or between monarchies and republics. Indeed most of the
predecessors of James would, from personal motives, have regarded
the patriarchal theory of government with aversion. William
Rufus, Henry the First, Stephen, John, Henry the Fourth, Henry
the Fifth, Henry the Sixth, Richard the Third, and Henry the
Seventh, had all reigned in defiance of the strict rule of
descent. A grave doubt hung over the legitimacy both of Mary and
of Elizabeth. It was impossible that both Catharine of Aragon and
Anne Boleyn could have been lawfully married to Henry the Eighth;
and the highest authority in the realm had pronounced that
neither was so. The Tudors, far from considering the law of
succession as a divine and unchangeable institution, were
constantly tampering with it. Henry the Eighth obtained an act of
parliament, giving him power to leave the crown by will, and
actually made a will to the prejudice of the royal family of
Scotland. Edward the Sixth, unauthorised by Parliament, assumed a
similar power, with the full approbation of the most eminent
Reformers. Elizabeth, conscious that her own title was open to
grave objection, and unwilling to admit even a reversionary right
in her rival and enemy the Queen of Scots, induced the Parliament
to pass a law, enacting that whoever should deny the competency
of the reigning sovereign, with the assent of the Estates of the
realm, to alter the succession, should suffer death as a traitor:
But the situation of James was widely different from that of
Elizabeth. Far inferior to her in abilities and in popularity,
regarded by the English as an alien, and excluded from the throne
by the testament of Henry the Eighth, the King of Scots was yet
the undoubted heir of William the Conqueror and of Egbert. He
had, therefore, an obvious interest in inculcating the
superstitions notion that birth confers rights anterior to law,