Beware in making your sporters your councellors, and delight not to keepe ordinarily in your companie comedians or balladines. - James VI and I

A custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black, stinking fume thereof, nearest resembling the horrible Stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless.

The state of monarchy is the supremest thing upon earth: for kings are not only God's lieutenants upon earth, and sit upon God's throne, but even by God himself they are called gods. There be three principal similitudes that illustrate the state of monarchy: One taken out of the word of God; and two other out of the grounds of policy and philosophy. In the scriptures kings are called gods, and so their power after a certain relation compared to the divine power. Kings are also compared to fathers of families: for a king is truly Parens patriae, the politic father of his people. And lastly, kings are compared to the head of this microcosm of the body of man.

I commend unto your special care, as some of you of late have done very well, to blunt the sharp edge and vain popular humour of some lawyers at the bar, that think they are not eloquent and bold spirited enough, except they meddle with the king's prerogative: But do not you suffer this; for certainly if this liberty be suffered, the king's prerogative, the Crown, and I, shall be as much wounded by their pleading, as if you resolved what they disputed: That which concerns the mystery of the king's power, is not lawful to be disputed; for that is to wade into the weakness of princes, and to take away the mystical reverence, that belongs unto them that sit in the throne of God.