the scarcity of provisions. Meanwhile a pestilential distemper crept in
among the English forces, so long cooped up in narrow vessels. Half
the army died while on board; and the other half, weakened by sickness,
appeared too small a body to march into the Palatinate.[*]

{1625.} And thus ended this ill-concerted and fruitless expedition;
the only disaster which happened to England during the prosperous and
pacific reign of James.

That reign was now drawing towards a conclusion. With peace, so
successfully cultivated, and so passionately loved by this monarch, his
life also terminated. This spring, he was seized with a tertian ague;
and, when encouraged by his courtiers with the common proverb, that such
a distemper, during that season, was health for a king, he replied, that
the proverb was meant of a young king. After some fits, he found himself
extremely weakened, and sent for the prince, whom he exhorted to bear a
tender affection for his wife, but to preserve a constancy in religion;
to protect the church of England; and to extend his care towards
the unhappy family of the palatine.[**] With decency and courage, he
prepared himself for his end; and he expired on the twenty-seventh of
March, after a reign over England of twenty-two years and some days, and
in the fifty-ninth year of his age. His reign over Scotland was almost
of equal duration with his life. In all history, it would be difficult
to find a reign less illustrious, yet more unspotted and unblemished,
than that of James in both kingdoms.

* Franklyn, p. 104. Rushworth, vol. i. p. 154. Dugdale, p.
24.

** Rushworth, vol. i. p. 155.

No prince, so little enterprising and so inoffensive, was ever so much
exposed to the opposite extremes of calumny and flattery, of satire
and panegyric. And the factions which began in his time, being still
continued, have made his character be as much disputed to this day, as
is commonly that of princes who are our contemporaries. Many virtues,
however, it must be owned, he was possessed of, but scarce any of
them pure, or free from the contagion of the neighboring vices. His
generosity bordered on profusion, his learning on pedantry, his pacific
disposition on pusillanimity, his wisdom on cunning, his friendship
on light fancy and boyish fondness. While he imagined that he was only
maintaining his own authority, he may, perhaps, be suspected, in a few
of his actions, and still more of his pretensions,