s which it had hitherto looked upon as one. Not only
did it disperse to every corner of the realm a crowd of great landowners
and great merchants who formed centres of local opposition to the royal
system, but it carried to every shire and every borough the news that
the Monarchy had broken with the Great Council of the realm.

[Sidenote: James his own minister.]

On Cecil his failure fell like a sentence of doom. Steeped as he was in
the Tudor temper, he could not understand an age when the Tudor system
had become impossible; the mood of the Commons and the mood of the king
were alike unintelligible to him. He could see no ground for the failure
of the Great Contract save that "God had not blessed it." But he had
little time to wonder at the new forces which were rising about him, for
only a year after the dissolution, in May 1612, he died, killed by
overwork. With him died the last check on the policy of James. So long
as Cecil lived the Elizabethan tradition, weakened and broken as it
might be, lived with him. In foreign affairs there was still the
conviction that the Protestant states must not be abandoned in any fresh
struggle with the House of Austria. In home affairs there was still the
conviction that the national strength hung on the establishment of
good-will between the nation and the Crown. But traditions such as these
were no longer to hamper the policy of the king. To him Cecil's death
seemed only to afford an opportunity for taking further strides towards
the establishment of a purely personal rule. For eight years James had
borne with the check of a powerful minister. He was resolved now to have
no real minister but himself. Cecil's amazing capacity for toil, as well
as his greed of power, had already smoothed the way for such a step.
The great statesman had made a political solitude about him. Of his
colleagues some had been removed by death, some set aside by his
jealousy. Ralegh lay in prison; Bacon could not find office under the
Crown. And now that Cecil was removed, there was no minister whose
character or capacity seemed to give him any right to fill his place.
James could at last be his own minister. The treasury was put into
commission. The post of secretary was left vacant, and it was announced
that the king would be his own Secretary of State. Such an arrangement
soon broke down, and the great posts of state were again filled with men
of whose dependence James felt sure. But whoever might nomi