the French under Champlain (1608), and that Hendrick Hudson explored the Hudson River. All these things took place before the reigns of the Jameses, the Charleses, and the Georges. It seems a long time to look back to the reigns of the Henries.

It was not a pleasant world which the men and women of Europe had to live in during the sixteenth century. Fighting was the constant occupation of the kings of that time. A year of peace was a rare and somewhat wearisome exception.

1604.

Fames I. and Parliament.

55

Kings habitually, at their own unquestioned pleasure, gathered their subjects together, and marched them off to slay and plunder their neighbors. Civil wars were frequent. In these confused strifes men slew their acquaintances and friends as the only method they knew of deciding who was to fill the throne. Feeble Commerce was crushed under the iron heel of War. No such thing as security for life or property was expected. The fields of the husbandman were trodden down by the march of armies. Disbanded or deserted soldiers wandered as masterless men" over the country, and robbed and murdered at their will. Highwaymen abounded, although highways could scarcely be said to exist. Epidemic diseases of strange type, the result of insufficient feeding and the poisonous air of undrained lands and filthy streets, desolated all European countries. Under what hardships and miseries the men of the sixteenth century passed their days, it is scarcely possible for us now to conceive.

The English Parliament once reminded James I. of certain "undoubted rights" which they possessed. The king told them, in reply, that he "did not like this style of talking, but would rather hear them say that all their privileges were derived by the grace and permission of the sovereign." Europe, during the sixteenth century, had no better understanding of the matter than James had. It was not supposed that the king was made for the people. It seemed rather to be thought that the people were made for the king. Here and there some man wiser than ordinary perceived the truth, so familiar to us, that a king is merely a great officer allowed by the people to do certain work for them. There was a Glasgow professor who taught in those dark days that the authority of the king was derived from the people, and ought to be used for their good. Two of his pupils were John Knox the reformer, and George Buchanan the historian, by whom this doctrine, so great and yet so simple, was clearly perceived

and firmly maintained. But to the great mass of mankind it seemed that the king had divine authority to dispose of his subjects and their property according to his pleasure. Poor patient humanity still bowed in lowly reverence before its kings, and bore, without wondering or murmuring, all that

it pleased them to inflict. No stranger superstition has ever possessed the human mind than this boundless mediæval veneration for the king,

a veneration which follies the most abject, vices the most enormous, were not able to quench. But as this unhappy century draws towards its

close, the elements of a most benign change are plainly seen at work. The Bible has been largely read. The Bible is the book of all ages and of all circumstances. But never, surely, since its first gift to man, was it more needful to any age than to that which now welcomed its restoration with wonder and delight. It took deep hold on the minds of men. It exercised a silent influ