ere many occasions moving princes to treat of
great affairs although often without any effective issue.

At that moment too the King was in a state of vehement wrath with the
Spanish Netherlands on account of a stinging libel against himself, "an
infamous and wonderfully scandalous pamphlet," as he termed it, called
'Corona Regis', recently published at Louvain. He had sent Sir John
Bennet as special ambassador to the Archdukes to demand from them justice
and condign and public chastisement on the author of the work--a rector
Putianus as he believed, successor of Justus Lipsius in his professorship
at Louvain--and upon the printer, one Flaminius. Delays and excuses
having followed instead of the punishment originally demanded, James had
now instructed his special envoy in case of further delay or evasion to
repudiate all further friendship or intercourse with the Archduke, to
ratify the recall of his minister-resident Trumbull, and in effect to
announce formal hostilities.

"The King takes the thing wonderfully to heart," said Caron.

James in effect hated to be made ridiculous, and we shall have occasion
to see how important a part other publications which he deemed
detrimental to the divinity of his person were to play in these affairs.

Meantime it was characteristic of this sovereign that--while ready to
talk of war with Philip's brother-in-law for a pamphlet, while seeking
the hand of Philip's daughter for his son--he was determined at the very
moment when the world was on fire to take himself, the heaven-born
extinguisher of all political conflagrations, away from affairs and to
seek the solace of along holiday in Scotland. His counsellors
persistently and vehemently implored him to defer that journey until the
following year at least, all the neighbouring nations being now in a
state of war and civil commotion. But it was in vain. He refused to
listen to them for a moment, and started for Scotland before the middle
of March.

Conde, who had kept France in a turmoil, had sought aid alternately from
the Calvinists at Grenoble and the Jesuits in Rome, from Spain and from
the Netherlands, from the Pope and from Maurice of Nassau, had thus been
caged at last. But there was little gained. There was one troublesome but
incompetent rebel the less, but there was no king in the land. He who
doubts the influence of the individual upon the fate of a country and
upon his times through long passages of history may explain