minister, served James with great skill till his death on May 24, 1612; after this, the king got into great difficulty with his parliament, through his arbitrary notions of the royal prerogative, and their equally strong determination to support their own privileges and liberties. In 1614, they refused to vote further supplies of money to the king, till he should redress their grievances; he committed five members of the house of Commons to the Tower for their opposition, and one, Oliver St. John, who refused to contribute to a "benevolence," was fined £5000. These instances of resistance ought to have warned the court: the king, however, refused to listen to the warning voice which shadowed forth the confusion and bloodshed of the next reign. The king, instead of benefiting by the lesson, said, with his usual pomposity, "My integrity is like the whiteness of my robe; my purity, like the metal of gold in my crown; my firmness and clearness, like the precious stones I wear; and my affections, natural, like the redness of my heart!" In Scotland, James had lived almost in poverty, the pensioner of Elizabeth,-when he came to the English throne, he appears to have thought himself possessed of riches beyond the power of exhaustion.

The present authorized translation of the Bible, dedicated to the king, was produced in three years (1607-10), by fortyeight divines, and printed in roman type (the same as that now employed) in 1611; the previous editions of the Bible had been printed in what is now called "old English," but which, in reality, was type of the German character, brought with him by Caxton, when he introduced the art of printing into. England, and which had hitherto been used in printing books; the noble simplicity of the Anglo-Saxon tongue, and the excellence of the English language, of the period, are exhibited in this translation. Charterhouse School was re-founded in 1611. The king, as a means of raising money, adopted the advice of sir Antony Shirley, and created, for the first time, the title of baronet, at a charge of £1095, which brought to his majesty's coffers upwards of £100,000; he also established horse-racing at Newmarket. Logarithms were invented by Napier (1614); the broad-silk manufacture introduced; copper halfpence and farthings first coined.

In 1613, was married the divorced countess of Essex to Robert Carr, duke of Somerset ; she wore on the occasion a coronet which was valued at 400,000 dollars; the clothes of the duke were covered with precious stones. The countess was suspected of being privy to the death of prince Henry,herself and husband were the cause of sir Thomas Overbury's death, by poison, and yet, this odious marriage was graced by the court lord Bacon spent £2000 on a play, entitled the "Masque of Flowers;" the corporation of London gave them a magnificent banquet, to proceed to which the duchess wished to borrow the four superb horses, so much prized by sir Ralph Winwood, but he begged her to accept them, "as so great a lady should not use anything borrowed." Two years after this, sir Ralph was trying to discover the murderers of sir Thomas Overbury, and traced the act to the duke and duchess of Somerset !-on its discovery, the king said to sir Edward Coke, "May God curse you, if you spare any of them!" and then invoked the same curse on himself and his, if he pardoned any of them; the duke and the duchess, and four accomplices were found guilty, the four latter were executed, the other two pardoned. Doubtless, sir Thomas Overbury was got rid of for the concealment of some terrible state secret,—but why were the two pardoned ?

George Villiers supplied the place of the duke of Somerset in the king's favour, by purchase; in a few months, he was made a knight, a baron, a viscount, an earl, a marquis, and then duke of Buckingham; he was also appointed lord high admiral, lord warden of the cinque ports, master of the horse, —indeed, he conferred upon himself and others, nearly all the honours and offices of the three kingdoms.

Lord Bacon gets the seals as lord keeper in 1617, is very active in his work, clears off all arrears of his predecessor, and finds time to write the Novum Organum;' in January, 1618, he is made lord chancellor, created lord Verulam and viscount St. Albans. In October, 1620, he gives to the world the 'Novum Organum'-a book which has done more than any other volume ever written, not of divine origin, to improve our knowledge of the aspect of nature and the character of man.

He is now the first subject in England, and the first philosopher in Europe; nothing seems wanting to his glory,-neither power, nor popularity, nor fame, nor obedience, nor troops of friends. Yet, seven months after publishing the greatest birth of time, and while the sages of continental Europe are engrossed with the duty and delight of its perusal, the writer is stripped of his rank, his honours, his good name, condemned to a ruinous fine of £40,000, and flung into the Tower.

