nce of the effects of sympathy over the infant in the womb from his
mother's terror at the assassination of Rizzio, is probably not true, yet
it serves the purpose of inconsiderate writers to indicate his excessive
pusillanimity; but there is another idle tale of an opposite nature which
is certainly true:--In passing from Berwick into his new kingdom, the
king, with his own hand, "shot out of a cannon so fayre and with so great
judgment" as convinced the cannoniers of the king's skill "in great
artillery," as Stowe records. It is probable, after all, that James I.
was not deficient in personal courage, although this is not of consequence
in his literary and political character. Several instances are recorded
of his intrepidity. But the absurd charge of his pusillanimity and
his pedantry has been carried so far, as to suppose that it affected
his character as a sovereign. The warm and hasty Burnet says at once of
James I.:--"He was despised by all abroad as a pedant without true
judgment, courage, or steadiness." This "pedant," however, had "the true
judgment and steadiness" to obtain his favourite purpose, which was the
preservation of a continued peace. If James I. was sometimes despised by
foreign powers, it was because an insular king, who will not consume the
blood and treasure of his people (and James had neither to spare), may be
little regarded on the Continent; the Machiavels of foreign cabinets will
look with contempt on the domestic blessings a British sovereign would
scatter among his subjects; his presence with the foreigners is only felt
in his armies; and they seek to allure him to fight their battles, and to
involve him in their interests.

James looked with a cold eye on the military adventurer: he said, "No man
gains by war but he that hath not wherewith to live in peace." But there
was also a secret motive, which made the king a lover of peace, and which
he once thus confidentially opened:--

"A king of England had no reason but to seek always to decline a war; for
though the sword was indeed in his hand, the purse was in the people's.
One could not go without the other. Suppose a supply were levied to begin
the fray, what certainty could he have that he should not want sufficient
to make an honourable end? If he called for subsidies, and did not obtain,
he must retreat ingloriously. He must beg an alms, with such conditions as
would break the heart of majesty, through capitulations that _some members