CHAPTER II.
CHARLES’ FIRST PARLIAMENTS.--IMPEACHMENT OF BUCKINGHAM.--PETITION OF RIGHT.--(1625-1629).
How shall we do for money for these wars? RICHARD II.
Little was known of the new king, who was only twenty-four years old when he came to the throne, and had seldom appeared in public. His manners were grave and cold; he loved order and propriety. “I will have no drunkards in my bedchamber,” he said, and turned out of office one of Buckingham’s own brothers. The courtiers followed the lead of their master, and led outwardly decorous lives.[19]
♦Certainty of quarrel between King and Parliament.♦ But all hopes that were entertained of good agreement between king and people were doomed to a speedy end. Charles, who from his earliest years had heard taught at his father’s court the doctrine of the Divine Right of kings, regarded it as the duty of Parliament submissively to vote supplies and carry out the wishes of the monarch, without questioning his government or bargaining for redress of grievances. His subjects, on the other hand, still smarting at James’ disregard of the laws of the land and the privilege of Parliament, were determined to make the new king acknowledge the limits which the laws set to the prerogative of the Crown.
An immediate cause of quarrel between Charles and the nation lay in the ascendancy of Buckingham, whose popularity had faded almost as soon as born. For if he had broken off the Spanish match on the grounds alleged by himself, he had since brought about the king’s marriage with another Catholic, Henrietta Maria, sister of Louis XIII. It is rare for a favourite to remain supreme during the life of one master; still more rare for him to gain the affection of a second. ♦Buckingham hated; his character.♦ Disappointment that Buckingham had not been ruined on the death of James now intensified the hatred felt by all classes towards him. Almost every officer employed by the Government was his creature, and at his command. “He on whom the duke smiled, was advanced; he on whom he frowned, cast down.”[20] The highest nobles in the land found that, to stand well in the eyes of the king, they must court the favour of this haughty minion--this upstart country squire. Buckingham himself was ill-fitted to exercise power. Handsome, of fascinating manners, courageous and not implacable, he was yet vain withal, insolent, reckless, no genius, and utterly selfish; a man who would embroil his country in war to salve a wound of vanity, and then, after pledging his country’s word, break it again to satisfy a change of whim. Such was the adviser with whom Charles met his first Parliament--a Parliament he soon summoned, as he was preparing a fleet for an expedition carefully kept secret from the country, and found himself in urgent need of money to fit this out. (18th June.)
%TONNAGE AND POUNDAGE.%
♦Charles’ first Parliament.♦ A dreadful plague was raging in London, of which the people were dying by thousands a week, so that the Houses were anxious to finish their business quickly and end the session. A bill for two subsidies,[21] amounting to something short of £200,000, was brought into the Lower House, and the members understanding from a message sent by the king that he was satisfied with the amount, and would allow them to re-assemble at some more convenient season, began to disperse in large numbers to their homes. The House was already emptied of two-thirds of its members, when the Bill of Tonnage and Poundage, granting the king the custom duties, came before it.
♦Commons limit to a year the Bill of Tonnage and Poundage.♦ Although the usual practice since the reign of Henry V. had been to grant the customs for life, the Commons, owing to the thinness of their House, and their wish for time to regulate the scale of duties, only granted them to Charles for a year, delaying to make him a life grant until the next session of Parliament. The bill reached the Upper House;[22] but Charles taking the contents as an insult, did not care to get it passed. The Parliament, however, might have adjourned without greater causes of discontent than the favour shown to Catholics and the rejection of the Tonnage and Poundage Bill, had not Buckingham deliberately fomented a quarrel.
%ADJOURNMENT TO OXFORD--DISCONTENT.%
♦First Parliament adjourned to Oxford.♦ At the calling of James’ last Parliament, when the match with Spain was broken off, the duke had allied himself with the popular leaders. Now, wishing to be entirely free of their control, especially in the conduct of the fleet, he determined to bring about a rupture with the Parliament and so effect a dissolution. Accordingly, on the day when the two Houses adjourned, and the king’s assent was given to the bill for two subsidies, the members heard, to their dismay, that they were required, within a fortnight’s time, to meet again at Oxford, a town where the plague had not yet appeared. (10th July.)
♦Causes of discontent.♦ Short as the interval was between the two sessions, events were not wanting to breed suspicion and distrust. Dr. Montague, a clergyman, censured by the Commons for publishing books upholding the Divine Right of kings, and teaching confession, the use of images, and other Roman doctrines, had been appointed chaplain to the king. Charles had agreed in the French Marriage Treaty not to put the laws against Catholics into force; and these conditions, kept secret at the time, were now beginning to be divulged. The customs were still levied, though the king had no legal claim to them, having failed to carry the Bill for Tonnage and Poundage. The national fleet was not allowed to defend the nation; reserved for the king’s high purposes, which were still unrevealed, it might not move to clear the channel of the Turkish pirates, now ravaging the coasts, plundering merchant vessels, and carrying off captives by hundreds. There was an ugly story abroad, that eight ships had been actually lent the French king to assist him in blocking up the Huguenots, brother Protestants, in Rochelle. And now, as a crowning cause of discontent, the Parliament was re-assembled at an unusual place, at the hottest time of a plague-smitten season (Aug 1st), and asked for sums that the king’s ministers should have shown were necessary before. Long journeys were no light matter in those days, when roads were so bad that a coach and four could often go little more than four miles an hour. The members regarded the demand now made upon them almost as an insult, and felt convinced that Charles and Buckingham preferred this patent disregard of their convenience to revealing their whole policy at first. Thus, instead of granting a second supply, the House began to debate upon the abuses of the administration, and to point at the duke as the cause of them.
