princess, the king's daughter, to the elector palatine, who arrived in England
for the purpose on the 16th of October, 1612, prince Henry was cut off by
death, on the 6th of November, having been taken ill the very day before the
elector's arrival. This young prince was eminently distinguished by piety
and honour, amiable manners and literary habits. His death-bed was cheered
by the practice and consolations of the religion to which, amidst the seductions
of a court, he had adhered in life, and he died, lamented by his family and
country, in the nineteenth year of his age.
In February, 1613, the princess Elizabeth was married to the elector palatine-not, it is said, without the dissatisfaction of her father. The preparations,however, were of the most splendid kind; so that means were again adopted to supply the royal wants, as also in the following year.
In 1615, James paid a visit to the university of Cambridge, where he resided in Trinity college, and was received with many literary exhibitions, in the form of disputations, sermons, plays, and orations. In this year he wrote his "Remonstrance for the right of kings, and the independence of their crowns," in answer to a speech delivered at Paris in January by cardinal Perron, who sent it to James. This year also occurred the celebrated trials for the murder of Overbury, in the examinations previous to which James personally engaged. He had now lost his enthusiastic attachment to Carr, the person chiefly accused of this foul deed, whom he had created earl of Somerset, and who had lately been replaced in his affections by Villiers, the royal cup-bearer, whom he knighted, and appointed a gentleman of the bed-chamber, and whom he gradually advanced, until he was created duke of Buckingham.
In 1617, after some changes in the court, James paid a visit to Scotland, leaving Bacon as principal administrator in his absence. On this occasion literary exhibitions were presented to him by the universities of Edinburgh and St Andrews, and he also amused himself with his favourite sport. But he soon proceeded to enforce the customs of the English hierarchy on the Scottish people—a measure which, notwithstanding considerable encouragement from a General Assembly, which had been convoked with a view to the proposed alterations, the nation in general deemed an infringement of a promise he had made many years before, and which they succeeded, to a considerable degree, in resisting.
The following year was marked by another act of cruelty. Sir Walter Raleigh, who had been confined in the Tower for twelve years, on the charge of having been engaged in a Spanish conspiracy, but had at last obtained release from his imprisonment, was condemned and executed, in consequence of his marked misconduct in an expedition to explore a mine in Guiana, which he had represented to the king as well fitted to enrich his exchequer. His execution, it will scarcely be doubted, was owing to the influence of Gondomar, the Spanish ambassador, an enemy of Raleigh at the English court, in prospect of a marriage between prince Charles and the Spanish infanta. Soon after the queen died,—a woman who seems to have been by no means destitute of estimable qualities, but still more remarkable for the splendour of her entertainments, to which Ben Jonson and other writers contributed largely of their wit. Indeed that eminent dramatist seems to have been a person of considerable consequence at the English court. At this time James's own literary character was exhibited to the world in a folio edition of his works, edited, with a preface well seasoned with flattery, by the bishop of Winchester. Soon after, on an application from prince Maurice for the appointment of some English divines, as members of a council for the settlement of the controversy between the Arminians and Gomarists, which was held at Dort in November, 1618, five learned men were nominated on
