The death of Elizabeth had left England in a profound peace, which was scarcely disturbed during his reign; and this fortuitous circumstance, more than his innate cowardice, won for him the name of "the peaceful monarch." He has had many satirists and many eulogists, and some who were both as occasion answered. Among the latter may be reckoned Sir Walter Scott, by whom we are told that the restless spirits of the former reign might calmly enjoy "the peace which James the peaceful gave." But, then, this was only in poetic _romaunt_, and by one who greatly despised him in romantic prose. Such eulogiums, however, had only reference to the influence of his reign on England and Scotland; the tyranny of an English king towards Ireland had been, in all times, his surest passport to popularity, and there his reign was one of terror, vengeance, persecution, and spoliation. The prince who connived at the murder of his royal mother, could lay little claim to the respect of the good or high-minded in any age or nation, and so he lived an object of contempt and loathing to all that was good or honorable in the land. But though men of honor shunned his court, the venal there held high jubilee. The king's natural avarice was keen, and it was still further whetted by Scotch self-seekers, who thronged lobby and vestibule in all their greedy officiousness. Their rapacity had to be appeased. The people of England, too, were grown sullen and discontented; a spiritual madness had lately overspread the land, and produced a state of society always ominous of evil to the monarch; hence the public mind should be diverted from its sombre broodings. To secure himself on the throne, he saw the necessity of opening a way to the enterprise of the incongruous elements by which he was surrounded, and many precedents pointed to Ireland as the never-failing outlet for English discontent.