The reader, learned in the history of those times, will know that, to a high-toned mind and feeling heart, the Court of England, under the reign of James I., was a place of constant trial, anxiety, and grief. Even had not the sickening selfishness, vulgarity, and wickedness of the King himself, affected greatly the comfort of all around him, the lightness of the Queen's manners, though perhaps not running to criminality, and the encouragement given to vice of every kind, rendered the palace a painful as well as disgusting abode, for any one of a pure spirit.[3] The freedom, indeed, from all those formal restraints which are, in fact, the shackles that vice imposes upon virtue, might prove not disagreeable, even to a noble mind like that of Arabella Stuart. To go whithersoever she would, unwatched and uncensured; to see whomsoever she would, without care or without fear; to be as free in her actions as her own principles would admit, could never be productive of any harm in one who sought not to abuse such liberty. But it was remarked of her, that unless when obliged to do so, as one of the Queen's train, she rarely, if ever, adopted the much misused habit of the day, in wearing a mask when travelling, or walking abroad. She wished her actions to be as free as the sunshine, but as open also. ---------- [Footnote 3: I need only cite the instance of Lady Rich, who was one of the public and favourite companions of Anne of Denmark, while undergoing the ordeal of the ecclesiastical courts on the charge of notorious adultery, fully established against her.] ---------- In the meantime, a number of important events occurred, which require but brief notice here. The quarrels of the King with his Parliament, his efforts to tread under foot the right of his people, his persecution of the Puritans, his bad faith with the Roman Catholics, the rise and discovery of the famous gunpowder plot, and the well merited execution of the diabolical conspirators, are all matters irrelevant to this history.