THE KING AND HIS PREROGATIVE.
1628-1636
Difficulty in raising funds.--The king's resources.--Modes of raising
money.--Parliaments abandoned.--The government attaches the property
of a member of Parliament.--Confusion in the House of
Commons.--Resolutions.--The Commons refuse to admit the king's
officers.--Members imprisoned.--Dissolution of Parliament.--The king
in the House of Lords.--The king's speech on dissolving
Parliament.--The king resolves to do without Parliaments.--Forced
loans.--Monopolies of the necessaries of life.--Tonnage and
poundage.--Ship money.--Origin of these taxes.--John Hampden.--He
refuses to pay ship money.--Hampden's trial.--He is compelled to
pay.--A fleet raised.--Its exploits among the herring-busses.--Court
of the Star Chamber.--Its constitution.--Trial by jury.--No jury in
the Star Chamber.--Crimes tried by the Star Chamber.--Origin of the
term.--Immense power of the Court of Star Chamber.--Oppressive
fines.--King's forests.--Offenses against the king and his lords.--A
gentleman fined for resenting an insult.--Murmurs silenced.--The
kingdom of Scotland.--The king visits Scotland.--He is crowned
there.--The king returns to London.--Increasing discontent.
The great difficulty in governing without a Parliament was the raising
of funds. By the old customs and laws of the realm, a tax upon the
people could only be levied by the action of the House of Commons; and
the great object of the king and council during Buckingham's life, in
summoning Parliaments from time to time, was to get their aid in this
respect. But as Charles found that one Parliament after another
withheld the grants, and spent their time in complaining of his
government, he would dissolve them, successively, after exhausting all
possible means of bringing them to a compliance with his will. He
would then be thrown upon his own resources.
The king had _some_ resources of his own. These were certain estates,
and lands, and other property, in various parts of the country, which
belonged to the crown, the income of which the king could appropriate.
But the amount which could be derived from this source was very
small. Then there were certain other modes of raising money, which had
been resorted to by former monarchs, in emergencies, at distant
intervals, but still in instances so numerous that the king considered
precedents enough had been established to make the power to resort to
these modes a part of the prerogative of the crown. The people,
however, considered these acts of former monarchs as irregularities or
usurpations. They denied the king's right to resort to these methods,
and they threw so many difficulties in the way of the execution of his
plans, that finally he would call another Parliament, and make new
efforts to lead them to conform to his will. The more the experiment
was tried, however, the worse it succeeded; and at last the king
determined to give up the idea of Parliaments altogether, and to
compel the people to submit to his plans of raising money without
them.
The final dissolution of Parliament, by which Charles entered upon his
new plan of government, was attended with some resistance, and the
affair made great difficulty. It seems that one of the members, a
certain Mr. Rolls, had had some of his goods seized for payment of
some of the king's irregular taxes, which he had refused to pay
willingly. Now it had always been considered the law of the land in
England, that the person and the property of a member of Parliament
were sacred during the session, on the ground that while he was giving
his attendance at a council meeting called by his sovereign, he ought
to be protected from molestation on the part either of his
fellow-subjects or his sovereign, in his person and in his property.
The House of Commons considered, therefore, the seizure of the goods
of one of the members of the body as a breach of their privilege, and
took up the subject with a view to punish the officers who acted. The
king sent a message immediately to the House, while they were debating
the subject, saying that the officer acted, in seizing the goods, in
obedience to his own direct command. This produced great excitement
and long debates. The king, by taking the responsibility of the
seizure upon himself, seemed to bid the House defiance. They brought
up this question: "Whether the seizing of Mr. Rolls's goods was not a
breach of privilege?" When the time came for a decision, the speaker,
that is, the presiding officer, refused to put the question to vote.
He said he had been commanded _by the king_ not to do it! The House
were indignant, and immediately adjourned for two days, probably for
the purpose of considering, and perhaps consulting their constituents
on what they were to do in so extraordinary an emergency as the king's
coming into their own body and interfering with the functions of one
of their own proper officers.
