James expostulated with Ruthven, entreated, and flattered him. Words had no effect. Ruthven told him that he must die, and attempted to bind his hands. James, unarmed as he was, scorned to submit to that indig nity, and, using with the assassin, a fierce struggle ensued, the man in armour standing motionless all the while, and the king dragging Ruthven towards a window which was open. The king then, with a voice of terror, loudly exclaimed, "Treason! treason! help! I am murdered!" His attendants heard and knew his voice, and saw at the window a hand which grasped the king's neck with violence. They flew to his assistance, and Sir John Ramsay first entering the apartment, rushed upon Ruthven, who was still struggling with his royal master, struck him twice with his dagger, and thrust him towards the stairs, where Sir Thomas Erskine and Sir Hugh Herries met and killed him. Gowrie now rushed into the room, with a sword in each hand, followed by seven of his attendants well armed, and, with a loud voice, threatened them all with instant death. Notwithstanding the inequality of numbers, they encountered the earl, and Sir John Ramsay pierced Gowrie to the heart, who fell without uttering a word. His followers having received several wounds, immediately fled. The parliament lost no time in proceeding against the conspirators. The dead bodies of the two brothers were produced there according to law, an indictment for high treason was preferred against them, witnesses were examined, and, by an unanimous sentence, the punishment due to traitors was inflicted on their dead bodies. The parliament also enacted that the surname of Ruthven should be abolished.

Queen Elizabeth died on the 24th of March, 1604, in the seventieth year of her age, and the forty-fifth of her reign. A short time previous to her death, she declared to Cecil and the lord-admiral, "that her cousin, the king of Scots, should be her successor." This she confirmed on her death-bed. As soon as she had breathed her last, the lords of the council proclaimed James king of England. All the intrigues carried on by foreigners in favour of the infanta, all the cabals formed within the kingdom to support the title of Lady Arabella Stuart and the earl of Hertford disappeared in a moment. Sir Charles Percy, brother to the earl of Northumberland, and Thomas Somerset, son of the earl of Worcester, were dispatched to Scotland with a letter to James, signed by all the peers and privy councillors then in London, informing him of Elizabeth's decease, and of his accession to the throne. He prepared to set out for London, and appointed the queen to follow him within a few weeks.

CHAPTER IV.

THE ACCESSION OF JAMES THE SIXTH OF SCOTLAND, AND THE FIRST OF ENGLAND

On the 5th of April James began his journey with a splendid train, and entering London on the 7th of May, took peaceable possession of the throne of England. But from this period to the legislative union of the kingdoms, Scotland declined not only in importance but in wealth. Instead of enjoying any advantages by the alliance, it was considered rather as an appendage of England than an important part of Great Britain, and it was consequently neglected.

We shall in this place introduce the reflections of that able historian. Dr. Robertson, on the alteration produced in the political and social state of Scotland by this event. "The Scots," he says, "dazzled with the glory of giving a sovereign to their powerful enemy, relying on the partiality of their native prince, and in full expectation of sharing liberally to the wealth and honours which he now would be able to bestow, at

