crime as black as Mary's haunted her sad old age, when sated with
pleasures and triumphs, lovers no more whispering adulation in her
ears, and mirrors banished from her presence, she silently waited for
the end.

She died in the year 1603, and succumbing to the irony of fate, named
the son of Mary Stuart--James VI. of Scotland--her successor.




CHAPTER VIII.


[Sidenote: House of Stuart, 1603-1714.]

The House of Stuart had peacefully reached the long coveted throne of
England in the person of a most unkingly King. Gross in appearance and
vulgar in manners, James had none of the royal attributes of his
mother. A great deal of knowledge had been crammed into a very small
mind. Conceited, vain, pedantic, headstrong, he set to work with the
confidence of ignorance to carry out his undigested views upon all
subjects, reversing at almost every point the policy of his great
predecessor. Where she with supreme tact had loosened the screws so
that the great authority vested in her might not press too heavily upon
the nation, he tightened them. Where she bowed her imperious will to
that of the Commons, this puny tyrant insolently defied it, and
swelling with sense of his own greatness, claimed, "Divine right" for
Kingship and demanded that his people should say "the King can do no
wrong," "to question his authority is to question that of God." If he