CHAPTER THE SECOND. JAMES THE FIRST (CONTINUED).

[Original Size]

HE Parliament that was to have been dissolved in thin air on the 5th of November, leaving nothing behind but a report in several volumes of smoke, met for the despatch of business on the 21st of January, 1606. Laws were passed against the Papists in a most vexatious spirit, and by one enactment they were positively prohibited from removing more than five miles from home without an order signed by four magistrates. If a Catholic had got into a cab, and the horse had run away, without the driver being able to pull up within the fifth mile, the fare would have been most unfairly sacrificed.

James, who saw the advantage Scotland would derive from an alliance with England, began to urge the Union, but the English naturally objected to such a very unprofitable match; for Scotland had nothing to lose, nothing to give, nothing to lend, and nothing to teach, except the art of making bread without flour, joke-books without wit, reputation without ability, and a living without anything. James felt that the sarcasms on the Scotch were personal to himself, and he told the Parliament they ought not to talk on matters they did not understand; but it was thought that to restrict them to subjects which they did understand would be equivalent to depriving them of liberty of speech on nearly every occasion.

James had become somewhat popular on account of the attempt to blow him up sky-high with all his ministers, and a rumour of his having been assassinated, sent him up a shade or two higher in the affections of his people. It is a feature in the character of the English that they always take into their favour any one who seems to be an object of persecution; and there is no doubt that if in a crowd there is any one desirous of rising in public esteem, he has only to ask a friend to give him a severe and apparently unmerited blow on the head, in order to render him the idol of the surrounding multitude. If there had been no Gunpowder Plot, it would have been worth the while of James to have got one up, for the express purpose of increasing his popularity. His qualities, as shown in his way of life at this time, do not warrant the esteem in which he was held; for he divided his time between the pleasures of the table, the excitements of the chase, and the blackguardism of the cock-pit. When remonstrated with on the lowness of his pursuits, he declared that his health required relaxation; and he would declare that he would rather see one of his Dorking chickens win his spurs, than witness the grandest tournament. These pursuits, which were expensive, caused him to do many acts of meanness to obtain the necessary supplies: and among other things he went to dine with the Clothworkers as well as with the Merchant Tailors, among both of whom the royal hat was sent round at the close of the banquet.