They met on the day to which they had adjourned, prepared to insist on
the speaker's putting the question. But he, immediately on the House
coming to order, said that he had received the king's command to
adjourn the House for a week, and to put no question whatever. He was
then about to leave the chair, but two of the members advanced to him
and held him in his place, while they read some resolutions which had
been prepared. There was great confusion and clamor. Some insisted
that the House was adjourned, some were determined to pass the
resolutions. The resolutions were very decided. They declared that
whoever should counsel or advise the laying of taxes not granted by
Parliament, or be an actor or instrument in collecting them, should be
accounted an innovator, and a capital enemy to the kingdom and
Commonwealth. And also, that if any person whatever should voluntarily
pay such taxes, he should be counted a capital enemy also. These
resolutions were read in the midst of great uproar. The king was
informed of the facts, and sent for the sergeant of the House--one of
the highest officers--but the members locked the door, and would not
let the sergeant go. Then the king sent one of his own officers to the
House with a message. The members kept the door locked, and would not
let him in until they had disposed of the resolutions. Then the House
adjourned for a week.
The next day, several of the leading members who were supposed to have
been active in these proceedings were summoned to appear before the
council. They refused to answer out of Parliament for what was said
and done by them in Parliament. The council sent them to prison in the
Tower.
The week passed away, and the time for the reassembling of the Houses
arrived. It had been known, during the week, that the king had
determined on dissolving Parliament. It is usual, in dissolving a
Parliament, for the sovereign not to appear in person, but to send his
message of dissolution by some person commissioned to deliver it. This
is called dissolving the House by commission. The dissolution is
always declared in the House of Lords, the Commons being summoned to
attend. In this case, however, the king attended in person. He was
dressed magnificently in his royal robes, and wore his crown. He would
not deign, however, to send for the Commons. He entered the House of
Peers, and took his seat upon the throne. Several of the Commons,
however, came in of their own accord, and stood below the bar, at the
usual place assigned them. The king then rose and read the following
speech. The antiquity of the language gives it an air of quaintness
now which it did not possess then.
"My Lords,--I never came here upon so unpleasant an occasion, it
being the Dissolution of a Parliament. Therefore Men may have
some cause to wonder why I should not rather chuse to do this by
Commission, it being a general Maxim of Kings to leave harsh
Commands to their Ministers, Themselves only executing pleasing
things. Yet considering that Justice as well consists in Reward
and Praise of Virtue as Punishing of Vice, I thought it necessary
to come here to-day, and to declare to you and all the World,
that it was merely the undutiful and seditious Carriage in the
Lower House that hath made the dissolution of this Parliament.
And you, my Lords, are so far from being any Causers of it, that
I take as much comfort in your dutiful Demeanour, as I am justly
distasted with their Proceedings. Yet, to avoid their Mistakings,
let me tell you, that it is so far from me to adjudge all the
House alike guilty, that I know there are many there as dutiful
subjects as any in the World it being but some few Vipers among
them that did cast this mist of Undutifulness over most of their
Eyes. Yet to say Truth, there was good Number there that could
not be infected with this Contagion.
"To conclude, As those Vipers must look for their Reward of
Punishment, so you, my Lords, may justly expect from me that
Favor and Protection that a good King oweth to his loving and
faithful Nobility. And now, my Lord Keeper, do what I have
commanded you."
Then the lord keeper pronounced the Parliament dissolved. The lord
keeper was the keeper of the great seal, one of the highest officers
of the crown.
Of course this affair produced a fever of excitement against the king
throughout the whole realm. This excitement was kept up and increased
by the trials of the members of Parliament who had been imprisoned.
The courts decided against them, and they were sentenced to long
imprisonment and to heavy fines. The king now determined to do without
Parliaments entirely; and, of course, he had to raise money by his
royal prerogative altogether, as he had done, in fact, before, a great
deal, during the intervals between the successive Parliaments. It will
not be very entertaining, but it will be very useful to the reader to
peruse carefully some account of the principal methods resorted to by
the king. In order, however, to diminish the necessity for money as
much as possible, the king prepared to make peace with France and
Spain; and as they, as well as England, were exhausted with the wars,
this was readily effected.
