[Footnote A:  Sir Edward Coke, attorney-general, in the trial of Garnet the Jesuit, says, “There were no Recusants in England—­all came to church howsoever Popishly inclined, till the Bull of Pius V. excommunicated and deposed Elizabeth.  On this the Papists refused to join in the public service.”—­“State Trials,” vol. i. p. 242.

The Pope imagined, by false impressions he had received, that the Catholic party was strong enough to prevail against Elizabeth.  Afterwards, when he found his error, a dispensation was granted by himself and his successor, that all Catholics might show outward obedience to Elizabeth till a happier opportunity.  Such are Catholic politics and Catholic faith!]

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POLEMICAL STUDIES WERE POLITICAL.

It was in these times that James I., a learned prince, applied to polemical studies; properly understood, these were in fact political ones.  Lord Bolingbroke says, “He affected more learning than became a king, which he broached on every occasion in such a manner as would have misbecome a schoolmaster.”  Would the politician then require a half-learned king, or a king without any learning at all?  Our eloquent sophist appears not to have recollected that polemical studies had long with us been considered as royal ones; and that from a slender volume of the sort our sovereigns still derive the regal distinction of “Defenders of the Faith.”  The pacific government of James I. required that the King himself should be a master of these controversies to be enabled to balance the conflicting parties; and none but a learned king could have exerted the industry or attained to the skill.  In the famous conference at Hampton Court, which the King held with the heads of the Nonconformists, we see his majesty conversing sometimes with great learning and sense, but oftener more with the earnestness of a man, than some have imagined comported with the dignity of a crowned head.  The truth is, James, like a true student, indulged, even to his dress, an utter carelessness of parade, and there was in his character a constitutional warmth of heart and a jocundity of temper which did not always adapt it to state-occasions; he threw out his feelings, and sometimes his jests.  James, who had passed his youth in a royal bondage, felt that these Nonconformists, while they were debating small points, were reserving for hereafter their great ones; were cloaking their republicanism by their theology, and, like all other politicians, that their ostensible were not their real motives.[A] Harris and Neale, the organs of the Nonconformists, inveigh against James; even Hume, with the philosophy of the eighteenth century, has pronounced that the king was censurable “for entering zealously into these frivolous disputes of theology.”  Lord Bolingbroke declares that the king held this conference “in haste to show his parts.”  Thus a man of genius substitutes suggestion and assertion for accuracy