and reckless in giving away; confidential and imperious; even in
little matters of daily life not master of himself, he often did what
he would afterwards rather have left undone. With all his knowledge
and acuteness, the high flight of his thoughts was often allied to a
moral weakness which among all circles did serious injury to that
reverence which had hitherto been reserved for those who held the
highest authority, and which was partly bestowed even on him. It could
not seem likely that such a man should be able to exercise great
influence on the fortunes of Britain.

He did however exercise such an influence. He gave the tone to the
policy of the Stuart dynasty, and introduced the complication in which
the destiny of his descendants was involved.

In the first years of his reign in England, so long as Robert Cecil
was alive, King James exercised no deep influence. The Privy Council
possessed to the full the authority which belonged to it by old
custom. James used simply to confirm the resolutions which were
adopted in the bosom of the Council under the influence of the
Treasurer: he appears in the reports of ambassadors as a phantom-king,
and the minister as the real ruler of the country.[386] After the
death of Cecil all this was changed. The King knew the party-divisions
which prevailed in the Council: he let its members have their own way,
and even connived at the relations they formed with foreign powers for
their own interest; but he knew how to hold the balance between them,
and in the midst of their divisions to carry out his own views. In
those country seats, where no one seemed to take thought for anything
except the pleasures of the chase and learned pursuits, the business
of the state also was carried on in course of time with
ever-increasing ardour.[387] The secretaries about the King were
incessantly busy, while the secretaries' chambers in London were
idle. Great affairs were generally transacted between the King and the
favourite in the ascendant at the time, in conferences to which only a
few others were admitted, and sometimes not even these. The King
himself decided; and the resolutions which were taken were
communicated to the Privy Council, which gradually became accustomed
to do nothing more than invest them with the customary forms. If it be
asked what the object of the King's efforts was, the answer must be
that it was to set the exercise of the supreme power free from the
controlling infl