narch whose character was perpetually reproached for indolent habits,
and for exercising arbitrary power! Even Mr. Brodie, the vehement
adversary of the Stuarts, quotes and admires James's prescient decision on
the character of Laud in that remarkable conversation with Buckingham and
Prince Charles recorded by Hacket.[B]

[Footnote A: See "Curiosities of Literature," vol. iii. p. 334.]

[Footnote B: Brodie's "History of British Empire," vol. ii. p. 244, 411.]

But let us leave these moderns perpetuating traditional prejudices, and
often to the fiftieth echo, still sounding with no voice of its own, to
learn what the unprejudiced contemporaries of James I. thought of the
cause of the disorders of their age. They were alike struck by the wisdom
and the zeal of the monarch, and the prevalent discontents of this long
reign of peace. At first, says the continuator of Stowe, all ranks but
those "who were settled in piracy," as he designates the cormorants of
war, and curiously enumerates their classes, "were right joyful of the
peace; but, in a few years afterwards, all the benefits were generally
forgotten, and the happiness of the general peace of the most part
contemned." The honest annalist accounts for this unexpected result by the
natural reflection--"Such is the world's corruption, and man's vile
ingratitude."[A] My philosophy enables me to advance but little beyond. A
learned contemporary, Sir Symond D'Ewes, in his manuscript diary, notices
the death of the monarch, whom he calls "our learned and peaceable
sovereign."--"It did not a little amaze me to see all men generally slight
and disregard the loss of so mild and gentle a prince, which made me even
to feel, that the ensuing times might yet render his loss more sensible,
and his memory more dear unto posterity." Sir Symond censures the king for
not engaging in the German war to support the Palsgrave, and maintain "the
true church of God;" but deeper politicians have applauded the king for
avoiding a war, in which he could not essentially have served the
interests of the rash prince who had assumed the title of King of
Bohemia.[B] "Yet," adds Sir Symond, "if we consider his virtues and his
learning, his augmenting the liberties of the English, rather than his
oppressing them by any unlimited or illegal taxes and corrosions, his
death deserved more sorrow and condolement from his subjects than it
found."[C]

[Footnote A: Stowe's Annals, p. 845.]

[Footnote B: See