if the unjust steward in the gospel could have given as good a reddere rationem for his diligence as ye have given to the chief of the stewards, he had never been cast in utter darkness; and yet my eyes saw all your letters consumed with fire, though without weeping or gnashing of teeth, my reading of them carrying likewise that other acherontide quality with it that like as I had drunken of Lethe flood when any point contained in any of them is told me by any other person, I can never remember to

have heard of it before.

But now I must turn my pen to a far contrary style, repenting me of that epithet I give you in the first words hereof; for what can I think of your affection to me, and the union, when as your works declare the contrary? I must judge of your mind by your actions, and not by your words. Your orations in parliament in advancement of the union are but words; but your officers severally in Dover 2 are actions; a strange thing that your natural avarice and innate hatred to me, and all Scotland for my cause, should make you to cause your officers, at such a time, pick shillings from poor Scottishmen. Well, I protest to God, I thought you at my parting from you as honest a servant as ever king had; but what now I think of you, since the discovery of this your great hypocrisy, judge ye, and according to your faith so be it unto you as ever it be. I am glad that I have gotten this ground to pay you home upon for your often cruel and malicious speeches against babby Charles and his honest

VOL. II.

J Rendering an account.

2 He was warden ofthe cinque ports.

G

proh. / written

abrer

Prince Henny's death in 1614

father; but I know ye are now so proud of your new patron as ye little care for your old friends. I know this will be the more welcome that it is my precursor, being myself shortly to follow; who, like the sun in this season, am mounting in my sphere, and approaching to shine upon your horizon. And so, praying you to believe the contrary, either of the first or last part of this letter, I bid you heartily farewell for all this great quarrel.

JAMES R. To our right trusty and right well-beloved cousin and councillor, the earl of Northampton.

Prince Charles to Lord Villiers, concerning an offence which the King had taken.1

Steenie,

There is none that know me so well as yourself, what dutiful respect and love I have ever, and shall ever carry to the king; and therefore ye may judge what grief it is to me to have the ill fortune as that any

of

my actions should bear so ill an interpretation as I find by your letter, this message I sent by my Lord Montgomery has borne. I will no ways stand upon my justification, but desire that my good meaning may be taken instead of the ill message. That which made me think that this message would not displease the king, was the

1 MS. Harl. 6986, fol. 83. There is no date to this letter in the original: but it was evidently written soon after the preceding note. It is well known that some time afterwards the king was most anxious that his consort should make a will, being fearful that her favourite attendants would otherwise obtain possession of her jewels.

command ye know he gave a good while ago, that I should use all the means I could to make the queen make a will whereby she should make over to me her jewels; therefore, I sent to have the King's approbation of that which I thought he had desired, and therefore I thought he would either be glad than any way displeased with the message. My meaning was never to claim any thing as of right, but to submit myself as well in this as in all other things to the king's pleasure. It doth grieve me much, that the king should be so much moved with it as you say he is, for the least show of his displeasure would make me leave to meddle or think of any such thing any more, without showing himself openly so angry with me. To conclude, I pray you to commend my most humble service to his majesty, and tell him that I am very sorry that I have done any thing may offend him, and that I will be content to have any penance inflicted upon me so he may forgive me, although I had never a thought nor never shall have to displease him; yet I deserve to be punished for my ill fortune. So, hoping never to have occasion to write to you of so ill a subject again, but of many better, I rest,

Your true, constant, loving friend,

CHARLES P.

I had written to the king before I received yours, but I hope you will mend any thing that is amiss in the other with this, for I did not think the king had been so angry before I received yours.

James I. to some Nobleman.1

March 5th. Trusty and well-beloved, we greet you well: and whereas ye remember how that in late time we discovered and put to flight one of those counterfeits, the like whereof ye now advertise us, by this bearer we send unto you instructions suited for such an occasion, willing you leave

1 Rawlinson MSS. Bodleian Library.

2

2 The particular allusion I am unable to explain; but the ingenuity displayed by James in such matters can be well illustrated by two anecdotes, which I have taken from a manuscript history of Wiltshire, pp. 362, 363, by that old gossip John Aubrey, and now preserved in the library of the Royal Society :—“In the reign of King James I., one Mrs. Katherine Waldron (a gentlewoman of good family) waited on Sir Francis Seymor's lady of Marlborough. She pretended to be bewitched by a certain woman and pretended strange things, &c.; that now she is coming to the house, now she is at such a place, &c. She had acquired such a strange habit, that she would endure exquisite torments, as to have pins thrust into her flesh, nay, under her nails. These tricks of hers were about the time when King James wrote his Dæmonologie. His majesty being in these parts, went to see her in one of her fits; she lay on a bed, and the king saw her endure the torments aforesaid. The room, as it is easily to be believed, was full of company. His majesty gave a sudden pluck to her coats, and tossed them over her head, which surprise (it seems she had some innate modesty in her), not imagining of such a thing, made her immediately start, and detected the cheat." The other anecdote is of a similar character:-"Richard Heydock, M.D., quondam fellow of New College in Oxford, was an ingenious and a learned person, but much against the hierarchy of the church of England. He had this device to gain proselytes by preaching in his dream, which was much noised abroad, and talked of as a miracle-(see Sir Richard Baker's Chronicle) but King James I. being at Salisbury went to hear him. He observed that this harangue was very methodical, &c., that he did but counterfeit a sleep. He surprised the doctor by drawing his sword, and swearing, God's wounes, I will cut off his head,' at which the doctor startled, and pretended to awake; so the cheat was detected."

1

nothing untried to discover the imposture, trying by any deceits ye can devise to expose the cheat, as I am sure no mortal yet living could last for so long a time with a small cup of charnigo; and whereas ye advertise us that she has been straitly guarded when as she lay so in a trance, I desire ye to see that those persons who do that office may be chosen from out of your own retinue, and by no means trust any who may be a leaguer or assister with her of her own sending; for we let you to wit that miracles like those of which you give us notice should be by all ways and diligently tested, according to what Agrippa says, "Many there are now-a-days who sanctify and believe miracles, when it is past the power of man to test them, who would not have believed them had they lived in the time in which they are alleged to have occurred, and the more especially if they knew the people who had a hand in the manufacture of them." It therefore becomes us to lose no opportunity of seeking after the real truth of pretended wonders, that if true we may bless the Creator who hath shown such marvels to men, and if false we may punish the impudent inventors of them. JAMES R.

1 This alludes to a well-known wine formerly termed charnico, which is mentioned by Shakespeare and many early writers; so called from Charneco, the name of a village near Lisbon. It is thus mentioned in an old poem,

Of claret, white wine, and canary sack,

Rhenish and charnico, I've had no lack.

2 Cornelius Agrippa. His work had been translated into English long before this letter was written, and published at London in 1575, under the title of The Vanity and Uncertainty of Arts." James, however as usual, quotes the Latin, which is here translated.