een
surmised to have borne some analogy to the horrid Capraea of Tiberius; but
a witness has accidentally detailed the king's uniform life in these
occasional seclusions. James I. withdrew at times from public life, but
not from public affairs; and hunting, to which he then gave alternate
days, was the cheap amusement and requisite exercise of his sedentary
habits: but the chase only occupied a few hours. A part of the day was
spent by the king in his private studies; another at his dinners, where he
had a reader, and was perpetually sending to Cambridge for books of
reference: state affairs were transacted at night; for it was observed, at
the time, that his secretaries sat up later at night, in those occasional
retirements, than when they were at London.[A] I have noticed, that the
state papers were composed by himself; that he wrote letters on important
occasions without consulting any one; and that he derived little aid from
his secretaries. James was probably never indolent; but the uniform life
and sedentary habits of literary men usually incur this reproach from
those real idlers who bustle in a life of nothingness. While no one loved
more the still-life of peace than this studious monarch, whose habits
formed an agreeable combination of the contemplative and the active life,
study and business--no king more zealously tried to keep down the growing
abuses of his government, by personally concerning himself in the
protection of the subject.[B]

[Footnote A: Hacket's Scrinia Reserata, Part I. p. 27.]

[Footnote B: As evidences of this zeal for reform, I throw into this note
some extracts from the MS. letters of contemporaries.--Of the king's
interference between the judges of two courts about prohibitions, Sir
Dudley Carleton gives this account:--"The king played the best part in
collecting arguments on both sides, and concluded that he saw much
endeavour to draw water to their several mills; and advised them to take
moderate courses, whereby the good of the subject might be more respected
than their particular jurisdictions. The king sat also at the Admiralty,
to look himself into certain disorders of government there; he told the
lawyers 'he would leave hunting of hares, and hunt them in their quirks
and subtilities, with which the subject had been too long abused.'"--MS.
Letter of Sir Dudley Carleton.

In "Winwood's Memorials of State" there is a letter from Lord Northampton,
who was present at one of these st