These years were chiefly marked by the struggles of the more zealous clergy to replace the church upon a purely Presbyterian basis, and to maintain their assumed independence of the civil power. The king found his power encroached on, upon the one hand, by nobles richer, and having a greater command of followers, than himself; on the other, by divines who repudiated all subjection to civil authority in matters ecclesiastical, and yet arrogated powers which greatly concerned the secular rights and liberties of the people. While the reaction in his youthful mind against these besetting troubles inspired him with visionary ideas of the true rights of a monarch, the dissimulation practised at his court by the astute emissaries of Elizabeth, the restraints imposed on his liberty and natural sentiments by the more zealous Protestant party while he was under their rule, and the tricks he was tempted to have recourse to in order to recover his freedom, and obtain some share of real power, gave him, before he was twenty, such a tutoring in craft, as marked his character during the remainder of life. A more manly and resolute person would have either broken bravely through such a complication of troubles or perished in the attempt. With the help of a good-natured pliancy, James floated on. He was of a timid disposition, greatly disrelishing the sight of weapons, and along with this temper he exhibited much good-nature. Trembling at the outrageous dispositions of his nobles, and constitutionally a lover of peace, he exerted himself to conciliate offenders, and by persuasion to make them cease to break the laws, when a vigorous procedure against them in courts of justice would have been required. For the sake of his hopes of the English succession, if not from his own convictions--which, however, are not to be doubted--he maintained the Protestant cause. At the same time, seeing that the Catholics were friends of monarchy, and might have something to say in the English succession, he desired, if possible, to avoid offending them past forgiveness. Even the ultra-zealous Presbyterian clergy, who came to remonstrate with him, in his own palace, on his public acts or his private foibles, he could treat with such pleasantry as often disarmed them, when a more strenuous policy might have failed. In February 1586-7, the unfortunate Mary was beheaded in Fotheringay Castle, a victim to the necessities of the Protestant cause.