What was
virtue in Scotland became vice in England; and the ultra-monarchists,
who came into existence not long after James I. succeeded to
Elizabeth, helped to spoil the Stuarts. Both James and his successor
were dominated by Scotch traditions, and supposed that they were
contending with men who had the same end in view that had been
regarded by the Douglases, the Hamiltons, the Ruthvens, the Lindsays,
and others of the old Scotch baronage. What helped to deceive them was
this,--that their opponents in England, like the opponents of their
ancestors in Scotland, were aristocrats; and they supposed, that, as
aristocratical movements in their Northern kingdom had always been
subversive of order and peace, the same kind of movements would
produce similar results in their Southern kingdom. They could not
understand that one aristocracy may differ much from another, and
that, while in Scotland the interest of the people, or rather of the
whole nation, required the exaltation of the kingly power, in England
it was that exaltation which was most to be feared. Sufficient
allowance has not been made for the Stuarts in this respect, little
regard being paid to the effect of the family's long training at home,
which had rendered hostility to the nobility second nature to it.
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