References.—Louis XIV. et son Siècle. Miss Pardoe's History of Louis XIV. Voltaire's and James's Lives of Louis XIV. Memoirs of Cardinal Richelieu. Memoirs of Mazarin. Mémoires de Mademoiselle de Montpensier. Mémoires du Duc de Saint Simon. Life of Cardinal de Retz, in which the Fronde war is well traced. Memoir of the Duchess de Longueville. Lacretelle's History of France. Rankin's History of France. Sismondi's History of France. Crowe's History, in Lardner's Cyclopedia. Rowring's History of the Huguenots. Lord Mahon's Life of the Prince of Condé. The above works are the most accessible to the American student.[(Back to Contents)]
CHAPTER XII.
THE REIGNS OF JAMES I. AND CHARLES I.
While the Protestants in Germany were struggling for religious liberty, and the Parliaments of France for political privileges, there was a contest going on in England for the attainment of the same great ends. With the accession of James I. a new era commences in English history, marked by the growing importance of the House of Commons, and their struggles for civil and religious liberty. The Commons had not been entirely silent during the long reign of Elizabeth, but members of them occasionally dared to assert those rights of which Englishmen are proud. The queen was particularly sensitive to any thing which pertained to her prerogative, and generally sent to the Tower any man who boldly expressed his opinion on subjects which she deemed that she and her ministers alone had the right to discuss. These forbidden subjects were those which pertained to the management of religion, to her particular courts, and to her succession to the crown. She never made an attack on what she conceived to be the constitution, but only zealously defended what she considered as her own rights. And she was ever sufficiently wise to yield a point to the commons, after she had asserted her power, so that concession, on her part, had all the appearance of bestowing a favor. She never pushed matters to extremity, but gave way in good time. And in this policy she showed great wisdom; so that, in spite of all her crimes and caprices, she ever retained the affections of the English people.
The Accession of James I. son of her rival Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, ascended the throne, (1603,) under the title of James I., and was the first of the Stuart kings. He had been king of Scotland under the title of James VI., and had there many difficulties to contend with, chiefly in consequence of the turbulence of the nobles, and the bigotry of the reformers. He was eager to take possession of his English inheritance, but was so poor that he could not begin his journey until Cecil sent him the money. He was crowned, with great ceremony, in Westminster Abbey, on the 25th of June.
The first acts of his reign were unpopular; and it was subsequently disgraced by a continual succession of political blunders. To detail these, or to mention all the acts of this king, or the events of his inglorious reign would fill a volume larger than this History. Moreover, from this period, modern history becomes very complicated and voluminous, and all that can be attempted in this work is, an allusion to the principal events.
The The Genius of the Reign of James. genius of this reign is the contest between royal prerogative and popular freedom. The proceedings in parliament were characterized by a spirit of boldness and resistance never before manifested, while the speeches and acts of the king were marked by an obstinate and stupid pertinacity to those privileges which absolute kings extorted from their subjects in former ages of despotism and darkness. The boldness of the Commons and the bigotry of the king led to incessant disagreement and discontent; and, finally, under Charles I., to open rupture, revolution, and strife.
The progress of this insurrection and contest furnishes one of the most important and instructive chapters in the history of society and the young student cannot make himself too familiar with details, of which our limits forbid a description.
The great Puritan contest here begins, destined not to be closed until after two revolutions, and nearly a century of anxiety, suffering, and strife. Providence raised up, during the whole of the Stuart dynasty, great patriots and statesmen, who had an eye to perceive the true interests and rights of the people, and a heart and a hand to defend them. No period and no nation have ever been more fertile in great men than England was from the accession of James I. to the abdication of James II., a period of eighty-five years. Shakspeare, Raleigh, Coke, Bacon, Cecil, Selden, Pym, Wentworth, Hollis, Leighton, Taylor, Baxter, Howe, Cromwell, Hampden, Blake, Vane, Milton, Clarendon, Burnet, Shaftesbury, are some of the luminaries which have shed a light down to our own times, and will continue to shine through all future ages. They were not all contemporaneous, but they all took part, more or less, on one side or the other, in the great contest of the seventeenth century. Whether statesmen, warriors, poets, or divines, they alike made their age an epoch, and their little island the moral centre of the world.
But we must first allude to some of the events of the reign of James I., before the struggle between prerogative and liberty attracted the attention of Europe.