II.
Had our old book but a tongue, what tales it might tell of the life after life which has passed before it!
Since the date of its printing, 1614, twelve sovereigns have worn the English crown; for in that year James I. was upon the throne of his mother's enemy. Eleven years before, when a messenger was sent to him in Scotland with an announcement of the death of Elizabeth and his own accession, the tidings found him so poor that he was obliged to apply to the English secretary, Cecil, for money to pay his expenses to London. His wants multiplied rapidly. From his first stopping-place he sent a courier forward to demand the crown jewels for his wife; and a little further on another messenger was dispatched for coaches, horses, litters, and, "above all, a chamberlain much needed."
This journey of James was a very unique affair. Honors were scattered so lavishingly that knighthood was to be had for the asking; and a little pasquinade appeared in print, advertising itself—A Help to Memorie in learning Names of English Nobility.
"At Newark-upon-Trent (says Stow) was taken a cut-purse, a pilfering thief all gentleman outside, with good stores of gold about him, who confessed he had followed the court from Berwick; and the king, hearing of this gallant, did direct a warrant to have him hanged immediately."[44]
And so began at the very outset the spirit which said afterward, "Do I make the lords? Do I make the bishops? Then God's grace—I make what likes me of law and gospel!" So outspoke the king; who is described by those who went to meet him as "ill-favored in appearance, slovenly, dirty, and wearing always a wadded dagger-proof doublet."
These eleven years of his reign had been fruitful in troubles of all kinds. The death of his son Henry, and the alleged, but never proven schemes of Lady Arabella Stuart to gain the throne, made a portion of them; and all were aggravated by that spectre, conjured up by his reckless extravagance, and which haunted him to the last moment of his life—an empty purse. When his daughter Elizabeth was married to the Palatine of Bohemia, the fireworks alone of London cost seven thousand pounds; and when my Lord Hargrave accompanied the bride to the Rhine and brought back a bill of thirty thousand pounds, the king, having neither gold nor silver to pay with, gave him a grant to coin base farthings in brass.
King James, in a book which he wrote on Sports, advocates all active exercises, and one of his own greatest pleasures had always been hunting. When so engaged, every thing else was forgotten, and hence arose a grievance by no means trifling to his English subjects—he and his courtiers, his companions in the chase, not unfrequently quartered themselves in some district where game abounded, until the provisions of the locality were absolutely exhausted. There is a story told of him that, while hunting at Royston, his favorite hound Jowler was missed one day, and the next he reappeared with a paper fastened on his neck, upon which was written—
"Good Mister Jowler, I pray you speak to the king, for he hears you every day, (and he doth not so us,) that it will please his majesty to go back to London, for all our provision is spent." ... "however, (says the courtier,) from Royston he means to go to New-Market, and from thence to Thetford."[45]
How much further he might have been led to hunt, is unknown; for there Lord Hay, who loved hounds, and horns also, promised no more to importune his majesty, and his more sedate counsellors succeeded in getting him back to business. In the mean time, in the more weighty matters of politics and religion, where the ambitious nobles of two countries intrigued and plotted for power over a monarch easily imposed upon, discord and contention reigned, until in 1614 they seem to have reached their height.