ong since dead. He had interspersed encomiums upon his own sovereign,
the 'temperate, revengeless, liberal, wise, and just,' though 'he may
err.' His doctrine was, as he has written in his _Cabinet Council_, that
'all kings, the bad as well as the good, must be endured' by their
subjects. The murder even of tyrants is deprecated, as 'followed by
inconveniences worse than civil war.' But posterity he did not think was
debarred from judging worthless rulers; and he tried them in his
History. In the eyes of James such freedom of speech, especially in
Ralegh, was _lese majeste_. An explanation by himself of his ill-will to
the book, which has been handed down by Osborn, has an air of
verisimilitude. In his _Memoirs on King James_, Osborn relates that
'after much scorn cast upon Ralegh's History, the King, being modestly
demanded what fault he found, answered, as one surprised, that Ralegh
had spoken irreverently of King Henry the Eighth.' He would be more
indignant on his own account than on that of King Henry, against whom,
says Osborn, 'none ever exclaimed more than usually himself.' James
discovered his own features in the outlined face of Ninias, 'esteemed no
man of war at all, but altogether feminine, and subjected to ease and
delicacy,' the successor of valiant Queen Semiramis, too laborious a
princess, as Ralegh held, to have been vicious.

[Sidenote: _Threatened Suppression._]

Commonly it has been believed that the King's sympathy with his caste
provoked him to the monstrosity of an attempt to stifle its censor's
volume. Chamberlain wrote to Carleton at Venice on January 5, 1615: 'Sir
Walter Ralegh's book is called in by the King's commandment, for divers
exceptions, but specially for being too saucy in censuring princes. I
hear he takes it much to heart, for he thought he had won his spurs, and
pleased the King extraordinarily.' The author of the _Observations on
Sanderson's History_ in 1656 writes to the same effect, but somewhat
less definitely: 'It is well known King James forbad the book for some
passages in it which offended the Spaniards, and for being too plain
with the faults of princes in his preface.' There is no other evidence,
and the majority of Ralegh's biographers have simply accepted the fact
on the authority of Chamberlain's assertion. Yet it is almost incredible
that so extreme an act of prerogative, carried out against so remarkable
a work, should have been suffered to pass without popular prote