One of the resorts adopted by the king was to a system of _loans_, as
they were called, though these loans differed from those made by
governments at the present day, in being apportioned upon the whole
community according to their liability to taxation, and in being made,
in some respects, compulsory. The loan was not to be absolutely
collected by force, but all were expected to lend, and if any refused,
they were to be required to make oath that they would not tell any
body else that they had refused, in order that the influence of their
example might not operate upon others. Those who did refuse were to be
reported to the government. The officers appointed to collect these
loans were charged not to make unnecessary difficulty, but to do all
in their power to induce the people to contribute freely and
willingly. This plan had been before adopted, in the time of
Buckingham, but it met with little success.
Another plan which was resorted to was the granting of what was called
monopolies: that is, the government would select some important and
necessary articles in general use, and give the exclusive right of
manufacturing them to certain persons, on their paying a part of the
profits to the government. Soap was one of the articles thus chosen.
The exclusive right to manufacture it was given to a company, on their
paying for it. So with leather, salt, and various other things. These
persons, when they once possessed the exclusive right to manufacture
an article which the people must use, would abuse their power by
deteriorating the article, or charging enormous prices. Nothing
prevented their doing this, as they had no competition. The effect
was, that the people were injured much more than the government was
benefited. The plan of granting such monopolies by governments is now
universally odious.
Another method of taxation was what was called _tonnage and poundage_.
This was an ancient tax, assessed on merchandise brought into the
country in ships, like the _duties_ now collected at our
custom-houses. It was called tonnage and poundage because the
merchandise on which it was assessed was reckoned by weight, viz., the
ton and the pound. A former king, Edward III., first assessed it to
raise money to suppress piracy on the seas. He said it was reasonable
that the merchandise protected should pay the expense of the
protection, and in proper proportion. The Parliament in that day
opposed this tax. They did not object to the tax itself, but to the
king's assessing it by his own authority. However, they granted it
themselves afterward, and it was regularly collected. Subsequent
Parliaments had granted it, and generally made the law, once for all,
to continue in force during the life of the monarch. When Charles
commenced his reign, the Peers were for renewing the law as usual, to
continue throughout his reign. The Commons desired to enact the law
only for a year at a time, so as to keep the power in their own hands.
The two houses thus disagreed, and nothing was done. The king then
went on to collect the tax without any authority except his own
prerogative.
Another mode of levying money adopted by the king was what was called
_ship money_. This was a plan for raising a navy by making every town
contribute a certain number of ships, or the money necessary to build
them. It originated in ancient times, and was at first confined to
seaport towns which had ships. These towns were required to furnish
them for the king's service, sometimes to be paid for by the king, at
other times by the country, and at other times not to be paid for at
all. Charles revived this plan, extending it to the whole country; a
tax was assessed on all the towns, each one being required to furnish
money enough for a certain number of ships. The number at one time
required of the city of London was twenty.
There was one man who made his name very celebrated then, and it has
continued very celebrated since, by his refusal to pay his ship money,
and by his long and determined contest with the government in regard
to it, in the courts. His name was John Hampden. He was a man of
fortune and high character. His tax for ship money was only twenty
shillings, but he declared that he would not pay it without a trial.
The king had previously obtained the opinion of the judges that he had
a right, in case of necessity, to assess and collect the ship money,
and Hampden knew, therefore, that the decision would certainly, in the
end, be against him. He knew, however, that the attention of the whole
country would be attracted to the trial, and that the arguments which
he should offer, to prove that the act of collecting such a tax on the
part of the king's government was illegal and tyrannical, would be
spread before the country, and would make a great impression, although
they certainly would not alter the opinion of the judges, who, holding
their offices by the king's appointment, were strongly inclined to
take his side.
It resulted as Hampden had foreseen. The trial attracted universal
attention. It was a great spectacle to see a man of fortune and of
high standing, making all those preparations, and incurring so great
expense, on account of a refusal to pay five dollars, knowing too,
that he would have to pay it in the end. The people of the realm were
convinced that Hampden was right, and they applauded and honored him
very greatly for his spirit and courage. The trial lasted twelve days.
The illegality and injustice of the tax were fully exposed. The people
concurred entirely with Hampden, and even some of the judges were
convinced. He was called the patriot Hampden, and his name will always
be celebrated in English history. The whole discussion, however,
though it produced a great effect at the time, would be of no interest
now, since it turned mainly on the question what the king's rights
actually were, according to the ancient customs and usages of the
realm. The question before mankind now is a very different one; it is
not what the powers and prerogatives of government have been in times
past, but what they ought to be now and in time to come.
