the Anglican Church
recognized for its head the temporal chief of the State. In Holland he
vehemently denounced the Arminians, indecently persecuting their
preachers and statesmen, who were contending for exactly the same
principle--the supremacy of State over Church. He sentenced Bartholomew
Legate to be burned alive in Smithfield as a blasphemous heretic, and did
his best to compel the States of Holland to take the life of Professor
Vorstius of Leyden. He persecuted the Presbyterians in England as
furiously as he defended them in Holland. He drove Bradford and Carver
into the New England wilderness, and applauded Gomarus and Walaeus and
the other famous leaders of the Presbyterian party in the Netherlands
with all his soul and strength.

He united with the French king in negotiations for Netherland
independence, while denouncing the Provinces as guilty of criminal
rebellion against their lawful sovereign.

"He pretends," said Jeannin, "to assist in bringing about the peace, and
nevertheless does his best openly to prevent it."

Richardot declared that the firmness of the King of Spain proceeded
entirely from reliance on the promise of James that there should be no
acknowledgment in the treaty of the liberty of the States. Henry wrote to
Jeannin that he knew very well "what that was capable of, but that he
should not be kept awake by anything he could do."

As a king he spent his reign--so much of it as could be spared from
gourmandizing, drunkenness, dalliance with handsome minions of his own
sex, and theological pursuits--in rescuing the Crown from dependence on
Parliament; in straining to the utmost the royal prerogative; in
substituting proclamations for statutes; in doing everything in his
power, in short, to smooth the path for his successor to the scaffold. As
father of a family he consecrated many years of his life to the wondrous
delusion of the Spanish marriages.

The Gunpowder Plot seemed to have inspired him with an insane desire for
that alliance, and few things in history are more amazing than the
persistency with which he pursued the scheme, until the pursuit became
not only ridiculous, but impossible.

With such a man, frivolous, pedantic, conceited, and licentious, the
earnest statesmen of Holland were forced into close alliance. It is
pathetic to see men like Barneveld and Hugo Grotius obliged, on great
occasions of state, to use the language of respect and affection to one
by whom they were h