'OUR cousin of Scotland'was ugly,awkward,and shuffling both in mind and person.His tongue was much too large for his mouth,his legs were much too weak for his body,and his dull goggle-eyes stared and rolled like an idiot's.He was cunning,covetous,wasteful,idle,drunken,greedy,dirty,cowardly,a great swearer,and the most conceited man on earth.His figure-what is commonly called rickety from his birth-presented a most ridiculous appearance,dressed in thick padded clothes,as a safeguard against being stabbed (of which he lived in continual fear),of a grass-green colour from head to foot,with a hunting-horn dangling at his side instead of a sword,and his hat and feather sticking over one eye,or hanging on the back of his head,as he happened to toss it on.He used to loll on the necks of his favourite courtiers,and slobber their faces,and kiss and pinch their cheeks;and the greatest favourite he ever had,used to sign himself in his letters to his royal master,His Majesty's 'dog and slave,'and used to address his majesty as 'his Sowship.'His majesty was the worst rider ever seen,and thought himself the best.He was one of the most impertinent talkers (in the broadest Scotch)ever heard,and boasted of being unanswerable in all manner of argument.He wrote some of the most wearisome treatises ever read-among others,a book upon witchcraft,in which he was a devout believer-and thought himself a prodigy of authorship.He thought,and wrote,and said,that a king had a right to make and unmake what laws he pleased,and ought to be accountable to nobody on earth.This is the plain,true character of the personage whom the greatest men about the court praised and flattered to that degree,that I doubt if there be anything much more shameful in the annals of human nature.
He came to the English throne with great ease.The miseries of a disputed succession had been felt so long,and so dreadfully,that he was proclaimed within a few hours of Elizabeth's death,and was accepted by the nation,even without being asked to give any pledge that he would govern well,or that he would redress crying grievances.He took a month to come from Edinburgh to London;and,by way of exercising his new power,hanged a pickpocket on the journey without any trial,and knighted everybody he could lay hold of.He made two hundred knights before he got to his palace in London,and seven hundred before he had been in it three months.
He also shovelled sixty-two new peers into the House of Lords-and there was a pretty large sprinkling of Scotchmen among them,you may believe.
His Sowship's prime Minister,CECIL (for I cannot do better than call his majesty what his favourite called him),was the enemy of Sir Walter Raleigh,and also of Sir Walter's political friend,LORD COBHAM;and his Sowship's first trouble was a plot originated by these two,and entered into by some others,with the old object of seizing the King and keeping him in imprisonment until he should change his ministers.There were Catholic priests in the plot,and there were Puritan noblemen too;for,although the Catholics and Puritans were strongly opposed to each other,they united at this time against his Sowship,because they knew that he had a design against both,after pretending to be friendly to each;this design being to have only one high and convenient form of the Protestant religion,which everybody should be bound to belong to,whether they liked it or not.This plot was mixed up with another,which may or may not have had some reference to placing on the throne,at some time,the LADY ARABELLA STUART;whose misfortune it was,to be the daughter of the younger brother of his Sowship's father,but who was quite innocent of any part in the scheme.Sir Walter Raleigh was accused on the confession of Lord Cobham-a miserable creature,who said one thing at one time,and another thing at another time,and could be relied upon in nothing.The trial of Sir Walter Raleigh lasted from eight in the morning until nearly midnight;he defended himself with such eloquence,genius,and spirit against all accusations,and against the insults of COKE,the Attorney-General-who,according to the custom of the time,foully abused him-that those who went there detesting the prisoner,came away admiring him,and declaring that anything so wonderful and so captivating was never heard.He was found guilty,nevertheless,and sentenced to death.Execution was deferred,and he was taken to the Tower.The two Catholic priests,less fortunate,were executed with the usual atrocity;and Lord Cobham and two others were pardoned on the scaffold.His Sowship thought it wonderfully knowing in him to surprise the people by pardoning these three at the very block;but,blundering,and bungling,as usual,he had very nearly overreached himself.For,the messenger on horseback who brought the pardon,came so late,that he was pushed to the outside of the crowd,and was obliged to shout and roar out what he came for.The miserable Cobham did not gain much by being spared that day.He lived,both as a prisoner and a beggar,utterly despised,and miserably poor,for thirteen years,and then died in an old outhouse belonging to one of his former servants.
This plot got rid of,and Sir Walter Raleigh safely shut up in the Tower,his Sowship held a great dispute with the Puritans on their presenting a petition to him,and had it all his own way-not so very wonderful,as he would talk continually,and would not hear anybody else-and filled the Bishops with admiration.It was comfortably settled that there was to be only one form of religion,and that all men were to think exactly alike.But,although this was arranged two centuries and a half ago,and although the arrangement was supported by much fining and imprisonment,I do not find that it is quite successful,even yet.