green. This central standard of the sport streamed with ribbons and kerchiefs of various colours, and was wreathed from base to summit with flowery branches. Around it the dance circled all day long in ceaseless waves of jollity, kept up by relays of dancers. The great London May-pole was set up on Cornhill, where it "towered high above the steeple of St. Andrews." May-day was one of the great occasions on which the Morricedancers shook their variously toned bells, and the richly trapped hobby-horse ambled in his plumes and braveries. The chief characters suited to this time of greenwood sports were Maid Marian and Robin Hood, who were never absent from the frolics of May-day. The milkmaids' dance, with a weighty head-dress of silver tankards and cups, also belonged to this time of year. Midsummer Eve or the Vigil of St. John was kept by the lighting of great bonfires. London, especially, on that night was all ablaze during the reigns of the carlier Tudors, for the streets were filled with constables and watchmen in bright harness, bearing lighted cressets—a most expensive civic display, which disappeared about the time of Edward the Sixth. Thus Old England ran riot with pageants and junketings, wakes and church-ales, in the last of which the clergy broached barrels of liquor in the churchyards for sale to their pious customers, he that spent most being esteemed the most orthodox. It was a strange medley of fun and foulness-this "merrie Englande" of the olden time.

CHAPTER X.

THE BRITISH SOLOMON.

The Main and the Bye-Hampton Court-The Gunpowder Treason-King versus Commons-Divine right-Death of Prince Henry-Favouritism -Visit to Scotland-Last days of Ralegh-The Elector - PalatineFrancis Lord Bacon.

BY

Y the time that James Stuart, the successor of Elizabeth, had reached the English capital, all England knew that their new king was not the wisest of men. Lifted to the grandeur of the English throne by the force of national feeling, in preference to any of the living heirs of the Suffolk branch,* he nevertheless managed, during his southward journey, to incur contempt and dislike on every hand. He 1603 made women kneel before him, he scolded his wife in public, he rebuked soldiers for offending his royal eyes with the sight of cold bare steel, and he swore in the broadest Scotch at those loyal peasants who drew near to see his majesty in the hunting-field. Such a beginning augured poorly for the comfort of the reign.

Secretary Cecil, son of Lord Burghley, managed to work himself into the good graces of the king at once, much to the chagrin of Ralegh and other ambitious men, whom he thus outstripped. These baffled politicians joined some discontented

It will be remembered that Henry VIII. executed a will, which left the crown, in failure of his own issue, to the heirs of the Duchess of Suffolk, his younger sister, in preference to the heirs of Margaret, his elder sister.

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members of the Catholic and Puritan parties in the formation of two plots, which had for their object the seizure and imprisonment of the king, until a change of ministry and the establishment of toleration were wrung from him. Ralegh and Cobham took part in the "Main"-Markham, Watson, and Brooke directed the "Bye;" so the conspiracies were styled respectively. Cecil, kept informed of the whole proceedings by secret spies, pounced in time on the heads of the plots. summer and autumn of plague delayed the falling blow. Ralegh was brought to trial in November at Winchester Castle, charged with treasonable plotting for the murder of the king, and for the elevation of his cousin Arabella Stuart* to the throne. The weak uncertain confession of his false friend Cobham formed the whole weight of the evidence against him. Edward Coke, the celebrated lawyer, who was then attorneygeneral, wasted all the fury he could muster on the undaunted captive, who had seen too many ocean storms to be moved by the bluster of a rhetorician. Defending himself with that classic eloquence which formed not the least of his splendid gifts, he rejected a paper-accusation, as worthy only of the Spanish Inquisition, and demanded that he and Cobham should meet face to face. He got no reply but abuse. On that long day of battle Ralegh regained the popularity which his eager ness for Essex's fall had cost him. Although three of the conspirators perished on the scaffold, Ralegh was reprieved, and was committed to the Tower, where for the time we leave him with pen and ink, busy with his History of the World.

James had no deep affection for the Puritans. He had felt too sharply the strength of their independence in his northern kingdom, and now, when he found English bishops soft as silk beneath his touch, he resolved that the author of Basilikon Doron†

*Arabella Stuart. She was daughter of the Tuke of Lennox, brother of Darnley, James's father.

Basilikon Doron (Royal Gift), a book of precepts on the art of government prepared by King James for his son Henry; published at Edinburgh in 1599.

and the pupil of George Buchanan should show the Nonconformist doctors of England what scholarship and theological controversy were like. The notable conference at Hampton Court, which led to the production of the Authorized translation of the Bible, was held in 1604 January 1604. Arrayed against four Puritan min

isters were a king, a score of bishops, and a crowd of courtiers. After hearing the royal logic, Bancroft, Bishop of London, blessed God on bended knees for such a monarch. Whitgift of Canterbury echoed the sentiment without assuming the posture of prayer. "I peppered them soundly," said the conceited king, "and they fled me from argument to argument like school-boys."

This conference soured Puritan loyalty a good deal; and when in the following March the first Parliament of the reign assembled, thickly sprinkled with Puritan members, symptoms of a great struggle began at once to manifest themselves. The Commons first showed fight over an election for Buckinghamshire, when they refused to admit the court candidate; and the matter ended in a compromise. They also grappled with the evils resulting from monopoly and purveyance, and, after the usual vote of tunnage and poundage* to the king for life, said not a word of any ready money. To prevent all mistake as to the position they took up at the opening of the struggle, a committee of the House prepared a document, entitled "A Form of Apology and Satisfaction," in which the privileges and liberties of the Commons were fully set forth and defended. There is, however, some doubt as to whether the apology ever reached King James's hand.

A great danger, surrounded with romantic and picturesque

*Tunnage and poundage, customs duties on wine (3s. per tun) and other merchandise (1s. per pound), except the staple commodities--wool, leather, tin, sheep-skin. Tunnage was first regularly granted in 1373 (Edward III.), and poundage in 1415 (Henry V.). They were generally granted for the king's life. They came to an end in the reign of Charles I.

incidents, threatened Parliament and king about this time. The heavy persecutions to which the Catholics were subjected roused a spirit of revenge in many breasts, but the germ of the Gunpowder Plot first struck root in the heart of a gentleman named Robert Catesby. In youth a renegade from Catholicism, he endeavoured in riper years to atone by fierce zeal for his temporary desertion of the faith. His first accomplice was a gentleman of Worcestershire, named Thomas Winter. But one accomplice would not do. Winter, an old soldier, happened at Ostend to meet with a comrade, Guido or Guy Fawkes, whose courage was like steel. Carrying this desperate man to London, he introduced him to the prime mover in the plot. Thomas Percy of the Northumberland family, his brotherin-law John Wright, Robert Keys, a gentleman of London, and Thomas Bates, Catesby's servant, soon joined the lawless band, ignorant as yet, however, of the dreadful idea seething in Catesby's brain. It was in a lonely house in the fields beyond St. Clement's Inn that the full horrors of the plot were revealed to the assembled gang. A solemn oath, sworn upon the sacrament, of which they all partook at the hands of Garnet, the provincial of the Jesuits, and two other priests, bound them never to reveal the secret, and not to rest until the object of the plot had been accomplished.

Hiring, in the name of Percy, who held a court post, a house in Westminster, the wall of which joined that of the Parliament House, they began to break a hole through the cellar wall. The adjoining cellar, which ran under the Parliament House, was occupied by a dealer in coal. A house at Lambeth, across the Thames, served as a secret store-house for

1604

their collection of wood and gunpowder. Through all the summer of 1604 they bore about the terrible burden of their meditated crime, checked for a time in their work by the Westminster house being chosen for the lodging of the Scottish commissioners. After Christmas, the