under that gallant and warlike monarch Henry IV. Marshal Bassompierre, in the journal of his own life, mentions a tilting in the lists which was held in 1605 as the only one during this reign. The marshal on that occasion received a challenge to break three lances in the open field; an antiquated species of combat of which there had been no example in France for a hundred years. In the trial of skill which ensued, he was dangerously wounded by the glancing of a spear, and the king would never give his consent to the repetition of so dangerous a sport; nor was the practice revived by his successor.

Though checked by the laudable vigilance of king James and his council, a savage species of duel in which the seconds, often several on a side, were expected to take part with their principals, was still frequent. Nor was this the only relic of primitive ferocity in the manners of the people. It was still the custom for gentlemen to go constantly armed; and in what manner they often exercised their weapons we may learn from what is said in Microcosmography of "a Sergeant or Catchpole." -"The common way to run from him is to run thorough him, which is often attempted and achieved, and no man is more beaten out of charity. He is one makes the streets more dangerous than the highways, and men go better provided in their walks than their journey. He is the first handsel of the young rapiers of the Templers, and they are as proud of his repulse as an Hungarian of killing a Turk." That even ladies bore the "household

sceptre" somewhat rudely, may be inferred from the same book; where it is said of a "she-precise hypocrite: " "She overflows so with the bible that she spills it upon every occasion, and will not cudgel her maids without scripture."

It was a considerable point gained, that every thing fierce or boisterous was now banished from the diversions of the court. These chiefly consisted of plays, masques, revels and balls, followed by splendid banquets. Something of a romantic spirit they still retained, a last memory of chivalry, but pomp and luxury were their principal characteristics. The cruel combats of the cock-pit, prohibited by Elizabeth, were indeed revived and diligently frequented by her successor; but the ruder, if not more inhuman sports of the bear-garden, appear to have been no longer patronized by the court, nor often witnessed by ladies. Even the chace, though passionately followed by James himself, and by most of the rural gentry, was no longer an object of paramount or universal interest to the highest class of society, which now comprised many individuals whose manners were refined and their leisure occupied by literature and the elegant arts; many also whose attention was largely shared by the pursuits of politics and the pleasures of the town.

The gradations of rank, down to the termination of the reign of Elizabeth, had remained fenced about with all the jealous precautions of the ancient feudal aristocracy. The liberal maxim that in the intercourses of society all gentlemen are to be regarded

as equals, had not yet obtained currency even in France, where it was first promulgated. In the mansions of the principal English noblemen guests were usually entertained at three different tables, answering to the degrees of lords, knights and gentlemen: and that it was by no means the general rule for commoners to partake of the same fare with their titled host, may be inferred from the exception recorded by Ben Jonson in his "Address to Penshurst," the seat of the earl of Leicester; a house long consecrated to the Muses and propitious to their votaries:

Where comes no guest but is allowed to eat

Without his fear, and of thy lord's own meat;

Where the same bread and beer, and self-same wine
That is his lordship's shall be also mine."

We find sir John Hollis, one of the most wealthy and considerable knights in England, and whose heir actually purchased under James the title of earl of Clare, refusing to marry his daughter to the earl of Cumberland, because he would not "be obliged to stand cap in hand to his son-in-law;" and so far was it from being accounted any disparagement to belong to the household of a person of rank and consequence, that Peacham deems it necessary to admonish his pupil, a Howard, not to consider men as ennobled, or made gentle in blood, "because they followed some great person." But the whole course of James's conduct had tended to disturb ancient order, to confound established distinctions, and as it were, to smooth away the steps of honor into an

almost imperceptible slope. The lavish hand with which he distributed not only knighthood but peerages in the beginning of his reign, and the open manner in which dignities were afterwards set to sale by his courtiers, the creation of the order of baronets, the intermingling of Scotch peers with English without any formal adjustment of precedency between them, and lastly, his practice of conferring Scotch and Irish peerages on Englishmen often of mean birth and small estate, might seem the results of a deliberate plan for lessening the importance of the ancient baronage of England, though they were more probably the uncalculated results of his facile disposition, and the embarrassments of his treasury. In fact, the times were long passed when a king of England could view with reasonable jealousy the power of the greatest amongst his nobles; a far more real danger to royal authority was in the extension of the privileges of peerage to individuals free from the prejudices, or strangers to the maxims, of the old hereditary aristocracy. Osborn observes, that through the introduction of so many new men into the house of lords, it began to participate in all the "humors" of the commons. "The ancient nobility," he adds, "never carried their opposition to kings so high, being in their greatest fury and pride wise enough to remember the plume of state could not be ruffled without putting in disarray all their smaller feathers."

From this survey of the commerce, the arts, the luxury, the literature, the education and the manners

of the age, we may certainly conclude the general state of the country at the accession of Charles I. to have been highly prosperous and rapidly improving. To its felicity however an important alloy was found in the abuses which had crept into the administration of justice and every other department of civil government, through the rapacity and corruption of men in power, and the arbitrary spirit of the prince, which inclined him to disdain the limits of law and the control of parliament; and also in the oppression to which large bodies of peaceable subjects were exposed through the operation of unjust and cruel laws enacted for the enforcement of religious conformity.

From many signs and tokens sagacity might have predicted, that whatever might be the personal qualities of the successor of James I., it was on conflicts between the maxims of passive obedience in church and state, and the rising spirit of civil and religious liberty amongst a moral and enlightened people, that the historic interest of his reign and the crisis of his fate, must turn.