“Strange, the adjournment for only a few days, and that meeting there in Oxford! As it could not be that the king should have such mutability in himself, was not the real cause manifest to them? To have the whole kingdom hurried in such haste for the will and pleasure of _one subject_! All this was beyond example and comparison.”[23]
%FIRST PARLIAMENT DISSOLVED.%
♦Parliament dissolved.♦ On this, Charles carried out Buckingham’s intention, and dissolved the Parliament at once (12th Aug.) There had been good cause for the caution displayed by the Commons in granting supplies. ♦Charles lends Louis ships to use against Rochelle.♦ In the spring, Charles and Buckingham, keeping their purpose concealed even from the Privy Council, pressed seven merchant vessels, and sent them with a ship of war under Captain Pennington’s command, to be employed by Louis XIII. in blocking up the Huguenots in Rochelle. The sailors, however, showed their spirit. Learning at Dieppe their destined service, masters and men persisted in sailing back to the Downs, swearing that they would be hanged or thrown overboard before they would fight; while Pennington, who fully shared the feelings of the crews, wrote to the king, asking to be removed from command. In reply, however, he was only peremptorily ordered back to the French coast, and received a royal warrant authorizing him to compel obedience, “even unto the sinking of the ships.” The men, being now told that the civil war in France was at an end, and that they were to be employed against Genoa, an ally of Spain, were with difficulty a second time persuaded to sail. At Dieppe, however, the truth could no longer be concealed. ♦Sailors desert the vessels.♦ One vessel sailed back to the Downs, and the rest of the crews deserted their ships, leaving them to be manned by Frenchmen. A gunner--the only Englishman who took part in the service--was killed by a shot before Rochelle.
%WAR WITH SPAIN--FAILURE.%
This story was the common talk of the nation at the time of the dissolution of Parliament. An expedition so unpopular was especially unfortunate when the king was bent on going to war with Spain. No English king could hope to carry on war without obtaining large parliamentary grants, unless he was prepared to resort to illegal means of raising money. James had disliked Parliaments, and therefore, with good reason, clung to peace. Peace was still open to Charles, for war had not been declared; but he preferred breaking the law to breaking his resolution. Money was raised in the form of loans.
♦Fleet sails against Spain.♦ By these means, a fleet of ninety vessels was collected. It sailed in the autumn (4th Oct.). Buckingham, though lord-admiral, was too wise to command in person. Sir Edward Cecil, created Viscount Wimbledon for the occasion, was sent as deputy, to take the blame in case of failure. Success those who knew the state of the fleet hardly ventured to hope for. The agents the duke employed in manning, provisioning, and furnishing the vessels, had shamefully embezzled the funds, so that victuals were bad, men sick, and ships leaky, even at starting. Wimbledon received secret instructions to seize shipping and stores in the Spanish harbours, and to capture a fleet of richly laden merchantmen, returning home from the West Indies. Charles had great hopes that his exchequer would be replenished with Spanish bullion.
♦Returns home disgraced.♦ Wimbledon, however, after entering the harbour of Cadiz and surprising a fort, found his troops disorderly, and finally returned to England without having fought an enemy or made a prize (Nov., Dec.). Disease broke out on the voyage home; hundreds perished at sea; hundreds were landed in a dying condition, solely, as it was said, through the bad food supplied for both soldiers and sailors. Upon the success of this expedition Buckingham’s reputation was staked. It had been planned by him, by his advice its destination had been kept secret from Parliament, and he was justly regarded as the real author of the disgrace.
♦Charles summons a Second Parliament.♦ Meantime the loans had fallen short; the seamen came up to London clamouring for their pay; the royal exchequer was empty. There was no escape, and Charles had to summon a second Parliament, which met only some six months after the dissolution of the first (6th Feb., 1626).
%IMPEACHMENT OF BUCKINGHAM.%
The illegal methods of raising money, the employment of English ships for crushing French Protestants, the fiasco of the fleet, were all set down to Buckingham.
♦Buckingham advised to conciliate the country.♦ The duke received hints of what was coming. “The office of high-admiral,” wrote a friendly counsellor, “requires one whole man to execute it. Your grace hath another sea of business to wade through, and the voluntary resigning of this office would fill all men, yea, even your enemies, with affection.” Buckingham, Lord High-Admiral of England and Ireland, Governor-General of seas and navy, Master of the Horse, Warden of the Cinque Ports, refused to resign one of these or his other titles to popular clamour.
But while Charles asked for a subsidy, the Commons appointed a committee to search into grievances. The committee soon satisfied themselves that all evils found their head and source in Buckingham. On this the king tried threats. “I must let you know,” he wrote in a letter to the House, “that I will not allow any of my servants to be questioned amongst you, much less such as are of eminent place and near unto me. The old question was, What shall be done to the man whom the king will honour? But now it hath been the labour of some to seek what may be done against him whom the king thinks fit to honour.... I wish you would hasten my supply, or else it will be worse for yourselves, for if any ill happen, I think I shall be the last that shall feel it.”
