James Stuart, the first King James of England, but the sixth of Scotland, was one of the most foolish and the most mischievous kings we ever had in England. He was the son of the unhappy Mary Queen of Scots, and after she was put in prison the first time, the Scotch lords made James king, though he was quite an infant. The lords gave him the best masters they could find to teach him, and he learned what was in books very well, but nobody could ever teach him how to behave wisely.

When Queen Elizabeth died, James, king of Scotland, became king of England, because he was Elizabeth’s cousin, and from that time England and Scotland have been under one king, and are called Great Britain.

As soon as James heard the queen was dead, he set out from Scotland to come to London; for as Scotland was then a very poor country, he and a great number of Scotchmen who came with him thought they had nothing to do but to come to England, and get all the money they could by all sorts of ways. Then he made so many lords and knights that people began to laugh at him and his new nobles. But, worst of all, he fancied that parliaments had no business to prevent kings from doing whatever they pleased, and taking money from their subjects whenever they liked.

You may think how vexed the English were when they found that they had a king so unfit for them, after their wise Queen Elizabeth.

The queen of James was Anne, the daughter of the King of Denmark. She was very extravagant, and loved feasts and balls, and acted plays herself, and filled the court with rioting, instead of the ladylike music and dancing, and poetry and needlework, that Queen Elizabeth and her ladies loved.

Instead of riding about among the people, and depending on their love and good will, James was always hiding himself; the only thing he seemed to love was hunting, and for the sake of that he neglected his people and his business.

The favourites he had were far from being useful, or wise, or brave. He chose them for their good looks and rosy cheeks, without inquiring anything about their behaviour.

He dealt severely with the Roman Catholics, whom he put in prison, and from whom he took a great deal of money. Then he disliked those Protestants who did not wish to have bishops as well as parish clergymen, and who are mostly called Presbyterians; but some were then named Puritans, and he would not let them alter the Prayer-book.

The Roman Catholics being tired of the ill usage they got from King James, some of them thought that, if they could kill him, they might take one of his young children to bring up themselves, and have a Roman Catholic king or queen, and get all England and Scotland for themselves. They thought besides, that they had better kill all the lords and all the gentlemen of the House of Commons too, and so get rid of the whole Protestant parliament.

From thinking wickedly they went on to do wickedly. They found there were some cellars under the houses of parliament, and they filled these cellars with gunpowder; and as they expected the parliament would meet in the house all together, with the king, on the fifth day of November, they hired a man called Guy Fawkes to set fire to the gunpowder, and so to blow it up, and kill everybody there at once.

Now, it happened that one of the lords, whose name was Mounteagle, had a friend among the Roman Catholics, and that friend wrote him a letter, without signing his name, to beg him not to go to the parliament that day, for that a sudden blow would be struck which would destroy them all. Lord Mounteagle took this letter to the king’s council. Some of the councillors laughed at it, and said it was only sent to frighten Lord Mounteagle. But the king took it, and after thinking a little, he said, the sudden blow must mean something to be done with gunpowder, and he set people to watch who went in and out of the vaults under the parliament-house; till at last, on the very night before the Roman Catholics hoped to kill the king and all those belonging to parliament, they caught Guy Fawkes with his dark lantern, waiting till the time should come for him to set fire to the gunpowder.

The king was very proud of having found out what the letter meant, and used to boast of it as long as he lived; but the truth is that the king’s clever minister, Sir Robert Cecil, had found out all about the plot, and managed to let James have all the credit.

So far I have only told you of the foolish behaviour of King James. I must now write about his mischievous actions.

His eldest son, Prince Henry, died very young; he was a sensible lad, and the people were sorry when he died, especially as his brother Charles was a sickly little boy.

Now, little Charles was a clever child, and had very good dispositions; and if he had been properly brought up, he would have been a good king, and a happy man. Instead of that, you will read that he was a bad king, and I daresay you will cry when you find how very unhappy he was at last.

