[Sidenote:  Letter to King James]

And the first notable occasion of shewing his fitness for this employment of Orator was manifested in a letter to King James, upon the occasion of his sending that University his book called “Basilicon Doron;"[9] and their Orator was to acknowledge this great honour, and return their gratitude to his Majesty for such a condescension; at the close of which letter he writ,

  Quid Vaticanam Bodleianamque objicis, hospes! 
    Unicus est nobis Bibliotheca Liber.

This letter was writ in such excellent Latin, was so full of conceits, and all the expressions so suited to the genius of the King, that he enquired the Orator’s name, and then asked William Earl of Pembroke, if he knew him? whose answer was, “That he knew him very well, and that he was his kinsman; but he loved him more for his learning and virtue, than for that he was of his name and family.”  At which answer the King smiled, and asked the Earl leave that he might love him too, for he took him to be the jewel of that University.

[Sidenote:  Andrew Melville]

[Sidenote:  Herbert’s answers]

[Sidenote:  Lady Arabella Stuart]

The next occasion he had and took to shew his great abilities, was, with them, to shew also his great affection to that Church in which he received his baptism, and of which he professed himself a member; and the occasion was this:  There was one Andrew Melvin,[10] a Minister of the Scotch Church, and Rector of St. Andrew’s; who, by a long and constant converse with a discontented part of that Clergy which opposed Episcopacy, became at last to be a chief leader of that faction; and had proudly appeared to be so to King James, when he was but King of that nation, who, the second year after his Coronation in England, convened a part of the Bishops, and other learned Divines of his Church, to attend him at Hampton-Court, in order to a friendly conference with some dissenting brethren, both of this and the Church of Scotland:  of which Scotch party Andrew Melvin was one; and he being a man of learning, and inclined to satirical poetry, had scattered many malicious, bitter verses against our Liturgy, our ceremonies, and our Church-government; which were by some of that party so magnified for the wit, that they were therefore brought into Westminster School, where Mr. George Herbert, then, and often after, made such answers to them, and such reflections on him and his Kirk, as might unbeguile any man that was not too deeply pre-engaged in such a quarrel.—­But to return to Mr. Melvin at Hampton-Court Conference;[11] he there appeared to be a man of an unruly wit, of a strange confidence, of so furious a zeal, and of so ungoverned passions, that his insolence to the King, and others at this Conference, lost him both his Rectorship of St. Andrew’s and his liberty too; for his former verses, and his present reproaches there used against the Church and State, caused him to be committed prisoner to the Tower of London; where he remained very angry for three years.  At which time of his commitment, he found the Lady Arabella[12] an innocent prisoner there; and he pleased himself much in sending, the next day after his commitment, these two verses to the good lady; which I will underwrite, because they may give the Reader a taste of his others, which were like these.