be of little
worth to our history had he not happened to occupy the place he did. But
he was a leading actor in the mournful drama which filled up the whole
period of the Twelve Years' Truce. His words had a direct influence on
great events. He was a man of unquestionable erudition, of powers of mind
above the average, while the absolute deformity of his moral constitution
made him incapable of thinking, feeling, or acting rightly on any vital
subject, by any accident or on any occasion. If there were one thing that
he thoroughly hated in the world, it was the Reformed religion. If in his
thought there were one term of reproach more loathsome than another to be
applied to a human creature, it was the word Puritan. In the word was
subversion of all established authority in Church and State--revolution,
republicanism, anarchy. "There are degrees in Heaven," he was wont to
say, "there are degrees in Hell, there must be degrees on earth."

He forbade the Calvinist Churches of Scotland to hold their customary
Synod in 1610, passionately reviling them and their belief, and declaring
"their aim to be nothing else than to deprive kings and princes of their
sovereignty, and to reduce the whole world to a popular form of
government where everybody would be master."

When the Prince of Neuburg embraced Catholicism, thus complicating
matters in the duchies and strengthening the hand of Spain and the
Emperor in the debateable land, he seized the occasion to assure the
agent of the Archduke in London, Councillor Boissetot, of his warm
Catholic sympathies. "They say that I am the greatest heretic in the
world!" he exclaimed; "but I will never deny that the true religion is
that of Rome even if corrupted." He expressed his belief in the real
presence, and his surprise that the Roman Catholics did not take the
chalice for the blood of Christ. The English bishops, he averred, drew
their consecration through the bishops in Mary Tudor's time from the
Pope.

As Philip II., and Ferdinand II. echoing the sentiments of his
illustrious uncle, had both sworn they would rather reign in a wilderness
than tolerate a single heretic in their dominions, so James had said "he
would rather be a hermit in a forest than a king over such people as the
pack of Puritans were who overruled the lower house."

For the Netherlanders he had an especial hatred, both as rebels and
Puritans. Soon after coming to the English throne he declared that their
revolt,