The king's government gained the victory, ostensibly, in this contest,
and Hampden had to pay the money. Very large sums were collected,
also, from others by this tax, and a great fleet was raised. The
performances and exploits of the fleet had some influence in quieting
the murmurs of the people. The fleet was the greatest which England
had ever possessed. One of its exploits was to compel the Dutch to pay
a large sum for the privilege of fishing in the narrow seas about
Great Britain. The Dutch had always maintained that these seas were
public, and open to all the world; and they had a vast number of
fishing boats, called herring-busses, that used to resort to them for
the purpose of catching herring, which they made a business of
preserving and sending all over the world. The English ships attacked
these fleets of herring-busses, and drove them off; and as the Dutch
were not strong enough to defend them, they agreed to pay a large sum
annually for the right to fish in the seas in question, protesting,
however, against it as an extortion, for they maintained that the
English had no control over any seas beyond the bays and estuaries of
their own shores.
One of the chief means which Charles depended upon during the long
period that he governed without a Parliament, was a certain famous
tribunal or court called the _Star Chamber._ This court was a very
ancient one, having been established in some of the earliest reigns;
but it never attracted any special attention until the time of
Charles. His government called it into action a great deal, and
extended its powers, and made it a means of great injustice and
oppression, as the people thought; or, as Charles would have said, a
very efficient means of vindicating his prerogative, and punishing the
stubborn and rebellious.
There were three reasons why this court was a more convenient and
powerful instrument in the hands of the king and his council than any
of the other courts in the kingdom. First, it was, by its ancient
constitution, composed of members of the _council_, with the exception
of two persons, who were to be judges in the other courts. This plan
of having two judges from the common law courts seems to have been
adopted for the purpose of securing some sort of conformity of the
Star Chamber decisions with the ordinary principles of English
jurisprudence. But then, as these two law judges would always be
selected with reference to their disposition to carry out the king's
plans, and as the other members of the court were all members of the
government itself, of course the court was almost entirely under
governmental control.
The second reason was, that in this court there was no jury. There had
never been juries employed in it from its earliest constitution. The
English had contrived the plan of trial by jury as a defense against
the severity of government. If a man was accused of crime, the judges
appointed by the government that he had offended were not to be
allowed to decide whether he was guilty or not. They would be likely
not to be impartial. The question of his guilt or innocence was to be
left to twelve men, taken at hazard from the ordinary walks of life,
and who, consequently, would be likely to sympathize with the accused,
if they saw any disposition to oppress him, rather than to join
against him with a tyrannical government. Thus the jury, as they said,
was a great safeguard. The English have always attached great value to
their system of trial by jury. The plan is retained in this country,
though there is less necessity for it under our institutions. Now, in
the Star Chamber, it had never been the custom to employ a jury. The
members of the court decided the whole question; and as they were
entirely in the interest of the government, the government, of
course, had the fate of every person accused under their direct
control.
The third reason consisted in the nature of the crimes which it had
always been customary to try in this court. It had jurisdiction in a
great variety of cases in which men were brought into collision with
the government, such as charges of riot, sedition, libel, opposition
to the edicts of the council, and to proclamations of the king. These
and similar cases had always been tried by the Star Chamber, and these
were exactly the cases which ought not to be tried by such a court;
for persons accused of hostility to government ought not to be tried
by government itself.
There has been a great deal of discussion about the origin of the term
Star Chamber. The hall where the court was held was in a palace at
Westminster, and there were a great many windows in it. Some think
that it was from this that the court received its name. Others suppose
it was because the court had cognizance of a certain crime, the Latin
name of which has a close affinity with the word star. Another reason
is, that certain documents, called _starra_, used to be kept in the
hall. The prettiest idea is a sort of tradition that the ceiling of
the hall was formerly ornamented with stars, and that this
circumstance gave name to the hall. This supposition, however,
unfortunately, has no better foundation than the others; for there
were no stars on the ceiling in Charles's time, and there had not been
any for a hundred years; nor is there any positive evidence that there
ever were. However, in the absence of any real reason for preferring
one of these ideas over the other, mankind seem to have wisely
determined on choosing the most picturesque, so that it is generally
agreed that the origin of the name was the ancient decoration of the
ceiling of the hall with gilded stars.
