of kings] above the rest … because in sudden murders oftentimes the soule and the body perish both together,’ and he compares it to the well-known quibble of the Jesuit Mariana:—

For Mariana liketh not at any hand the poisoning of a Tyrant by his meat or drinke: for feare lest he taking the poison with his owne hand, and swallowing or gulping it downe in his meate or drinke so taken, should be found felo de se (as the common Lawyer speaketh), or culpable of his owne death. But Mariana likes better, to have a Tyrant poysoned by his chaire, or by his apparell and robes … that being so poysoned onely by sent, or by contact, he may not be found guiltie of selfe-fellonie, and the soule of the poore Tyrant in her flight out of the body may be innocent. O hel-houndes, O diabolical wretches, O infernall monsters! Did they onely suspect and imagine, that either in kings there is any remainder of kingly courage, or in their subjects any sparke left of ancient libertie; they durst as soone eat their nailes, or teare their owne flesh from the bones, as once broach the vessell of this diabolicall device. How long then, how long shall kings whom the Lord hath called his Anointed, kings the breathing images of God upon earth; kings that with a wry or frowning looke, are able to crush these earthwormes in pieces; how long shall they suffer this viperous brood, scot-free and without punishment, to spit in their faces? how long the Majestie of God in their person and Royall Majestie, to be so notoriously vilified, so dishonourably trampled under foot?

Apart from its rhetoric, the Defence shows James at his best as a controversialist. It was a subject on which he felt strongly and with regard to which he had a good case; and he knew his position to be so strong that he could speak of his adversary with courtesy and respect, except when he was carried away by his own denunciations. It was a subject, too, which afforded an opportunity for a display of his very considerable learning, and he was not insensible of the importance, for this purpose, of marginal references, if judiciously employed.

The other politico-theological treatise is An Apologie for the Oath of Allegiance, imposed upon Roman Catholics after the Gunpowder Plot. Pope Paul v. had issued two Briefs forbidding English Romanists to take the oath, and Cardinal Bellarmin, the ex-Jesuit, had enforced the Papal briefs in a strongly worded letter. James now published, under a veil of anonymity, a remarkably temperate defence of the position of the Government, pointing out that the oath did not involve any acknowledgment of the Royal Headship of the Church, and was a promise of political obedience. Two answers made to this Apologie led to the king's publishing a second edition, in his own name, with a vigorous preamble, entitled, ‘A Premonition to all Most Mightie Monarchs, Kings, Free Princes, and States of Christendom.’ One of these answers was in English, and was the work of an English Roman Catholic resident abroad.11 Him James dismissed in a few words, considering ‘a rope the fittest answer’ for him:—

As for the English Answerer, my unnaturall and fugitive Subject; I will neither defile my pen, nor your sacred eyes or eares with the describing of him, who ashames, nay, abhorres not to raile, nay, to rage and spew foorth blasphemies against the late Queene of famous memory. A subject to raile against his naturall Soveraigne by birth; a man to raile against a Lady by sexe; a holy man (in outward profession) to insult upon the dead; nay, to take Radamanthus office over his head, and to sit downe and play the judge in hell.

The other antagonist had written in Latin, and his name led the king into a play upon words—‘Hee calleth himselfe Mattheus Tortus, Cardinall Bellarmins Chaplaine. A throwne12 Evangelist indeed, full of throward Divinitie.’ Tortus brought three main accusations against James, that he was an Apostate, having been baptized into the Roman Faith; that he had been a Puritan in Scotland, and now persecuted the Puritans; and that he was a Heretic. Against each of these James defended himself in his characteristic manner, making incidentally a number of interesting statements, and concluding with an assertion of the Anglo-Catholic position which is strangely reminiscent of modern controversies:—

