in the charge of
Lord Harrington, at Combe Abbey, near Coventry--a fact to which there
will be occasion to refer again. The Princes remained with their
parents, to the great satisfaction of the Queen, who had struggled as
ceaselessly as vainly against the rigid Scottish custom of educating the
heir-apparent away from Court Queen Anne of Denmark was a graceful,
elegant woman, with extremely fair complexion and abundant fair hair.
The King was plain even to ungainliness--a strange thing for the son of
one of the most beautiful women that ever lived. The wisdom of James
the First has been by different writers highly extolled and
contemptuously derided. It seems to me to have partaken, like
everything else, of the uncertainty of its author. He did give
utterance to some apothegms of unquestionable wisdom, and also to some
speeches of egregious folly. His subjects did not err far when they
nicknamed their Scottish master and their "dear dead Queen," his
predecessor, "King Elizabeth and Queen James." Yet justice requires the
admission that the chief root of James's many failings was his intense,
unreasoning, constitutional timidity, which would have been ludicrous if
it had been less pitiful. He could not see a drawn sword without
shuddering, even if drawn for his own defence; and when knighting a man,
it was necessary for the Lord Chamberlain to come to his Majesty's help,
and guide the blade, lest the recipient of the honour should be wounded
by the unsteadiness of the King's hand under the strong shuddering which
seized him. So afraid was he of possible assassins that he always wore
a thickly-padded cotton garment under his clothes, to turn aside bullet
or dagger.

Lord Oxford came to Town in May, and Aubrey at once began his duties as
a squire in his household. During June and July, he ran into the White
Bear some half-dozen times in an evening, he said, to assure them that
he was still alive. In August and September he was more remiss: and
after October had set in, they scarcely saw him once a month. It was
noticeable, when he did come, that the young gentleman was becoming more
fashionable and courtly than of old. Lettice asked him once if he had
bidden the tailor to make his garments of snips, since the brown suit
which had been his Sunday best was breaking out all over into slashes
whence puffs of pink were visible. Aubrey drew himself up with a laugh,
and told his cousin that she knew nothing of the fas