%PRACTICE OF IMPEACHMENT.%
♦Buckingham impeached.♦ The Commons, undaunted, impeached the duke for high crimes and misdemeanours (22nd April). In cases of parliamentary impeachment, the House of Commons is accuser, the House of Lords judge. The earliest case occurred towards the end of Edward the Third’s reign (1376). From the time of Henry VI. there was no impeachment for nearly two centuries (1449-1621), till the practice was revived in the reign of James I., when two of the king’s ministers were impeached for bribery and corruption--Bacon, lord chancellor, in 1621; the Earl of Middlesex, lord treasurer, in 1624. In times when the Parliament and the crown, the law and the prerogative, were struggling for mastery, and when the crown dismissed and appointed at pleasure both judges and ministers of State, such a power was a most useful weapon in the hands of the Commons. Now, since the trials of Warren Hastings (1791) and Lord Melville (1805), the right of impeachment has ceased to be exercised, because the relation of all parties has changed. The law has gained the victory over the prerogative. Courts of justice are independent, and ministers of the crown only hold office at the pleasure of the Commons.
♦True charge against Buckingham.♦ The reverse of all this might have been affirmed at the time when Buckingham was impeached. The special allegations against him were his holding many offices at the same time, selling places of judicature, lending ships to Louis to be used against Rochelle, with various other offences, in all thirteen. But the Commons did not, in fact, impeach Buckingham for any particular crime. Their quarrel with him was that he alone possessed the royal ear, and that he counselled Charles to commit illegal acts at home, and pursue a wavering course of foreign policy, detrimental to the interests of the Protestants. The English nation has always been intolerant of tyranny at second hand. It seemed to them now monstrous that the wishes of people and Parliament should be over-ruled by the fancies of one unworthy favourite. They determined, therefore, to impeach the duke, as the only constitutional means then possessed of securing the change of ministry they desired.
♦Speech of Sir John Eliot♦
“What vast treasures he has gotten,” said Sir John Eliot, conducting the impeachment before the Lords, “what infinite sums of money, and what a mass of lands! If your lordships please to calculate, you will find it all amounting to little less than the whole of the subsidies which the king has had within that time. A lamentable example of the subjects’ bounties so to be employed! His profuse expenses, his superfluous feasts, his magnificent buildings, his riots, his excesses, what are they but the visible evidences of an express exhausting of the State, a chronicle of the immensity of his waste of the revenues of the crown? No wonder, then, our king is now in want, this man abounding so. And as long as he abounds, the king must still be wanting....
“Of all the precedents I can find, none so near resembles him as doth Sejanus, and him Tacitus describes thus: that he was _audax, sui obtegens, in alios criminator: juxta adulatio et superbia_.[24] If your lordships please to measure him by this, pray see in what they vary. He is _bold_, and of such a boldness, I dare be bold to say, as is seldom heard of. He is _secret_ in his purposes, and more, that we have showed already. Is he a _slanderer_? Is he an _accuser_? I wish this Parliament had not felt it, nor that which was before. As for his _pride and flattery_, what man can judge the greater?... And now, my lords, I will conclude with a particular censure given on the Bishop of Ely in the time of Richard I. That prelate had the king’s treasures at his command, and had luxuriously abused them. His obscure kindred were married to earls, barons, and others of great rank and place. No man’s business could be done without his help. He would not suffer the king’s council to advise in the highest affairs of state. He gave _ignotis personis et obscuris_ the custody of castles and great trusts. He ascended to such a height of insolence and pride, that he ceased to be fit for characters of mercy. And therefore, says the record, of which I now hold the original, _per totam insulam publicè proclametur_;--PEREAT QUI PERDERE CUNCTA FESTINAT; OPPRIMATUR NE OMNES OPPRIMAT”[25] (10th May).
♦Charles visits the House of Lords,♦ When Charles heard that Eliot had compared the duke to Sejanus, he exclaimed, “He must intend me for Tiberius!” and with the defendant by his side, went to the Upper House, and tried to overawe the duke’s judges by informing the Lords that he had given orders for punishment of some insolent speeches spoken to them yesterday, and that he could himself be a witness to clear the duke of every charge brought against him (11th May). ♦and imprisons two members of the Commons.♦ He was as good as his word, and the same day committed to the Tower two of the managers of the impeachment, Sir Dudley Digges and Sir John Eliot. The Lords, of whom many were concealed enemies of the favourite, let the king speak and depart in silence. The Commons agreed to do no business until their members were restored to the House.
♦Charles angrily dissolves the Parliament.♦ Charles might have ended the struggle by a dissolution, but as he still hoped to obtain a supply, he preferred to release the two members. Finding, however, that the Commons would not grant money, unless the duke was first removed from office, he determined to put a stop to the impeachment, by dissolving the Parliament. “No, not a minute!” he said to the Lords, who came in person to petition him to stay the dissolution, and the next day he carried out his purpose (15th June).
♦Fear entertained in the country.♦ The people had been anxiously watching the course of events within the House. “This is the king’s last Parliament,” they said, aware of Charles’ indignation at the impeachment of his minister. “And now that the Parliament is dissolved, and the duke still in power, what will follow next?” “Is it not time to pray? Unless God show us the way out, we are but in an ill case.”[26]
Charles did not keep his subjects long in doubt of his intentions. In fact, a series of measures followed, attacking more classes and more interests within a shorter period than had been ever known in English history.