James taught him that no power on earth had any right to find fault with the king, that the king’s power was given to him by God, and that it was a great sin to say that anything the king did was wrong. Thus he taught him to think that the people were made for nothing but to obey kings, and to labour and get money for kings to spend as they pleased, and that even the nobles were nothing but servants for kings; in short, he filled his poor little son’s mind with wrong thoughts, and never taught him that it was a king’s duty to do all the good he could, and to set an example of what is right.

Yet Charles had many good qualities, as you will read by-and-by. He was a good scholar, and loved books and clever men, and music, and pictures; and if he had only been taught his duty as a king properly, he would have done a great deal of good to England.

I have told you that James used to make favourites of people, without caring much about their goodness. One of his greatest favourites was George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, and he gave his son Charles to the Duke to take care of, just when he was grown up. The silly king used to call Buckingham, Steenie, and the prince, Baby Charles, although he was almost as big and as old as a man.

When the prince was old enough to be married, his father wished him to marry the Infanta of Spain. (In Spain the princes are called Infants, and the princesses Infantas.) Now the Duke of Buckingham wanted very much to go abroad, and show himself to all the princes and nobles in France and Spain, for he was very vain of his beauty and his fine clothes; so he put it into the prince’s head, to tell his father he would not marry, unless he would let him go to Spain with the Duke of Buckingham, and see the Infanta before he married her.

The poor foolish king began crying like a child, and begged his dear Steenie and Baby Charles not to go and leave him; but they laughed at him, and went and borrowed all his fine diamonds and pearls, to wear in their hats and round their necks, and took all the money they could get, and set off to go to Spain. They called themselves John Smith and Thomas Smith, and first they went to France.

Prince Charles found the ladies in the French court very pleasant and entertaining. It is true that several of them were not very good, but then they amused Charles, and he was particularly pleased with the Princess Henrietta Maria, who was pretty and merry, and appeared to like Charles very much.

They quickly pursued their journey through France to go to Spain, and when Charles and Buckingham first got there everything seemed very pleasant. The Infanta was handsome, but very different from Henrietta Maria, for she was very grave and steady, and seemed as if she would be a fit wife for the prince, who was naturally grave and steady too.

But the Duke of Buckingham quarrelled with some of the great men of the court, and was so much affronted at not being treated rather like a king than only a plain English nobleman, that he made the prince believe that the King of Spain meant to offend him, and did not really intend his daughter to marry him; and, in short, he contrived to make Charles so angry, that he left Spain in a rage, and afterwards married that very French princess, Henrietta Maria, whom he had seen at Paris.

The bad education King James gave his son Charles, though it was the most mischievous of all his bad acts, was not the only one.

The King of Spain had taken a dislike to Sir Walter Raleigh, who had been so great a favourite of Queen Elizabeth, because Raleigh had beaten his sailors at sea, and his soldiers ashore. But Sir Walter’s men happened to kill some Spaniards when they were looking for a gold mine in South America; so the King of Spain demanded that James should put Raleigh to death, and James shamefully yielded to Spain, and ordered that great and wise man’s head to be cut off.

As to Scotland, King James’s own country, he behaved as ill in all things belonging to it as he did in England. But the thing that turned out worst for the country and his poor son Charles was his insisting on the Scotch people kneeling at the communion, keeping certain holy days, and having bishops, although the Scotch religion is presbyterian. This vexed the Scotch people very much indeed. And the Irish were not better pleased, because the Roman Catholics were ill-treated by James, and most of the Irish were Roman Catholics.

When James died, all the three kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland were discontented. Poor Ireland was even worse off than ever. Scotland had been neglected, and the people affronted about their religion; and, in England, James had taken money unlawfully, and behaved so ill, both to parliament and people, that everybody disliked him as a king, and he was so silly in his private behaviour, that everybody laughed at him as a gentleman.

In short, I can praise him for nothing but a little book-learning; but as he made no good use of it, he might as well have been without it. He reigned twenty-two years in England, during which there was no great war. But James had begun one against the Emperor of Germany and the King of Spain, just before his death.

I must tell you of one very great man who lived in his reign: Lord Bacon. He was one of the wisest men that ever lived, though not without his faults; but when you grow up you will read his books if you wish to be truly wise.