Stay, I pray, for one seven years, before you demand; and then, if you find me grow pursy and fat, I may perchance hearken unto you.

For that government will keep me in breath, and give me work enough."[***] Such were the political considerations which determined the king in his choice among religious parties.
* Fuller's Ecclesiastical History.
** Kennet, p.

665.
*** Fuller's Ecclesiastical History.
The next assembly in which James displayed his learning and eloquence, was one that showed more spirit of liberty than appeared among his bishops and theologians The parliament was now ready to assemble; being so long delayed on account of the plague, which had broken out in London, and raged to such a degree, that above thirty thousand persons are computed to have died of it in a year; though the city contained at that time little more than one hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants.
The speech which the king made on opening the parliament, fully displays his character, and proves him to have possessed more knowledge and better parts, than prudence, or any just sense of decorum and propriety.[*] Though few productions of the age surpass this performance either in style or matter, it wants that majestic brevity and reserve which become a king in his addresses to the great council of the nation.
It contains, however, a remarkable stroke of candor, where he confesses his too great facility in yielding to the solicitations of suitors:[**] a fault which he promises to correct, but which adhered to him, and distressed him, during the whole course of his reign.
The first business in which the commons were engaged was of the utmost importance to the preservation of their privileges; and neither temper nor resolution was wanting in their conduct of it.
In the former periods of the English government, the house of commons was of so small weight in the balance of the constitution, that little attention had been given either by the crown, the people, or the house itself, to the choice and continuance of the members.

It had been usual, after parliaments were prolonged beyond one session, for the chancellor to exert a discretionary authority of issuing new writs to supply the place of any members whom he judged incapable of attending, either on account of their employment, their sickness, or other impediment.

This practice gave that minister, and consequently the prince, an unlimited power of modelling at pleasure the representatives of the nation; yet so little jealousy had it created, that the commons of themselves, without any court influence or intrigue, and contrary to some former votes of their own, confirmed it in the twenty-third of Elizabeth.[***] * King James's Works, p.