scholarship, and a zealous religious faith, has not been surpassed in
any age. Take him all in all, James was a bigot, a tyrant, a conceited
fool. He professed to be the most ardent devotee of piety, and at the
same time issued a proclamation that all lawful recreations, such as
dancing, archery, leaping, May-games, etc., might be used after divine
service, on Sundays. An advocate of religious freedom, he attempted to
enforce the most abject conformity in his own Scottish home, against the
well-known independence of that section of his realm, and drove the
Puritans to seek an asylum in Holland, where they might find liberty to
worship God.

In the county of Somerset, the old king consented to an act of tyranny
which would grace the age of Henry VIII. One Reverend Edmund Peacham, a
clergyman in Somersetshire, had his study broken open, and a manuscript
sermon being there found in which there was strong censure of the
extravagance of the king and the oppression of his officers, the
preacher was put to the rack and interrogated, "before torture, in
torture, between torture, and after torture," in order to draw from him
evidence of treason; but this horrible severity could wring no
confession from him. His sermon was not found treasonable by the judges
of the King's Bench and by Lord Coke; but the unhappy man was tried and
condemned, dying in jail before the time set for his execution. Just
about this time was the State murder of Overbury, and the execution of
Sir Walter Raleigh, one of England's noblest sons, brave and chivalric,
who, at the executioner's block, took the axe in his hand, kissed the
blade, and said to the sheriff: "'Tis a sharp medicine, but a sound cure
for all diseases." These and kindred acts serve to illustrate the
history of a king whose personal and selfish interests overruled all
sentiments of honor and regard for his subjects, and who publicly
declared that "he would govern according to the good of the commonweal,