hat country
under the faith of some secret engagement with James, had thought it
necessary to bribe him to fidelity by some brilliant promises, of which
when the danger was past Elizabeth unhandsomely evaded the fulfilment;
but even on this occasion he abstained from any vehement expressions of
indignation: in short, his whole demeanour towards his lofty kinswoman
was that of a submissive expectant much more than of a competitor and
rival prince. True it is, that he had begun to attach to himself among
her nobles and courtiers as many adherents as his means permitted; but
besides that his manoeuvres remained for the most part concealed from
her knowledge, they certainly carried with them no danger to her
government. The partisans of James were not, like those of his mother,
the adherents also of a religious faction leagued with the foreign
powers most inimical to her rule, and from whose machinations she was
exposed to daily peril of her throne and life. They were protestants and
Englishmen, and many of them possessed of such strong hereditary
influence or official rank, that it could never become their interest to
throw the country into confusion by ill-timed efforts in favor of the
king of Scots; whose cause they in fact embraced with no other view than
to secure the state from commotion, and themselves from the loss of
power on the event of the queen's demise. The puritan party indeed, by
whom several attempts were afterwards made in parliament to extort from
the queen a settlement of the crown in James's favor, were doubtless
actuated in part by discontent with the present church-establishment,
and the hope of seeing it superseded under James by a presbyterian form
resembling that of Scotland. For the present, however, these
religionists were sufficiently repressed under the iron rod of the
High-commission court, and James had entered with them into no regular
correspondence, and engaged their attachment by no promises of future
indulgence or support.

On the whole, therefore, the violent jealousy with which Elizabeth
continued to regard this feeble and inoffensive young king, in every
point so greatly her inferior, must rather be imputed to her narrowness
and malignity of temper than to any dictates of sound policy or
advisable precaution; and the measures with which it prompted her were
impressed accordingly with every character of spite and meanness. She
was peculiarly solicitous to prevent James from increasing