I am no Apostate … not onely having ever bene brought up in that Religion which I presently professe, but even my Father and Grandfather on that side professing the same. … And as for the Queene my Mother of worthy memorie; although she continued in that Religion wherein she was nourished, yet was she so farre from being superstitious or Jesuited therein, that at my Baptisme (although I was baptized by a Popish Archbishop) she sent him word to forbeare to use the spettle in my Baptisme; which was obeyed, being indeed a filthy and an apish tricke, rather in scorne then in imitation of Christ. … As also the Font wherein I was Christened, was sent from the late Queene here of famous memory, who was my Godmother; and what her Religion was, Pius V. was not ignorant. And for further proofe, that that renowned Queene my Mother was not superstitious; as in all her Letters (whereof I received many) she never made mention of Religion, nor laboured to persuade me in it; so at her last words, she commanded her Master-houshold, a Scottish Gentleman, my servant and yet alive, she commanded him (I say) to tell me; that although she was of another Religion then that wherein I was brought up; yet she would not presse me to change, except my owne Conscience forced mee to do it. … Neither can my Baptisme in the rites of their Religion make me an Apostate, or Heretike in respect of my present profession, since we all agree in the substance thereof, being all Baptized In the Name of the Father, the Sonne, and the holy Ghost: upon which head there is no variance amongst us. … I cannot enough wonder with what brasen face this Answerer could say that I was a Puritane in Scotland, and an enemie to Protestants: I that was persecuted by Puritanes there, not from my birth onely, but even since foure moneths before my birth?13 I that in the yeere of God 84 erected Bishops, and depressed all their popular Paritie, I being then not 18 yeeres of aage? I that in my Booke to my Sonne doe speake tenne times more bitterly of them nor of the Papists; having in my second Edition thereof, affixed a long Apologetike Preface, onely in odium Puritanorum? … And now for the point of Heretike, I will never bee ashamed to render an accompt of my profession, and of that hope that is in me, as the Apostle prescribeth. I am such a CATHOLIKE CHRISTIAN, as beleeveth the three Creeds … and I beleeve them in that sense, as the ancient Fathers and Councels that made them did understand them. … I reverence and admit the foure first generall Councels as Catholique and Orthodoxe. … As for the Fathers, I reverence them as much and more then the Jesuites doe. … As for the Scriptures, no man doubteth I will beleeve them. … As for the Saints departed, I honour their memory, and in honour of them doe we in our Church observe the dayes of so many of them, as the Scripture doeth canonize for Saints. … For the blessed Virgin Marie, I yeeld her that which the Angel Gabriel pronounced of her … that all generations shall call her blessed. … And I freely confesse that shee is in glory both above angels and men, her owne Sonne (that is both God and man) onely excepted. But I dare not mocke her and blaspheme against God, calling her not onely Diva but Dea, and praying her to command and controule her Sonne, who is her God and her Saviour: Nor yet not I thinke, that shee hath no other thing to doe in heaven than to heare every idle man's suite, and busie herselfe in their errands; whiles requesting, whiles commanding her Sonne, whiles comming downe to kisse and make love with Priestes, and whiles disputing and brawling with Devils. … That Bishops ought to be in the Church. I ever maintained it, as an Apostolique institution. … If the Romish Church hath coined new Articles of Faith, never heard of the first 500 yeeres after Christ, I hope I shall never bee condemned for an Heretike, for not being a Novelist. … Since I beleeve as much as the Scriptures doe warrant, the Creeds doe perswade, and the ancient Councels decreed; I may well be a Schismatike from Rome, but I am sure I am no Heretike. … And I will sincerely promise, that whenever any point of the Religion I professe, shalbe proved to be new, and not Ancient, Catholike, and Apostolike (I meane for matter of Faith) I will as soone renounce it.

But the Anglican Catholic, before he concludes, appears as a sixteenth-century Protestant, and devotes many pages, and much wealth of Scriptural and historical allusion, to proving that the Pope is Antichrist.14 From this we pass naturally to an Appendix consisting of ‘A Catalogue of the Lyes of Tortus, together with a Briefe Confutation of them,’ and there we leave this part of our subject.