%WAR WITH FRANCE.%
Although Charles was already engaged in war with Spain, and had not received a penny from his last Parliament, he had still the temerity to enter into war with France. Several causes of quarrel existed between himself and his brother-in-law, Louis XIII. ♦Coalition of Protestant powers against Spain and Austria.♦ Shortly before the death of James, Cardinal Richelieu, Louis’ chief minister, had effected a league between France and the Protestant powers (1624). The French were to fight the armies of Austria and Spain, while the King of Denmark, Christian IV., assisted by men from England, and money from France, was to lead the Protestant forces of Germany for the recovery of the Palatinate. The fleets of England and Holland were to attack Spain, while the Turks were engaged to fall upon Hungary. But as soon as Louis had reduced the Huguenots in Rochelle by the aid of the ships borrowed from Charles, he deserted his allies, and made peace with Spain (March, 1626). The reason of this sudden change in French policy was that the Huguenots, regardless of the interests of their co-religionists, seized the moment when France was about to engage in foreign war, to rise in arms against the government. The English contingent had already been fitted out with the money granted in James’ last Parliament. But Louis now refused permission for these troops to pass through France on their way to join the German army, so that they were obliged to take a long sea passage to Zealand. Disease broke out, and 5000 men out of the 14,000 men perished before they saw the face of the foe.[27]
Christian IV., thus left unsupported, was defeated at Lutter (27th August, 1626), and the armies of the emperor, Ferdinand II., were soon overrunning the north of Germany (1627-8). Charles, who had agreed in his marriage treaty not to put the laws against Catholics into force, and had afterwards lent Louis ships, expecting, in return, to receive aid for the recovery of the Palatinate, naturally felt aggrieved at the conduct of the French government. Moreover, Buckingham had some personal disagreement with Richelieu, which was believed to be his only motive for breaking the peace between the two nations.
%FORCED LOANS.%
♦War with France.♦ The war was unpopular in England, because the French, through their well-known jealousy of Spain and Austria, were regarded as the natural allies of the German Protestants. But Charles and Buckingham were ill advised enough to hope that, by merely declaring themselves friends of the Huguenots, they would be carried along on a flood-tide of popularity, and thus be able to raise money enough by illegal means for the support of two wars at once. ♦Money raised by illegal means.♦ A general loan was demanded; every man, rich or poor, was required to give in the same proportion as he had been rated in the last subsidy granted by Parliament. This so-called loan was in fact nothing less than a tax laid on land and property, without consent of Parliament. Henry VIII., the most absolute of the Tudor sovereigns, once endeavoured to raise money by means of a general loan; but even in his time the attempt produced widespread discontent; a serious insurrection broke out in Suffolk, and the imposition was withdrawn (1525). Since that time a steady increase in wealth and knowledge had for more than a century been strengthening the middle classes, and confirming their attachment to their liberties. Leaders were now to be found in the House of Commons, ready boldly to point the attention of the nation to acts of arbitrary power, and to brave the consequences of the royal displeasure. It was hardly likely, therefore, that an act from which Henry VIII. and Cardinal Wolsey had shrunk, should fail to rouse indignation when attempted by Charles and his detested favourite.
♦Opposition to loan offered by all classes.♦ Opposition arose on all sides from rich and poor. The prisons were full of gentlemen who refused to lend. Lincolnshire “almost rebelled;” Shropshire “utterly denied.” Several gentlemen, on being brought before the Council Chamber, refused to kneel, for fear of seeming to acknowledge that they were in any way responsible for a legitimate refusal of an illegitimate demand. In London, only two or three in a parish would pay, and that though goods were seized, and the duke threatened, saying, “Sirrah, take heed what you do; did not you speak treason at such a time?” Charles himself was reported to be so inflamed against refusers, that he was “vowing a perpetual remembrance, as well as a present punishment.”[28]
Five gentlemen, imprisoned for refusing the loan, applied to the Court of King’s Bench for a writ of _habeas corpus_.[29] The judge sent a writ to the gaoler, commanding him to produce his prisoners before the court, with the warrant on which they had been imprisoned. The gaoler replied that they were committed by a warrant from the king’s council, by the special command of his Majesty, but that no special cause of imprisonment was mentioned. ♦Judgment of Court of King’s Bench concerning personal liberty of subject.♦ Accordingly, the question was pleaded before the judges of the King’s Bench, whether or not the king had power to commit his subjects to prison without alleging any crime against them. The court was crowded, and shouts of applause were raised at the arguments of the prisoners’ counsel. The judges, however, gave judgment in favour of the king, and the five gentlemen were remanded to prison.
The poor, who refused the loans, were pressed into the service of the army and navy. On some districts an extra imposition was laid, called “coat and conduct money,” for fitting out the soldiers. The rich had soldiers quartered on them, who acted as though the king’s soldiers were as much above the law as their master. ♦Disorderly conduct of soldiers.♦ Not content with killing and carrying off oxen and sheep from the owners’ grounds, they murdered and robbed upon the highways, “nay, in fairs and markets, for to meet a poor man coming from the market with a pair of shoes, and take them from him, was but a sport and merriment.” ♦Commissions issued for execution of martial law.♦ The highways became so insecure, that, to suppress disorders, Charles issued commissions to execute martial law. The ordinary course of justice was then set aside, and the commissioners tried and sentenced the soldiers under forms more summary than those of the common law. In spite, however, of the crimes committed, the remedy seemed to the nation worse than the disease. Standing armies and courts-martial being alike unknown to English statute or common law, Charles had no more legal power to issue commissions to try soldiers by martial law than he had to try civilians.[30] ♦Clergy preach duty of passive obedience.♦ To increase the general indignation, the clergy received orders to preach up the duty of passive obedience and the divine right of kings. Those who looked out for promotion complied, but the preachers were regarded as mere lacqueys of the court. It was adding insult to injury, first to take the people’s properties illegally, and then to tell them that submission was a duty, pleasing to God.
