Civil War: The History of England Volume III by Peter Ackroyd

bad-tempered. The doctor went on to say that ‘he is extremely sensitive, most impatient of pain; and while it tortures him with violent movements, his mind is tossed as well, thus augmenting the evil’.
    James drank frequently and immoderately. He perspired heavily, and caught frequent colds; he was always sneezing. His face had become red; he was growing fat, and his hair was turning white. At the age of fifty, he was rapidly ageing. He was still averse to business and preferred to hunt, but now he rode more slowly and allowed his horse to be guided by grooms.
    So the eyes of aspirants turned more often to the heir. Charles, at the age of fifteen, had acquired many of the virtues of a prince. He was a champion at tennis and at tilting; he delighted in horses and in masques; he was already a connoisseur of art and music. Yethe was also pious and reserved; he was silent and even secretive; he blushed at an indelicate word. He was 5 feet 4 inches in height, and had a pronounced stutter.
    The Venetian ambassador reported that his chief endeavour ‘is to have no other aim than to second his father, to follow him and do his pleasure and not to move except as his father does. Before his father he always aims at suppressing his own feelings.’ So Charles grew to be uncertain and hesitant, apt to cling to the few maxims that he had already imbibed. He was too modest for his own good, perhaps stunned by the loquacity of his father and the beauty of Villiers. When he did try to act forcefully, in later life, he often descended into rash action without any thought of the consequences. His piety, and sense of divine mission, also rendered him humourless and strict.
    In the summer of the year the king turned upon his judges. Edward Coke, the chief justice of the kings bench, had often angered James by his continual assertion of common law over the claims of royal power. The king called the judges before him in June 1616, and accused them of insubordination; they fell on their knees, pledging their loyalty and obedience. The king then asked each of them in turn whether they would consult with him before pronouncing on matters of the prerogative. All assented, with the notable exception of Coke himself, who simply answered that he would behave in a manner fitting for a high judge. The king turned upon him, calling him a knave and a sophist. James proceeded to the Star Chamber a few days later, where he delivered a long speech on his zeal for justice. ‘Kings are properly judges,’ he told his councillors, ‘and judgement properly belongs to them from God . . . I remember Christ’s saying, “My sheep hear my voice”, and so I assure myself, my people will most willingly hear the voice of me, their own shepherd and king.’ It was not the most modest of his pronouncements.
    Coke was not destined to remain in the king’s service for much longer. He was removed from the privy council and ordered to desist from his summer circuit of the kingdom; he was told to revise his law reports ‘wherein (as his Majesty was informed) there were many exorbitant and extravagant opinions’. Five months later, in November 1616, he was dismissed from office. He was, in a phrase of the time,‘quite off the books’. The king had rid himself of a turbulent judge but, in the process, he had turned Coke into a martyr for the rule of law and the liberties of the people.
    The nature and the character of the ‘people’, however, could be understood in a multitude of ways. The population itself was growing rapidly until 1620, with the consequence that the number of the poor also began to rise. As late as 1688 it was reported that over half of the population, both rural and urban, were below the level of subsistence. The purchasing power of the wages of agricultural labourers or minor craftsmen was in relative terms at its lowest point for generations. In 1616 it was recorded that in Sheffield, out of a population of little over 2,000, 725 persons were