It remains to mention King James's more purely political writings. These have reference, mainly, to three topics—the proposed Union of the Kingdoms, the Gunpowder Plot, and the general relations between king and subject. In his first speech to his English Parliament, on 19th March 1603-4, the king brought forward his proposal for a complete union of the two kingdoms. The words in which he commended it to his new people are very characteristic:—

What God hath conjoyned, let no man separate. I am the Husband and all the whole Isle is my lawfull wife; I am the Head, and it is my Body; I am the Shepherd, and it is my flocke; I hope therefore no man will be so unreasonable as to thinke that I that am a Christian King under the Gospel, should be a Polygamist and husband to two wives; that I being the Head, should have a divided and monstrous Body; or that being the Shepheard to so faire a Flocke (whose fold hath no wall to hedge it but the foure seas) should have my Flocke parted in two. … And as God hath made Scotland the one halfe of this Isle to enjoy my Birth, and the first and most unperfect halfe of my life, and you heere to enjoy the perfect and the last halfe thereof: so can I not thinke that any would be so injurious to me … as to cut asunder the one halfe of me from the other.

The incorporating Union proposed by King James was more thorough than that which afterwards was carried in 1707. It involved the abolition of Scots Law, and the Scottish Church would have become part of the Church of England. The Parliament did not welcome the proposal, and, in 1607-8, James had again to devote his oratorical power to persuade his English subjects to consent:—

You here have all the great advantage by the Union. Is not here the personall residence of the King, his whole Court and family? Is not here the seate of Justice, and the fountaine of Government? must they [the Scots] not be subjected to the Lawes of England, and so with time become but as Cumberland and Northumberland, and those other remote and Northern Shires? you are to be the husband, they the wife: you conquerours, they as conquered, though not by the sword, but by the sweet and sure bond of love. … Some thinke that I will draw the Scottish nation hither, talking idlely of transporting of trees out of a barren ground into a better … doe you not thinke I know England hath more people, Scotland more wast ground? so that there is roumth in Scotland rather to plant your idle people that swarme in London streets, and other Townes, and disburden you of them? … The Kings my successours, being borne and bred heere, can never have more occasion of acquaintance with the Scottish nation in generall, then any other English King that was before my time. … Since my comming from them I doe not alreadie know the one halfe of them by face, most of the youth being now risen up to bee men, who were but children when I was there, and more are borne since my comming thence.

James failed to convince the English Parliament. The question became connected with the difficult constitutional problems of the time, and the project was definitely abandoned. Like James's foreign policy, the scheme possessed a distinct note of statesmanship, but it resembled it also in its impracticability. It was premature, and could not but have ended in disaster: the ecclesiastical conditions alone would have been sufficient to work its ruin.

In connection with the Gunpowder Plot, the king published A Discourse of the maner of the Discoverie of the Powder Treason, joyned with the examination of some of the prisoners, and he also devoted to the subject his speech to Parliament after the discovery. In neither does he add anything that is not otherwise known; but his personal allusions are, as usual, interesting, and he gives us incidentally such a piece of information as the fact that Salisbury was accustomed to end an audience with the king ‘with some merry jeast.’ In his Speech to Parliament, James laid great stress on the ‘two great and fearefull Domesdayes, wherwith God threatned to destroy mee.’ The first was the mysterious Ruthven Raid: the second, the Gunpowder Plot:—

By three different sorts in generall may mankinde be put to death. The first, by other men and reasonable creatures, which is least cruell … and the second way more cruell then that, is by Animal and unreasonable creatures, for as they have less pitie then men, so is it a greater horror and more unnaturall for men to deale with them. … But the third, which is most cruell and unmercifull of all, is the destruction by insensible and inanimate things, and amongst them all, the most cruell are the two elements of Water and Fire: and of those two, the fire most raging and mercilesse. … The discovery hereof is not a little wonderfull, which would bee thought the more miraculous by you all, if you were as well acquainted with my naturall disposition, as those are who be neere about me: For as I ever did hold suspition to be the sicknes of a Tyrant, so was I so farre upon the other extremity, as I rather contemned all advertisements, or apprehensions of practises. And yet now at this time was I so farre contrary to myselfe, as when the Letter was shewed to me by my Secretary, wherein a generall obscure advertisement was given of some dangerous blow at this time, I did upon the instant interpret and apprehend some darke phrases therein, contrary to the ordinary Grammar construction of them,15 (and in another sort then I am sure any Divine, or Lawyer in any Universitie, would have taken them) to be meant by this horrible forme of blowing us up all by Powder.