%DEFEAT AT ROCHELLE.%
♦Expedition of Buckingham to Rochelle.♦ At last, at the expense of so much bitterness between king and commons, a fleet of 100 vessels was fitted out, and sailed for France (27th June). Buckingham took the command himself; a landing was effected on the Isle of Rhé, and the Huguenots in Rochelle were persuaded to trust to the honour of the English, and try the event of war against Louis XIII. once more. But, after two months had been spent in an unsuccessful siege of the fortified town of St. Martin,[31] Buckingham made a disastrous retreat along a narrow causeway, beset on either side with salt pits and ditches. So many officers and soldiers were slain, so many taken prisoners, that not above half the number of those who sailed returned to their homes. Beside the cries of private mourning were heard those of public indignation. Buckingham was believed to have gone to Rochelle in a pet, merely to gratify his spleen against Louis, without caring either for the Huguenots or his troops; and the people, in whose minds the remembrance of Elizabeth’s triumphs was still fresh, went back to King John’s time to find a parallel disgrace, describing it as “the shamefullest overthrow the English have received since we lost Normandy.”
%THIRD PARLIAMENT.%
A clamour was raised for a Parliament. The coasts were infested; pirates entered the harbours, and sailed up the rivers; the very fishermen were afraid to put out; trade was decaying, for merchants refused to build vessels only to be pressed into the king’s service; the sailors came round about the palace at Whitehall, crying out for pay. Charles had pledged himself to relieve Rochelle, the siege of which, by Louis, was the only outcome of his intervention; but how he was to carry on two wars, in the face of all these difficulties, was a question to puzzle the wisest head. ♦Charles summons a third Parliament.♦ The lords of the council were afraid to try forced loans again, and Charles, though, as he truly said, he did “abominate the name,” consented to follow their advice, and send out the summons for another Parliament.
♦Enemies of court in large majority.♦ The House was filled with patriots, elected against court candidates by overwhelming majorities. Eliot, Pym, Coke, Selden, Wentworth, were all there; and Oliver Cromwell, a young man of twenty-nine, took his seat for the first time as member for the town of Huntingdon. Charles opened this, his third Parliament, with threats (17th March). “If you,” he said, “should not do your duties in contributing what the State at this time needs, I must, in discharge of my conscience, use those other means which God hath put into my hands.” The threat only made the Commons more determined to put an end to the loans, billeting of soldiers, and imprisonments, “those other means” which had caused such just and bitter resentment.
%PETITION OF RIGHT.%
Debates on granting the king a supply, and on finding a remedy for grievances, advanced hand in hand. The decision of the judges, that the king might not commit a subject to prison, _except at his pleasure_,[32] was thought a wanton outrage on the intelligence of the nation. According to this theory, the laws were only binding on the king so long as he graciously chose not to act in right of his royal prerogative, so that Acts of Parliament, regarded for centuries as the bulwarks of public liberty, were rendered absolutely meaningless.
♦Judgment of King’s Bench canvassed in Commons.♦ “To have my body pent up in a gaol,” exclaimed an indignant patriot, “without remedy of law, and to be so adjudged.... If this be law, why do we talk of liberties? Why do we trouble ourselves with a dispute about law, franchises, property of goods, and the like? What may a man call his own, if not the liberty of his person? I am weary of treading these ways.”
A security was needed that the old laws should be kept in force, and the king’s prerogative be prevented from trampling them under foot. “We must vindicate--what?” said Wentworth, “new things? No! our ancient, lawful, and vital liberties! We must reinforce the laws made by our ancestors. We must set such a stamp upon them as no licentious spirit shall dare hereafter to invade them.”
♦Petition of Right.♦ The Commons, however, still believed the king would feel bound in conscience to respect a law which he passed himself; and, under this impression, drew up a bill, in the form of a Petition of Right, to serve as a new guarantee for the preservation of liberty. They called their bill the Petition of Right, because it was but a confirmation of old laws, of rights already possessed. The Petition demanded:
1st. That no freeman be required to give any gift, loan, benevolence, or tax without common consent by Act of Parliament.
2nd. That no freeman be imprisoned or detained contrary to the laws of the land.
3rd. That soldiers and mariners be not billeted in private houses.
4th. That commissions to punish soldiers and sailors by martial law be revoked, and no more issued.
%ATTEMPTED EVASION.%
♦Saving clause proposed by Lords, rejected by Commons.♦ The Upper House, which the king had partially packed by the creation of several new lords, proposed to add to the petition the following saving clause:--“We humbly present this petition to your Majesty, with due regard to leave entire that sovereign power wherewith your Majesty is entrusted for the protection of your people.” The Commons, however, refused to accept the amendment, which conceded the very point at issue. “All our petition,” said Pym, “is for the laws of England; this power seems to be another power distinct from the power of the law. We cannot leave him a sovereign power, for he was never possessed of it.” After several conferences between the two Houses, the Lords yielded and passed the petition in the form desired by the Commons (27th May). ♦Charles’ first answer to Petition of Right.♦ Charles, being in want of money, did not venture in any direct manner to refuse his consent, but when the petition was read before assembled King, Lords, and Commons, the lord keeper read out, instead of the usual words by which the royal assent is signified, a new form, “that the king wished that right should be done, and that he held himself in conscience as much obliged to maintain their just rights and liberties as his own prerogative” (2nd June). The Commons were engaged in preparing a remonstrance against the evil advisers by whose counsel this worthless answer had been given, when a message came from the king, forbidding the House to meddle with affairs of State (5th June). There followed a prolonged silence. ♦Charles forbids House of Commons to meddle with affairs of State.♦ Not to meddle with affairs of State, meant that they must endure the ascendancy of the duke, and see the name of England despised abroad from a policy which was at once meddlesome, feeble, and fickle; while at home outrages were done to the dearest liberties of their country, which it was their bounden duty to defend. Some members sat down in tears, dumb through grief; others mingled their speech with tears; some hundred wept in all, they felt so much was at stake. “Let us palliate no longer,” cried the old lawyer, Sir Edward Coke, “if we do, God will not prosper us. I think the Duke of Buckingham is the cause of all our miseries--that man is the grievance of grievances; it is not the king but the duke”--(a great cry of “’Tis he, ’tis he!” “Yea, yea!” “Well moved, well spoken”)--“that saith, ‘We require you not to meddle with State government or the ministers thereof’” (5th June).
