Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 154.djvu/794

When King James VI. of Scotland became King James I. of England, and transferred himself from the banks of the Forth to the banks of the Thames, it was with a farewell assurance to his Scottish subjects that they need not be inconsolable over his departure, for Scotland would always be dear to him, and he would make it a rule to be back among them at least once every three years. That was in 1603; but for fourteen years there was no fulfilment of the promise, and not till 1617 did his Majesty recross the Border. His return to his native kingdom in that year—and it was the only time he ever saw Scotland again—was to be of no small consequence to the Scottish body-politic generally, and to the Church of Scotland in particular. It was in this visit that he set agoing among the Scots the ecclesiastical agitation which resulted in the famous Five Articles of Perth of the following year, ordaining and making compulsory certain changes in the Scottish Church ritual that were necessary, in his Majesty's eyes, for the perfection of the Episcopal Church system already successfully established by him in Scotland. What we are immediately concerned with now, however, is the vast contemporary sensation occasioned by the visit throughout the British Islands. In Scotland the preparations for it had been enormous and elaborate, and the commotion on the king's actual arrival, and so long as he remained, was extraordinary. It was on the 13th of May that he and his magnificent retinue of horse, foot, and carriages entered Scotland by Berwick-upon-Tweed; and from that day onward, through his carefully prearranged circuit among the towns, royal palaces, and mansions of the nobility in the southern shires,—Edinburgh and Holyrood having, of course, most of his presence, but the circuit extending to Dundee, Perth, and St Andrews,—his motion was through one series of banquetings, huzzaings, speechifyings, and presentations of poems of welcome to him, interrupted only by days of hunting and hawking in neighbourhoods where there was plenty of game, and not ended till the 4th of August, when, after some stay in Glasgow, he and his retinue vanished back into England by Dumfries and Annan. But while the excitement was naturally greatest in Scotland, England shared in it. The great retinue the king had brought with him was composed largely of Englishmen, and included about a score of the men of the very highest rank and distinction in the English realm. Young George Villiers, then Earl of Buckingham, afterwards Marquis and Duke of Buckingham, was with him; and, though we may think little of that now, all England thought much of it then, for Buckingham was the king's all-powerful favourite, and wherever he might go, all English eyes kept him in sight. The stately Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel and Surrey, and premier earl of England, was in his Majesty's train, as were also two other English earls, of whose advent into Scotland on this occasion one hears with particular interest because of their celebrity in English literary history. One of them was Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, the early patron of Shakespeare, to whom,