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.

[Sidenote: The Genius of the Reign of James.]

The 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