The fate of lord Bacon necessitates a brief explanation on the matter of fees and bribes, to remove a portion of the onslaught on the character of Bacon by lord Campbell. In the reign of James, the machinery of every department of government was worked by fees. The king took fees, so did the bishops, the judges, and the bar, the various officers of state, even the lords and ladies of the royal bedchamber; everybody took fees, everybody paid fees,-hence the peculation and bribes of these times,-though, in the eyes of both payer and receiver, they were generally looked upon as wages. Thus, lord Bacon had no salary from the king, though his berth was worth £15,000 per annum; when attorney-general, his office realised £6000, but the crown only paid him £81 6s. 8d.; Yelverton, as solicitor-general, realised £4000, yet the crown only allowed him £70; the allowances to the judges was scarcely sufficient to procure their robes and gloves; sir E. Coke, the lord chief justice, had £225; the chief justice of the common pleas, £195; the lord chief baron of the exchequer, £188; yet each of the judges had given up lucrative practice at the bar, and, on their promotion, had to live in state, make presents to the king, and get rich! It is therefore obvious that the charges against them were unsound,-in the language of our own days, they were not bribes, but a part of an evil system, the exposure of which led to the immolation of the greatest man in the world and of the age. In the majority of cases, the monies were not taken as a secret act, for the perversion of justice, but arose out of a system which has since been exploded. £10,000 was offered for Bacon's post as attorney-general, besides a present of £4000 to the king,— subsequently, £30,000 for the chancellorship. In those days

there were only ten printing-presses in the metropolis, which, at this time, were all busily producing squibs, ballads, and broadsides, written by the vilest of mankind, these, with the venomous spleen of sir E. Coke, did their work: we know the result to lord Bacon! He bore the punishment with a patience as profound as it is humble and serene,-he trusts to posterity to vindicate his fame; he lived to see his most conspicuous enemies ignominiously disgraced. Bacon retires, a very poor man, to Gorhambury; among his books, he recruits his health, as well as his spirits and wit,-he, with his soul at peace, toils away at his pen, increases his fame throughout Europe, becomes indeed a greater man in his study than when the mace was borne before him in his various offices of state,-he lives in seclusion, but his writings fill the whole world with his fame. The tale of his official fall is the most sad and the most strange in all the history of man. It is surprising he did not acknowledge how much his ideas must have been indebted to his prototype and namesake, the poor capuchin friar of the thirteenth century-Roger Bacon.

The circulation of the blood was discovered by William Harvey, M.D. (1619); the story of the efforts which he made for its discovery, is one of the most interesting in the whole range of science; he persevered in his experiments and researches for eight years before he published his views, which were then received with ridicule; he was accused of subverting the authority of the Scriptures; he lost his professional practice; for some time he made not a single convert. Harvey held fast his truth amidst much adversity, but it was twenty-five years before his great scientific ideas were recognised. In 1615; Edmond Peachum, a clergyman, preached a sermon on the improprieties and extravagancies of the king; he was accused of treason, put on the rack, and interrogated "before torture, in torture, between torture, and after torture;" on which Bacon was instructed by the king to confer with the judges, separately, if the sermon could be construed as treason, to which the chief justice, sir E. Coke, objected; the other twelve judges were bribed, sir Edward gave an equivocal opinion; Peachum, however, was tried and condemned, but died in gaol. After

this sir Edward Coke and the twelve judges were at variance with the king on a question of prerogative, whereupon his majesty flew into a rage, caused twelve of the judges to yield, and dismissed sir Edward from his office. The prince of Wales, in company with the duke of Buckingham, visited Spain in disguise (1623), to see the princess; they took Paris on their route, where they had a peep at the princess Henrietta Maria, whom Charles afterwards married. On May 23, 1622, appeared the first authentic periodical newspaper, entitled 'The Weekly News.' The New River Company was formed by sir Hugh Middleton; having lost all his private fortune in the attempt, he obtained assistance from the king; the work was completed in 1613, and it is now one of the most useful and profitable investments in London.

Names of Note. - Robert Cecil, earl of Salisbury (1550-1612); Villiers, duke of Buckingham (1592—1628); lord chancellor Francis Bacon (1561 -1626); sir Walter Raleigh (1552-1618); lord Herbert of Cherbury (1581-1648); sir Hugh Middleton (1570-1637); Inigo Jones, a celebrated architect (1572-1653); Ben Jonson, dramatist (1574—1637); Camden, antiquary (1551–1623); Dr. W. Harvey (1578-1657); Percy, Monteagle, and Guido Fawkes; Chapman, the first translator into English of Homer (1557-1634); Burton, author of 'Anatomy of Melancholy' (1576-1640); John Napier, inventor of logarithms (1550-1617).

(46.) CHARLES I. The Martyr.

Birth and Reign.-He was the eldest surviving son of James I.; born at Dumferline, Fifeshire, Scotland, on November 19, 1600, crowned at Westminster, February 6, 1625, and reigned till 1649. He was also crowned at Holyrood church, in Scotland, on June 18, 1633.

Marriage. He espoused, June, 1625, Henrietta Maria, daughter of Henry IV., king of France; the queen, unwilling, as a Roman Catholic, to compromise the king as to the religious ceremonials, was never crowned; she died August 10, 1669. It is a curious fact that, except Henry V., all those monarchs who married French princesses, incurred the displeasure of their subjects, and suffered violent deaths.

Issue.-Charles, prince of Wales, afterwards Charles II.; Mary, married to William, prince of Orange, father to William