Finally, we have King James's political philosophy stated in a discussion of The Trew Law of Free Monarchies, written before he left Scotland, and in three speeches to his English Parliament. His view was that which is known as the Divine Right of Kings. ‘Kings are justly called Gods.’ for

God gives not kings the style of Gods in vaine.

The king is the father of his people, and they may in no case oppose his will. If he is a bad king, he ‘is sent by God for a curse to his people, and a plague for their sinnes: but that it is lawfull for them to shake off that curse at their owne hand, which God hath laid on them, that I deny, and may do so justly.’ To God alone is any king responsible. The king is above the law. ‘A good king will frame all his actions to be according to the Law, yet is hee not bound thereto but of his good will, and for good example-giving to his subjects.’ This theory he grounded upon the law of nature which makes the king stand to the people as the father to the children or the head to the members; upon the statements of chroniclers regarding early history; upon deductions from the laws (e.g. the law of treasure-trove); and upon the teachings of Scripture. In his Trew Law, he makes a clever use of Samuel's description of the office of a king, when the Israelites demanded a king to rule over them, and the old prophet attempted to dissuade them, by drawing a picture of the powers of an absolute monarch.16 This speech of Samuel being part of Holy Scripture, ‘it must necessarily follow that these speeches proceeded not from any ambition in Samuel, as one loath to quite the reines that he so long had ruled, and therefore desirous, by making odious the government of a king, to disswade the people from their farther importunate craving of one. For, as the text proveth it plainly, he then conveened them to give them a resolute grant of their demand, as God by his owne mouth commanded him, saying, “Hearken to the voice of the people.” And to presse to disswade them from that, which he then came to grant unto them, were a thing very impertinent in a wise man; much more in the Prophet of the most high God.’

In his speeches to his English Parliaments, James stated his position with regard to the rights and privileges of Parliament. ‘It is no place for particular men to utter their private conceipts, nor for satisfaction of their curiosities, and least of all to make shew of their eloquence by tyning [losing] the time with long studied and eloquent Orations: No, the reverence of God, their King, and their Countrey being well setled in their hearts, will make them ashamed of such toyes. … Men should bee ashamed to make shew of the quicknesse of their wits here, either in taunting, scoffing, or detracting the Prince or State in any point, or yet in breaking jests upon their fellowes.’ The duty of a Parliament is to ‘give advice in such things as shall by the king be proposed,’ to propose anything that, after mature judgment it shall consider to be needfull, to supply the king with money, and to inform him of grievances. But, under the pretext of grievances, Parliament must not presume to ‘meddle with the maine points of Government,’ or with ancient Rights received by the king from his predecessors, or to attempt to disturb ‘any thing that is established by a setled Law,’ which they know the king is unwilling to alter. Both in his speeches to Parliament and in ‘A Speach in the Starre Chamber,’ James stated his belief in the doctrine that the king is the fountain of law. And he warned the judges of the Star Chamber not to decide anything affecting the royal prerogative or mysteries of State, without first consulting the king. ‘The absolute Prerogative of the Crowne is no subject for the tongue of a Lawyer, nor is lawfull to be disputed. It is Athiesme and blasphemie to dispute what God can doe … so, it is presumption and high contempt in a subject to dispute what a king can doe or say that a king cannot doe this.’ These speeches abound in valuable illustrations of the domestic history of the reign, though the topics are too varied to find mention here.

Only once does James refer to the great political theory which was being debated in his time—the theory of the Social Contract, afterwards associated with the name of Locke. ‘There is, say they, a mutuall paction, and contract bound up, and sworne betwixt the king and the people: Whereupon it followeth, that if the one part of the contract or the Indent bee broken upon the king's side, the people are no longer bound to keepe their part of it, but are thereby freed of their oath.’ James denies the existence of any such contract, ‘especially containing such a clause irritant as they alledge,’ but admits that, at his coronation, a king ‘willingly promiseth to his people’ to discharge his office honourably. But God alone can judge whether or not the promise has been broken: ‘the cognition and revenge must only appertaine to him,’ and he must first ‘give sentence upon the king that breaketh.’

