their opponents in England, like the opponents of their
ancestors in Scotland, were aristocrats; and they supposed, that, as
aristocratical movements in their Northern kingdom had always been
subversive of order and peace, the same kind of movements would
produce similar results in their Southern kingdom. They could not
understand that one aristocracy may differ much from another, and
that, while in Scotland the interest of the people, or rather of the
whole nation, required the exaltation of the kingly power, in England
it was that exaltation which was most to be feared. Sufficient
allowance has not been made for the Stuarts in this respect, little
regard being paid to the effect of the family's long training at home,
which had rendered hostility to the nobility second nature to it. Had
the Stuarts been the supporters of liberal ideas in England, their
conduct would have given the lie to every known principle of human
action. As their distrust of aristocracy rendered them despotically
disposed, because the Scotch aristocracy had been the most lawless of
mankind, so did they become attached to the Church of England because
of the tyranny they had seen displayed by the Church of Scotland, the
most illiberal ecclesiastical body, in those times, that men had ever
seen, borne with, or suffered from. James I. and his grandson Charles
II. had their whole conduct colored, and dyed in the wool, too, by
their recollections of the odious treatment to which they had
been subjected by a harsh and intolerant clergy. They had not the
magnanimity to overlook, in the day of their power, what they had
suffered in the day of their weakness.

James I. undoubtedly disliked his eldest son, and was jealous of him;
but it is by no means clear that he killed him, or caused him to
be killed. He used to say of him, "What! will he bury me alive?"
He ordered that the court should not go into mourning for Henry, a
circumstance that makes in his favor, as murderers are apt to affect
all kinds of hypocrisy in regard to their victims, and to weep in
weeds very copiously. Yet his conduct may have been a refinement of
hypocrisy, and, though a coward in the common acceptation of the word,
James had much of that peculiar kind of hardihood which enables its
possessor to treat commonly received ideas with contempt. His conduct
in "The Great Oyer of Poisoning" was most extraordinary, it must
be allowed, and is not reconcilable with innocence; but it does not