the liberties and rights of his subjects.”  He who came to scoff remained to pray.  Thus a lawyer, in examining the laws of James the First, concludes by approaching nearer to the truth:  the step was a bold one!  He says, “It is at present a sort of fashion to suppose that this king, because he was a pedant, had no real understanding, or merit.”  Had Daines Barrington been asked for proofs of the pedantry of James the First, he had been still more perplexed; but what can be more convincing than a lawyer, on a review of the character of James the First, being struck, as he tells us, by “his desire of being instructed in the English law, and holding frequent conferences for this purpose with the most eminent lawyers,—­as Sir Edward Coke, and others!” Such was the monarch whose character was perpetually reproached for indolent habits, and for exercising arbitrary power!  Even Mr. Brodie, the vehement adversary of the Stuarts, quotes and admires James’s prescient decision on the character of Laud in that remarkable conversation with Buckingham and Prince Charles recorded by Hacket.[B]

[Footnote A:  See “Curiosities of Literature,” vol. iii. p. 334.]

[Footnote B:  Brodie’s “History of British Empire,” vol. ii. p. 244, 411.]

But let us leave these moderns perpetuating traditional prejudices, and often to the fiftieth echo, still sounding with no voice of its own, to learn what the unprejudiced contemporaries of James I. thought of the cause of the disorders of their age.  They were alike struck by the wisdom and the zeal of the monarch, and the prevalent discontents of this long reign of peace.  At first, says the continuator of Stowe, all ranks but those “who were settled in piracy,” as he designates the cormorants of war, and curiously enumerates their classes, “were right joyful of the peace; but, in a few years afterwards, all the benefits were generally forgotten, and the happiness of the general peace of the most part contemned.”  The honest annalist accounts for this unexpected result by the natural reflection—­“Such is the world’s corruption, and man’s vile ingratitude."[A] My philosophy enables me to advance but little beyond.  A learned contemporary, Sir Symond D’Ewes, in his manuscript diary, notices the death of the monarch, whom he calls “our learned and peaceable sovereign.”—­“It did not a little amaze me to see all men generally slight and disregard the loss of so mild and gentle a prince, which made me even to feel, that the ensuing times might yet render his loss more sensible, and his memory more dear unto posterity.”  Sir Symond censures the king for not engaging in the German war to support the Palsgrave, and maintain “the true church of God;” but deeper politicians have applauded the king for avoiding a war, in which he could not essentially have served the interests of the rash prince who had assumed the title of King of Bohemia.[B] “Yet,” adds Sir Symond, “if we consider his virtues and his learning, his augmenting the liberties of the English, rather than his oppressing them by any unlimited or illegal taxes and corrosions, his death deserved more sorrow and condolement from his subjects than it found."[C]