under the Parliament House, hidden under piles of faggots. A fearless and fanatical man stood ready to light the fatal train. We seem to see him now in the low doorway, with his slow matches, his tinder, and his dark lantern, just as he was seized in the dead of night-the night before the appointed day.

13. The conspiracy had been discovered. One of the traitors, a Northamptonshire gentleman named Tresham, had felt some relentings towards his brother-in-law, Lord Monteagle, who would be sure to be in his place in the House of Lords, and would perish with the rest. He wrote him a strange anonymous letter, in a feigned hand, hinting at some terrible blow which the parliament would receive, and warning him, as he tendered his life, to keep away. This letter, being shown to the king and his ministers, led to the discovery of the plot before it was too late. Guy Fawkes was seized in the cellar; the rest of the conspirators were pursued, and either died in defending themselves, or were taken, tried, and executed.

14. This Gunpowder Treason seemed to have something specially demoniacal about it. The very darkness and mystery, the terribleness of a sudden explosion which would give no warning before all was over, the awful cruelty of involving so many innocent people in the punishment which was supposed to be due to the guilty, and its having so very nearly succeeded, struck the whole nation with horror, and remains still one of the most vivid memories in the imagination of the people. Still it is only just to remark that eighty men at most knew of its existence, and it would be entirely wrong to lay it on the Roman Catholics in general, most of whom probably thought it quite as wicked as we do.

15. It is well worth notice, however, that the conspirators believed themselves to be engaged in a noble and sacred work. One of them, a gentleman of high character and unblemished reputation, Sir Everard Digby, wrote to his wife, after his condemnation: "Now for my intention; let me tell you that if I had thought there had been the least sin in the plot I would not have been in it for all the world; and no other cause drew me to hazard my fortune and my life but zeal to God's religion." So utterly can religious bigotry blind the eyes of the soul and deaden the voice of conscience and humanity.

It is said that Digby and some of the others, notably Guy Fawkes, died very penitently and devoutly.

LECTURE XLVII.-THE KING AND THE PARLIAMENT.

The royal prerogative. The parliament. Charles I. The Cavaliers and the Roundheads. Strafford and Laud. Ship-money. Hampden. The Prayer-book in Scotland.

1. Ir was not only in religious matters that James showed his arbitrary spirit, and alienated many of his people. He wished to be supreme in all points, and to have the authority The royal of Henry VIII. without having the character of prerogative. Henry VIII. The exact power which lawfully belonged to the king was not at that time very clearly defined, nor can it be said to be so now. The royal prerogative is a sort of shadowy thing, which seems in theory to be very great, but which in a country like ours shrinks up into almost nothing, unless the sovereign and the nation are of one mind. The Tudors had felt this by instinct, if they did not know it; but the Stuarts neither felt it nor knew it.

2. Just about this period, in other countries as well as our own, the monarchs became more despotic than they had ever been yet; in some of them the last traces of liberty disappeared. The kings of Spain became utter tyrants. In France, too, the national assemblies of the people ceased, and the king and nobles did just as they pleased, without any check upon them. But we in England were better off, because our parliament never came to an end.

3. All through the reigns of the Tudors, it is true, the parliaments had been very meek and submissive, and had almost always done what the king or queen told them ; The but still they were there. Outwardly they had all parliament. their old powers and rights, and neither king nor queen ever professed to act without their consent. Under the Stuarts the parliaments quite left off being meek and submissive; they remembered their duties and their privileges, and stood up like men to defend them. They fell back on the right, which their predecessors had exercised so manfully in days of

old, and would give the king no money until he had redressed their grievances. Then the king in his turn fell back on the old plan of Edward IV., and tried to levy "benevolences." He could not have done much by force, even if he had desired it, because he had no army. Elizabeth's whole standing army is said to have consisted of 100 beef-eaters, and James had no chance of getting more.

The Duke

of Buckingham.

4. Things went on very ill in many ways. James, like so many other kings, made favourites, and favourites whom the nation could not respect. The principal one was George Villiers, who was afterwards made Duke of Buckingham, but whom the king always called Steenie, because he thought him like a picture he had seen of the martyr Stephen. "Steenie" does not seem to have had anything else at all saint-like about him, and his principal recommendations were that he danced and dressed beautifully. He treated the king with the greatest familiarity and insolence, which seemed to please James, but disgusted the nation.

Lord Bacon.

5. But a far more sad and shameful thing than the follies of a worthless courtier occurred during this reign-the disgrace of the most eminent man in the whole kingdom; one of the greatest men indeed whom England has ever produced. This was the famous Lord Bacon, who was Lord Chancellor of England, but whose great fame rests upon his writings and his studies more than on his high position. He has been long looked on as the father of modern science, though it is now supposed by some eminent writers that his work has been somewhat overrated. He carried on the ideas of his great old namesake, Roger Bacon, by teaching men to observe nature, and to learn from her instead of busying themselves with words and phrases of their own manufacture.