♦King’s second answer to Petition of Right.♦ Two days later, Charles yielded, the Petition of Right was read a second time, and the reply given in the usual form: “_Soit droit fait comme il est désiré_” (7th June).
The Commons, on their side, passed a bill for five subsidies, after which Parliament was prorogued (26th June).
While Parliament was sitting, another fleet which was sent to Rochelle, returned without raising the siege. “What wonder!” said the people; “was not the commander Buckingham’s brother-in-law?” No allowance had been made for the shallowness of that sandy coast: Lord Denbigh, finding his ships drew too much water to approach the city, seemed only too glad of an excuse for sailing away at once. It was believed that the expedition had been got up, not to save Rochelle, but merely to blind the eyes of Parliament. One of the duke’s household, called Dr. Lamb, was set upon by the rabble in the streets of London, and so brutally knocked about that he died the same night. The city magistrates could not, or would not, find the offenders. The people sang,
“Let Charles and George do what they can, The duke shall die like Dr. Lamb.”
%MURDER OF BUCKINGHAM.%
♦Felton murders Buckingham.♦ Felton, described as a gentleman of low stature, few words, and melancholy spirit, after pondering over a remonstrance of the Commons, declaring Buckingham the cause of all the evils under which the kingdom suffered, conceived it his duty to rid his country of an enemy. The duke was at Portsmouth, preparing to set sail immediately in command of another fleet for the relief of Rochelle. He was in company with several officers, French and English, when, in passing through a dark lobby leading from a breakfast-room into a hall, he was stabbed to the heart. “The villain hath killed me!” he cried, pulled out the knife, staggered to a table, and fell dead in the arms of the bystanders (23rd Aug.). No one had seen the blow struck, and suspicion was falling on the Frenchmen, when Felton stepped forward out of the crowd and said, “I am the man who did the deed, let no one suffer who is innocent.” The people could not restrain their joy; healths were drunk to the murderer, verses written in his honour. Crowds gathered to see him on his way to London and the Tower, greeting him as the slayer of the Philistine. “Now, God bless thee, little David,” “The Lord be merciful unto thee,” “The Lord comfort thee,” were the cries that reached his ears.
♦Judges declare use of torture against the common law.♦ On being brought before the council and threatened by Bishop Laud with the rack, unless he revealed the names of his associates, he replied that he alone was author of the deed, and that as for the rack, he could not say whether torture might make him accuse his lordship, or which of their lordships. The threat was not put into execution. The judges unanimously declared the use of torture was contrary to the common law of England, and the king did not think it prudent to override their decision. Felton was hanged at Tyburn. To the last he felt little remorse for the murder. Though he confessed he had done wrong in shedding blood, he could not be brought to doubt but that good would result to Church and State from his act.
%POLITICAL ASSASSINATION.%
The duke was only thirty-five. Charles called him “his martyr,” and never forgave those who opposed him during life, or spoke ill of him after death. His fate shows the truth of the common maxim that those who are above the law are above the protection of law; but the crime was the crime of a fanatic. ♦Popular leaders not implicated in the crime.♦ Not a shadow of suspicion rests on the popular leaders. They were at once too far-sighted and too honourable. Acts of treachery and violence, whatever the immediate advantage gained, are sure in the long run to recoil to the injury of the side that practises them. Sooner or later, violence is condemned by public opinion, for in a constitutional struggle, the mass of the nation have really more the feelings of a jury than of parties to a case. It is only by winning a favourable judgment from the large and wavering masses, that any party, which has no armed force behind it, can obtain a sure and final triumph. Violent partisans are always to be found ready to approve and employ all means without distinction to advance their ends; but the English leaders knew that the statue of Wingless Victory can only stand in the shrine of law and right.
%FALL OF ROCHELLE.%
The fleet, which now sailed under Lord Lindsay, was as unsuccessful as though Buckingham himself had lived to command it. While Charles delayed, Richelieu’s genius and energy were at work. The city was gradually shut in on the land side by a line of circumvallation extending nine miles, while a vast mole of nearly a mile in length was raised across the roadstead. After two unsuccessful attempts to force their way through the mole, the English returned without having placed a morsel of food within reach of the starving inhabitants. The town had a strong position between the sea and the marshes on the rocky promontory from which it got its name of the “little rock.” Originally a colony of serfs, who had fled from the oppressions of their feudal lords, it had a tradition of political as well as of religious freedom. Once a fief of the English kings, and now much dearer as a stronghold of Protestantism, the English were deeply interested in its heroic resistance, and regarded themselves and their country as irretrievably disgraced, when, after 16,000 were said to have died of famine, the city at last surrendered at discretion (8th Oct., 1628).
