it serves the purpose of inconsiderate writers to indicate his excessive pusillanimity; but there is another idle tale of an opposite nature which is certainly true:—­In passing from Berwick into his new kingdom, the king, with his own hand, “shot out of a cannon so fayre and with so great judgment” as convinced the cannoniers of the king’s skill “in great artillery,” as Stowe records.  It is probable, after all, that James I. was not deficient in personal courage, although this is not of consequence in his literary and political character.  Several instances are recorded of his intrepidity.  But the absurd charge of his pusillanimity and his pedantry has been carried so far, as to suppose that it affected his character as a sovereign.  The warm and hasty Burnet says at once of James I.:—­“He was despised by all abroad as a pedant without true judgment, courage, or steadiness.”  This “pedant,” however, had “the true judgment and steadiness” to obtain his favourite purpose, which was the preservation of a continued peace.  If James I. was sometimes despised by foreign powers, it was because an insular king, who will not consume the blood and treasure of his people (and James had neither to spare), may be little regarded on the Continent; the Machiavels of foreign cabinets will look with contempt on the domestic blessings a British sovereign would scatter among his subjects; his presence with the foreigners is only felt in his armies; and they seek to allure him to fight their battles, and to involve him in their interests.

James looked with a cold eye on the military adventurer:  he said, “No man gains by war but he that hath not wherewith to live in peace.”  But there was also a secret motive, which made the king a lover of peace, and which he once thus confidentially opened:—­

“A king of England had no reason but to seek always to decline a war; for though the sword was indeed in his hand, the purse was in the people’s.  One could not go without the other.  Suppose a supply were levied to begin the fray, what certainty could he have that he should not want sufficient to make an honourable end?  If he called for subsidies, and did not obtain, he must retreat ingloriously.  He must beg an alms, with such conditions as would break the heart of majesty, through capitulations that some members would make, who desire to improve the reputation of their wisdom, by retrenching the dignity of the crown in popular declamations, and thus he must buy the soldier’s pay, or fear the danger of a mutiny."[A]

[Footnote A:  Hacket’s “Life of Lord-Keeper Williams,” p. 80.  The whole is distinguished by italics, as the king’s own words.]

* * * * *

JAMES ACKNOWLEDGES HIS DEPENDENCE ON THE COMMONS. THEIR CONDUCT.

Thus James I., perpetually accused of exercising arbitrary power, confesses a humiliating dependence on the Commons; and, on the whole, at a time when prerogative and privilege were alike indefinite and obscure, the king received from them hard and rigorous usage.  A king of peace claimed the indulgence, if not the gratitude, of the people; and the sovereign who was zealous to correct the abuses of his government, was not distinguished by the Commons from him who insolently would perpetuate them.