s were repressed, and he himself, and his
adherents, were brought in and well settled. Then, lo! they began to make
small account of her authority, and took the cause into their own hands."

This was a pointed political tale, appropriately told in the person of a
monarch.

The king was never deficient in the force and quickness of his arguments.
Even Neale, the great historian of the Puritans, complaining that
Dean Barlow has cut off some of the king's speeches, is reluctantly
compelled to tax himself with a high commendation of the monarch, who, he
acknowledges, on one of the days of this conference, spoke against the
corruptions of the church, and the practices of the prelates, insomuch
that Dr. Andrews, then dean of the chapel, said that his majesty did that
day wonderfully play the Puritan.[A] The king, indeed, was seriously
inclined to an union of parties. More than once he silenced the angry
tongue of Bancroft, and tempered the zeal of others; and even commended
when he could Dr. Reynolds, the chief of the Puritans; the king consented
to the only two important articles that side suggested; a new catechism
adapted to the people--"Let the weak be informed and the wilful be
punished," said the king; and that new translation of the Bible which
forms our present version. "But," added the king, "it must be without
marginal notes, for the Geneva Bible is the worst for them, full of
seditious conceits; Asa is censured for _only deposing_ his mother for
idolatry, and not _killing_ her." Thus early the dark spirit of Machiavel
had lighted on that of the ruthless Calvin. The grievances of our first
dissenters were futile--their innovations interminable; and we discover
the king's notions, at the close of a proclamation issued after this
conference: "Such is the desultory levity of some people, that they are
always languishing after change and novelty, insomuch that were they
humoured in their inconstancy, they would expose the public management,
and make the administration ridiculous." Such is the vigorous style of
James the First in his proclamations; and such is the political truth,
which will not die away with the conference at Hampton Court.

[Footnote A: The bishops of James I. were, as Fuller calls one of them,
"potent courtiers," and too worldly-minded men. Bancroft was a man of
vehement zeal, but of the most grasping avarice, as appears by an
epigrammatic epitaph on his death in Arthur Wilson--

"Here lies his g