♦Fall of Rochelle.♦ The fall was a fatal blow to the cause of the Huguenots. Liberty of conscience was still left them, but their fortresses were destroyed, their assemblies, their privileges, their organization by churches abolished. Instead of being a power within the state, they became a sect.[33]
[Illustration: Map of Rochelle area]
The English, after this defeat of their religion, could not console themselves for long with the victory they had obtained over the government in the Petition of Right. At first the people in London rung bells and made bonfires, believing their liberties to be now secured; but their mistake was soon proved. Notwithstanding the king’s distinct promise to respect the rights enumerated in the Petition, the customs were still levied. ♦Petition of Right broken by ministers.♦ A merchant, a member of the Commons, who refused to pay £200 duty, had his goods seized to the value of £5000. “If all the Parliament were in you, we would take your goods,” said the custom-house officers. Men who ventured on speaking or writing against the introduction of Catholic ceremonies and doctrines into a Protestant church, were brought before the Star Chamber on charges of libel, fined, cast into prison, and, in some cases, mutilated. Bishop Laud, a cruel persecutor of Puritans, was translated to the see of London (July). Clergymen, tried and censured by the last Parliament for publishing books and sermons maintaining the right of the king to take his subjects’ goods without their own consent, were now rewarded with bishoprics or rich livings, Charles did not seem to realize the alteration he had made in his position by giving his consent to the Petition of Right. Previously, no special tie bound him to act by law. No special charge of deceit, therefore, could be brought against him if, like his father, he tried to exalt his position into that of a French king, free arbitrarily to tax and imprison his subjects. But now a victory had been fairly won by patriots armed only with the legal weapons of the constitution, and by confirming the old charters by a new statute, he had pledged his word to their observance; by infringement now, he would lose the confidence as well as the affection of his subjects.
%WENTWORTH THE MINISTER.%
♦Sir Thomas Wentworth fills Buckingham’s place in council.♦ Meantime the place of Buckingham was filled. The name of Sir Thomas Wentworth had hitherto been counted among the chief leaders of the opposition. But his subsequent conduct seemed to show that his actions had been dictated by pride rather than by patriotism. Haughty and ambitious, scorning to hold a second place, he had chosen to rise to influence as an enemy of the court, rather than lower himself and sue for favour to Buckingham. Promotion, however, is sure to be offered to a dangerous opponent, who will sacrifice principles to place. A month before Buckingham’s death, Wentworth was raised to a barony. Thus when Felton made the first place vacant, Charles had already enlisted in his service a man, whose great abilities and commanding nature rendered him far more competent to be his adviser in the exercise of arbitrary government than the vain and frivolous favourite he had lost. Wentworth made no conditions as to the policy to be pursued; thus he left his party, not to forward their views in office, but simply to gratify his inordinate ambition. He appointed a meeting with his old friend and companion, Pym, at Greenwich, and there discoursed to him “of the dangers they were like to run by the courses they were in, and what advantages they might have, if they would listen to some offers which would probably be made to them from court.” “You need not use all this art,” replied Pym, “to tell me that you have a mind to leave us. But remember what I tell you. You are going to be undone. And remember also, that though you leave us now, I will never leave you, while your head is upon your shoulders.”
♦Second session of Charles’ Third Parliament.♦ Thus Wentworth, now Viscount Wentworth, and a member of the Privy Council, at the next session of Parliament sat amongst the king’s ministers in the Upper House, ready to throw all the weight of his abilities and eloquence upon the side of arbitrary power (20th Jan).
The Commons immediately began to debate upon their grievances. ‘The goods of merchants had been seized for refusing to pay illegal customs. Further, though no man ought to lose life or limb but by the law, the Star Chamber sentenced men to lose their ears.’ “Next it will be our arms, and then our legs, and so our lives.” Charles, not content with thus breaking his royal promise, had descended to subterfuge. Though by the king’s own orders the Petition of Right, with the proper answer, had been entered in the journals of the House, yet copies had subsequently been dispersed over the country, with the first evasive answer annexed, as well as the second. It was found that the printer had received royal orders to suppress the true copies, and make a new impression. ‘Noblesse oblige,’ but such doubtful dealing could only bring obloquy on the sovereign. The strength of loyalty lies in sentiment, and this was a fatal omen of the future for king and commons.