Lended little to the most obvious consequences of that great event, and rejoiced at his accession to the throne of England, as if it had been no less beneficial to the kingdom than honourable to the king. By his accession, James acquired such an immense increase of wealth, power, and splendour, that the nobles, astonished and intimidated, thought it vain to struggle for privileges which they were now unable to defend. Nor was it from fear alone they submitted to the yoke; James, partial to his countrymen, and willing that they should partake in his good fortune, loaded them with riches and honours; and the hope of his favour concurred with the dread of his power, in taming their fierce and independent spirits. The will of the prince became the supreme law in Scotland, and the nobles strove, with emulation, who should most implicitly obey commands which they had formerly been accustomed to contemn. Satisfied with having subjected the nobles to the crown, the king left them in full possession of their ancient jurisdiction over their own vassals. The extensive rights vested in a feudal chief, became in their hands dreadful instruments of oppression, and the military ideas on which these rights were founded, being gradually lost or disregarded, nothing remained to correct or to mitigate the rigour with which they were exercised. The nobles exhausting their fortunes by the expense of frequent attendance upon the English court, and by attempts to imitate the manners and luxury of their more wealthy neighbours, multiplied exactions upon the people, who durst hardly utter complaints which they knew would never reach the ear of their sovereign, nor move him to grant them any redress. From the union of the crowns to the revolution in 1688, Scotland was placed in a political situation of all others the most singular and unhappy; subjected at once to the absolute will of a monarch, and to the oppressive jurisdiction of an aristocracy, it suffered all the miseries peculiar to both these forms of government. Its kings were despotic, its nobles were slaves and tyrants, and the people groaned under the rigorous domination of both." As the nobles were deprived of power, the people acquired liberty. Exempted from burdens to which they were formerly subject, screened from oppression, to which they had long been exposed, and adopted into a constitution whose genius and laws were more liberal than their own, they extended their commerce, refined their manners, made improvements in the elegancies of life, and cultivated the arts and sciences. Since the union, the commons, anciently neglected by their kings, and seldom courted by the nobles, have emerged into dignity, and, being admitted to a participation of all the privileges which the English had purchased at the expense of so much blood, must now be deemed a body not less considerable in the one kingdom than in the other. The church felt the effects of the power which the king acquired by his accession, and its revolutions are worthy of notice. James, delighted with the splendour and authority which the English bishops enjoyed, and eager to effect a union in the ecclesiastical policy, which he had, in vain, attempted in the civil government of the two kingdoms, resolved to bring both churches to an exact conformity with each other. Three Scotchmen were consecrated bishops at London. From them their brethren were commanded to receive orders. Ceremonies unknown in Scotland were imposed, and though the clergy, less obsequious than the nobles, boldly opposed these innovations, James, long practised and well skilled in the arts of managing them, obtained at length their compliance. But Charles I., a super stitious prince, unacquainted with the genius of the Scots, imprudent and precipitant in all the measures he pursued in that kingdoin, pressing too eagerly the reception of the English liturgy, and indiscreetly attempting a resumption of church lands, kindled the flames of civil war; and the people being left at liberty to indulge their own wishes, the episcopal church was overturned, and the presbyterian government and discipline

were re-established with new vigour. Together with monarchy, episcopacy was restored in Scotland. A form of government so odious to the people, required force to uphold it, and though not only the whole rigour of authority, but all the barbarity of persecution, were employed in its support, the aversion of the nation was insurmountable; and it subsisted with difficulty. At the revolution, the inclinations of the people were thought worthy the attention of the legislature, the presbyterian government was again established, and, being ratified by the union, is still maintained in the kingdom.

Nor did the influence of the accession extend to the civil and ecclesiastical constitutions alone; the genius of the nation, its taste and spirit, things of a nature still more delicate, were sensibly affected by that event. When learning revived in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, all the modern languages were in a state extremely barbarous, devoid of elegance, of vigour, and even of perspicuity. No author thought of writing in language so ill adapted to express and embellish his sentiments, or of erecting a work for immortality with such rude and perishable materials. As the spirit which prevailed at that time did not owe its rise to any original effort of the human mind, but was excited chiefly by admiration of the ancients, which began then to be studied in every part of Europe, their compositions were deemed not only the standards of taste and of senti ment, but of style, and even the languages in which they wrote were thought to be peculiar, and almost consecrated to learning and the muses. Not only the manner of the ancients was imitated, but their language was adopted, and, extravagant as the attempt may appear to write in a dead tongue, in which men were not accustomed to think, and which they could not speak, or even pronounce, the success of it was astonishing. As they formed their style upon the purest models, and were uninfected with those barbarisms which the inaccuracy of familiar conversation, the affectation of courts, intercourse with strangers, and a thousand other causes introduced into living languages, many moderns have attained to a degree of eloquence in their Latin compositions which the Romans themselves scarce possessed beyond the limits of the Augustan age. While this was almost the only species of composition, and all authors, by using one common language, could be brought to a nearer comparison, the Scottish writers were not inferior to those of any other nation. The happy genius of Buchanan, equally formed to excel in prose and in verse, more various, more original, and more elegant than that of almost any other modern who writes in Latin, reflects, with regard to this particular, the greatest lustre on his country.

The

But the labour attending the study of a dead tongue was irksome; the unequal return for their industry which authors met with, who could be read and admired only within the narrow circle of the learned, was mortifying; and men, instead of wasting half their lives in learning the language of the Romans, began to refine and to polish their own. modern tongues were found to be susceptible of beauties and graces which, if not equal to those of the ancient ones, were at least more attainable. The Italians having first set the example, Latin was no longer used in works of taste, but was confined to books of science; and the politer nations have banished it even from these. The Scots, we may presume, would have had no cause to regret this change in the public taste, and would still have been able to maintain some equality with other nations, in their pursuit of literary honour. The English and Scottish languages, derived from the same sources, were at the end of the sixteenth century in a state nearly similar, differing from one another somewhat in orthography, though not only the words, but the idioms, were much the sanie. The letters of several Scottish statesmen of that age were not inferior m elegance, or in purity, to those of the English ministers with whom they