6. That he had grand thoughts and clothed them in noble words is certain, but that neither thoughts nor words could help him to live a noble life is unfortunately as certain. No one knew better than he what was the duty of a judge. Most of his great books were written in Latin, but one was in English, a little book of essays, which are full of wise thoughts, very simply expressed, about matters of constant and practical interest. They are about envy, truth, death, parents and children, marriage and single life. One is about "judicature." It shows that he had reflected gravely on the responsibilities of a judge's office. "The place of justice," he wrote, "is an hallowed place; and

therefore not only the bench, but the foot pace and precincts thereof, ought to be preserved without scandal and corruption." Judges should imitate God, in whose place they sit." Yet the man who wrote this, the highest judge in the land, was charged with taking bribes! a hundred pounds from one ; 1620. three or four hundred pounds from another; was found guilty, owned the justice of the charge with shame and penitence, and was degraded from his high office by the king and parliament. Truly "it is a good divine that follows his own instructions."

Still in his case we seem to have quite reversed the saying that "the evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones." And for the sake of his grand works as a philosopher and a writer his name is held in honour, and his faults and infirmities pardoned or forgotten.

7. James continued to go contrary to the wishes of his people in most matters to the end of his reign. They earnestly desired him to help the cause of the Protestants abroad. His own daughter Elizabeth, who was so gracious and beautiful that she was called the Queen of Hearts, had married a Protestant German prince, the Elector Palatine Frederic, who was afterwards elected King of Bohemia. He was in great need of help and support; but though the country implored James to take his part, he would not do so.

1620.

8. Worse than that, in the eyes of the English, he actually wished to make friends with Spain. He seemed to forget all the past, all the cruelty of Philip, all the dread of the Armada, and the triumph and deliverance of England,-and wished to marry his son to a Spanish princess. His eldest son, Henry, having died very young, the second, Charles, became heir to the throne, and it was proposed that he should take a Spanish wife. The people writhed under the very idea; but that did not seem of much importance. Charles and the favourite Buckingham went off in disguise to Spain, but on their way thither, passing through Paris, Charles saw a French princess who attracted him. Nevertheless, he went on and saw the Spanish princess also; he tricked and played with the Spaniards, making them believe that he fully intended to marry her; but as soon as he returned to England he broke off the match.

1623.

9. This insincerity and deceit did not promise very well for the honour of the future King of England, but the people were so delighted to be freed from the fear of a Spanish queen that they were inclined to overlook all that was bad in their prince's

conduct, and were willing for him to marry the French princess, Henrietta Maria. But before he had actually done so his father died, and he became king as Charles I.

1625.

Charles I.

10. The new king was a great contrast to his father. James was paltry and contemptible in his looks and manners; Charles was very royal, dignified, and handsome. He was every inch a gentleman; he was also a scholar and (in his own way) a Christian. His private character too was unlike James's; he was pure in life, a faithful husband, and a loving father. We seem to know his beautiful and melancholy face very well from the portraits which he left behind him. So now the romantic element comes in. Had he been vulgar, undignified, and clownish, there would not have been nearly such discordant opinions about him and his character. His greatest fault was that he never could be trusted to keep his promises; he was fond of bidding parliament rely on his " royal word," but he was not at all particular as to observing that "royal word."

The queen.

11. He had already in his love-making shown a specimen of this fatal defect in his character. The new French queen, and still more her attendants, soon became very distasteful to the nation, chiefly on account of their religion. It was believed that some of the Catholic priests who had followed the queen from France "had not only practised with the Pope on the one side, and the English Papists on the other, but had had intelligence also with the Spaniard." There is a very amusing letter about these French attendants of the queen, written at the time, and giving an account of their dismissal. The priests who attended on her, says the writer, were the most superstitious, turbulent, and Jesuited priests that could be found in all France, very fit to make firebrands of sedition in a foreign state." The king found it necessary to order all these "hypocritical dogs," besides great numbers of ladies and servants, to quit the country. When it was made known that they were to go away, "the women howled and lamented, as if they were going to execution," and the queen, it was said, "grew very impatient, and brake the glass windows with her fist;" but it was all in vain, Charles held his own; and though he rewarded them handsomely, they had to go. He knew very well how to be peremptory, and could use language, at this period, at least, not quite befitting a "royal saint." Witness this letter of his, entirely in his own hand, to the Duke of Buckingham," for the final driving away of the Monsieurs."

1626.