%ELIOT’S DECLARATION.%
♦Commons inquire into illegal acts of ministers and officers of executive.♦ Meantime Charles sent message after message bidding the House pass a bill, granting him the customs, for this was in fact the only purpose for which he had called the Parliament. “Let the merchants have their goods restored,” said the Commons, “before the bill is passed.” “Kings,” said one, “ought not, by the law of God, thus to oppress their subjects. I know we have a good king, and this is the advice of his wicked ministers, but there is nothing can be more dishonourable unto him.” They proceeded to question those ministers; they demanded of the king’s attorney-general by whose warrant he had discharged Catholic priests; they demanded of the farmers of the customs on what warrants they had seized the goods of merchants who refused to pay illegal duties; they demanded of the judges on what grounds they had refused to let the merchants have their cause tried at law. No acts could have given more dire offence to Charles. Other Houses of Commons had attacked some single minister of state, but none had ever ventured on questioning the conduct of the king’s servants at large. An immediate dissolution being fully expected, the popular leaders determined not to separate, without first passing a vote against the illegal levying of the customs. On the 2nd of March Eliot rose to address the House. ♦The Speaker refuses to put Eliot’s declaration to the vote.♦ The Speaker, Finch, a thorough courtier, rose also, and saying that he had the king’s orders for an immediate adjournment, left his chair. Two members, Denzil Hollis and Valentine, standing on either side, forced him back to his seat, and held him down, whilst Eliot made a short speech, in which he declared it to be the duty of the House to maintain religion and the rights of the subject, and brought forward a declaration to that effect, which he desired the Speaker to put to the vote. But Finch, with tears, refused to receive it or put it to the vote, declaring that he had the king’s command to the contrary. Again he tried to rise from his chair, and again was forced down by Hollis and Valentine. “God’s wounds,” said Hollis, “he should sit there until it pleased them to rise.” “You are the disgrace of your country, and the blot of a noble family,” cried one of his own kinsmen. ♦Tumult in the House. King’s messenger refused admittance.♦ The king’s councillors, coming forward to rescue the Speaker, were forcibly driven back to their seats. Blows were given, and sword hilts handled. “Let all,” said Strode, “who desire the declaration read and put to the vote, stand up.” Whereupon the majority of the House started to their feet, and Eliot flung down the paper before them. At this moment a messenger from the king came to the door, with orders to the sergeant to withdraw with the mace, which, by custom always lies on the Commons’ table while the House is proceeding with business. No sooner, however, had the sergeant laid his hand upon the mace, than a cry was raised to lock the door, and Sir Miles Hobert turned the lock, and put the key in his pocket. Eliot then read a protest against any who should levy or pay customs. “And for myself,” he said, “I protest further, as I am a gentleman, if my fortune be ever again to meet in this honourable assembly, where I now leave, I will begin again.” While he was speaking, the gentleman usher of the black rod, sent by Charles to pronounce a dissolution, vainly knocked at the door for admittance. And now Hollis, standing by the Speaker’s chair, with a paper containing three resolutions in his hand, called out, that he put the question, “that they were traitors who should introduce Popery; that they were traitors who should levy the customs, ungranted by Parliament; that they were traitors who should voluntarily pay them.” “Ay, ay,” was shouted on all sides. The door was unlocked, and the members rushed out, carrying away in the stream a third messenger waiting outside from the king (2nd March).
%ANGRY DISSOLUTION.%
The next day Charles signed a proclamation for a dissolution. The Commons “had,” he said, “tried to erect an universal overwhelming power to themselves, which belongs only to us, and not to them.” They had in fact tried to gain control over the executive power. So far the charge was true. The nation was weary of entering upon wars without its own approval or consent; of giving money for one object, and seeing it spent on another; of seeing good laws not only violated by ministers of the crown, but rendered nugatory by the quibbles of time-serving judges. The Petition of Right was already a dead letter. Judges, ministers, custom-house officers, all acted as though the king’s consent to such a law had never been given. The Commons saw that it was but a vain guarantee against tyranny to ‘have a king’s word to the contrary.’ They were on the right track when they sought to make the officers of the executive personally responsible, as according to the principles of the constitution they had always been. Charles, on his side, published a proclamation against Parliament, threatening “certain vipers of the Commonwealth” with condign punishment, and declaring it “presumption for any one to prescribe to him any time for the calling of that assembly.”
FOOTNOTES:
[19] Birch, I. 12;--Hutch. Mem.
[20] Strafford, Letters and Despatches, I. 28.
[21] A subsidy was an income tax of 4s. in the pound upon the annual value of lands, and a property-tax of 2s. 8d. in the pound upon the actual value of goods. Those whose lands were not worth 20s. a year, or whose personal property was less than £3 in value, were not taxed. These subsidies were levied by commissioners, appointed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer from amongst the inhabitants of the county or borough. The assessment was made with great laxity; owing to this fact and to a constant rise in the money-value of lands, and goods (the price of wheat for instance, doubling in Elizabeth’s reign), the real state of the subsidy was very much less than the nominal. A tenth or a fifteenth was generally voted in addition to the subsidy. These were originally the real tenth or fifteenth of all the movables or personal property of the subject. Each county or borough was responsible for a certain sum, which was levied by commissioners, appointed by its representatives in the Commons. Since the last valuation had been made in the reign of Edward III., in that of Charles I., when the purchasing power of money had decreased five times, the tenths and fifteenths instead of being taxes of 2s., and of 1s. 4d., were more like taxes of 5d. and 3d., in the £ respectively.
[22] This has been proved by Forster’s Life of Sir John Eliot, i. v. 6.
[23] See Forster’s Life of Sir John Eliot. i. vi. 4.
[24] Tac. Ann. iv. 1.
[25] Forster’s Life of Sir J. Eliot, i. vii. 6.
[26] Ellis. 3rd Series, 227, 228.
[27] Vessels were not then required, as they happily are now, to have on board a sufficient supply of lime juice, or other preventives against consequences of a salt diet. Hence the fatal ravages of scurvy in those times. The symptoms of this disease are described as--discoloured spots, swelled legs, extraordinary lassitude and dejection, sudden death resulting on the least motion or exertion of strength. See G. Anson’s Voyage, I. x.
[28] Straff. Letters, I. 38; Birch. 190, 154, 157, 164.
[29] See p. 16.
[30] Kings of England had indeed always exercised the right of issuing ordinances of war for the regulation of their armies. But this military law had been confined to military offences committed on actual service, while these ‘soldiers, mariners, and other dissolute persons,’ were (1) not on actual service, and (2) had committed offences which were cognizable at the courts of common law; hence fears were naturally entertained that so tempting a method of procedure would be extended to civilians. Since England has had a standing army, a Mutiny Act is annually passed, allowing courts-martial for punishment of military offences, and reserving the crown power to frame further articles in case of actual war.
[31] For map, see p. 46.
[32] Forster’s Life of Sir J. Eliot, ii. ix. 2.
[33] Lavallée, Hist. de France.