‘Our play is played out.’ It is easy to speak severely of the puppets; but the feeling of the reader will probably be directed rather towards a sympathetic judgement. The faults of King James lay largely on the surface. If he has not deserved the prophecy of his flatterers:—

The Monarks all to thee shall quit their place:
          Thy endless fame shall all the world fulfill.
          And after thee, none worthier shal be seene,
          To sway the Sword, and gaine the Laurell greene,

yet we may apply to him the often-quoted words that were written of his grandson: ‘He had as good a claim to a kind interpretation as most men. It there might be matter for objections, there is not less reason for excuses; the defects laid to his charge, are such as may claim indulgence from mankind. Should nobody throw a stone at his faults but those who are free from them, there would be but a slender shower.’

Notes

  1. The works contained in the folio edition had been frequently printed; some of them under various titles. (Cf. The British Museum Catalogue.) Several speeches, delivered after the publication of the folio of 1616, were separately published. They have reference to incidents in the political history of the reign, and scarcely come within our province.

  2. For a selection on a somewhat larger scale, see Arber's English Reprints, James VI. of Scotland and I. of England. Westminster: A. Constable & Co.

  3. The reader will find a few specimens on pp. 61-79.

  4. The Scottish Parliament had, after the Reformation, made stringent rules for maintaining the old customs regarding the eating of fish in Lent. These Acts were passed in the interests of the fishing trade, which, as in England, had, since the fifteenth century, contributed largely to the prosperity of the towns on the East Coast.

  5. Cf. Sir Walter Scott's description of James's person in The Fortunes of Nigel, chap. v.

  6. Reginald Scot (1538?-1599) was the author of The Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584), in which he advanced views far beyond his age with regard to witchcraft and sorcery. He had adopted, in part, the enlightened opinions of John Wier (1515-1588), who published, in 1566, a work entitled De Praestiqiis Demonum. Cf. Mr. Sidney Lee's article on Scot in the Dictionary of National Biography.

  7. Bel and the Dragon.

  8. Subsequently to the folio edition, King James published two purely theological writings, A Meditation upon the Lord's Prayer (1619), and A Meditation upon St. Matthew xxvii. 27-29 (1620). After his death, there appeared Cygnea Cantio or Learned Decisions, and most Prudent and Pious Directions for Students in Divinitie, delivered by our late Soveraigne of Happie Memorie, King James, at Whitehall, a few weekes before his death (1629). It was edited by Daniel Featly, the well-known controversialist, chaplain to Archbishop Abbot, and is a report of a ‘scholastick duel’ between the king and Featly.

  9. Conrad Vorstius (1569-1622) succeeded Arminius in his Chair in the University of Leyden in 1610.

  10. Jacques Davy du Perron, Cardinal (successively Bishop of Evreux, and Archbishop of Sens). The Cardinal's oration was translated into English in 1616. He wrote a reply to King James's Defence, but it did not appear in English till 1630, when it was translated by the Viscountess Falkland.

  11. Parsons the Jesuit.

  12. Being a proper word to expresse the trew meaning of Tortus [original note].

  13. A reference to the circumstances of the murder of Rizzio.

  14. The Gunpowder Plot and the Perron controversy had driven James to this extreme attitude. At the time of his arrival in England he held quite different language:—‘I acknowledge the Romane Church to be our Mother Church, although defiled with some infirmities and corruptions.’—Speech in Parliament, March 1603.

  15. The words (which occurred in a letter to Lord Mounteagle, warning him not to go to the meeting of Parliament) were:—‘For though there be no appearance of any stirre, yet I say, they shall receive a terrible Blow this Parliament, and yet they shall not see who hurts them. This counsell is not to be contemned, because it may doe you good, and can doe you no harme; for the danger is past so soone as you have burnt the Letter.’ The last clause was construed by the king to indicate ‘the suddaintie and quickenesse of the danger, which should be as quickly performed and at an end as that paper should be of bleasing up in the fire; turning that word of as soone to the sense of as quickly,’ and this suggested gunpowder.—Discourse of the Powder Treason.

  16. Samuel viii, 11-18.

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