CHAPTER VIII
THE EARLY STUARTS AND THE GREAT CIVIL WAR, 1603–1660
James I, 1603–25; his character.Henry VIII and Elizabeth had given England unity and patriotism. Would the next race of Kings, the Stuarts, be able to maintain unity? That was the question which every one was asking while King James I was slowly riding from Scotland to London in 1603. James, of whom you may read the character in Sir Walter Scott's beautiful story, The Fortunes of Nigel, was already thirty-five, ‘an old king’, he said; and he had had a miserable time in Scotland between the turbulent nobles and the Presbyterian ministers who were always preaching at him. And he had been very poor. He knew England to be rich, and thought he was going to be a rich and great king. He was a firm and very learned Protestant, a kindly man, though irritable and conceited. He saw a great deal farther than most of his subjects saw, but he never understood the temper of the English people; and above all he did not know, as the Tudors had known, when he had ‘come to the place called Stop’. You might describe him as
A shifty mother’s shiftless son,
Bred up among intrigues and plots,
Learned in all things, wise in none!
Ungainly, babbling, wasteful, weak,
Shrewd, clever, cowardly, pedantic,
The sight of steel would blanch his cheek,
The smell of baccy drive him frantic.