However this may be, the court of the Star Chamber was an engine of
prodigious power in the hands of Charles's government. It aided them
in two ways. They could punish their enemies, and where these enemies
were wealthy, they could fill up the treasury of the government by
imposing enormous fines upon them. Sometimes the offenses for which
these fines were imposed were not of a nature to deserve such severe
penalties. For instance, there was a law against turning tillage land
into pasturage. Land that is tilled supports men. Land that is
pastured supports cattle and sheep. The former were a burden,
sometimes, to landlords, the latter a means of wealth. Hence there was
then, as there is now, a tendency in England, in certain parts of the
country, for the landed proprietors to change their tillage land to
pasture, and thus drive the peasants away from their homes. There were
laws against this, but a great many persons had done it
notwithstanding. One of these persons was fined four thousand pounds;
an enormous sum. The rest were alarmed, and made _compositions_, as
they were called; that is, they paid at once a certain sum on
condition of not being prosecuted. Thirty thousand pounds were
collected in this way, which was then a very large amount.
There were in those days, as there are now, certain tracts of land in
England called the king's forests, though a large portion of them are
now without trees. The boundaries of these lands had not been very
well defined, but the government now published decrees specifying the
boundaries, and extending them so far as to include, in many cases,
the buildings and improvements of other proprietors. They then
prosecuted these proprietors for having encroached, as they called
it, upon the crown lands, and the Star Chamber assessed very heavy
fines upon them. The people said all this was done merely to get
pretexts to extort money from the nation, to make up for the want of a
Parliament to assess regular taxes; but the government said it was a
just and legal mode of protecting the ancient and legitimate rights of
the king.
In these and similar modes, large sums of money were collected as
fines and penalties for offenses more or less real. In other cases
very severe punishments were inflicted for various sorts of offenses
committed against the personal dignity of the king, or the great lords
of his government. It was considered highly important to repress all
appearance of disrespect or hostility to the king. One man got into
some contention with one of the king's officers, and finally struck
him. He was fined ten thousand pounds. Another man said that a certain
archbishop had incurred the king's displeasure by desiring some
toleration for the Catholics. This was considered a slander against
the archbishop, and the offender was sentenced to be fined a thousand
pounds, to be whipped, imprisoned, and to stand in the pillory at
Westminster, and at three other places in various parts of the
kingdom.
A gentleman was following a chase as a spectator, the hounds belonging
to a nobleman. The huntsman, who had charge of the hounds, ordered him
to keep back, and not come so near the hounds; and in giving him this
order, spoke, as the gentleman alleged, so insolently, that he struck
him with his riding-whip. The huntsman threatened to complain to his
master, the nobleman. The gentleman said that if his master should
justify him in such insulting language as he had used, he would serve
him in the same manner. The Star Chamber fined him ten thousand pounds
for speaking so disrespectfully of a lord.
By these and similar proceedings, large sums of money were collected
by the Star Chamber for the king's treasury, and all expression of
discontent and dissatisfaction on the part of the people was
suppressed. This last policy, however, the suppression of expressions
of dissatisfaction, is always a very dangerous one for any government
to undertake. Discontent, silenced by force, is exasperated and
extended. The outward signs of its existence disappear, but its inward
workings become wide-spread and dangerous, just in proportion to the
weight by which the safety-valve is kept down. Charles and his court
of the Star Chamber rejoiced in the power and efficacy of their
tremendous tribunal. They issued proclamations and decrees, and
governed the country by means of them. They silenced all murmurs. But
they were, all the time, disseminating through the whole length and
breadth of the land a deep and inveterate enmity to royalty, which
ended in a revolution of the government, and the decapitation of the
king. They stopped the hissing of the steam for the time, but caused
an explosion in the end.
Charles was King of Scotland as well as of England. The two countries
were, however, as countries, distinct, each having its own laws, its
own administration, and its own separate dominions. The sovereign,
however, was the same. A king could inherit two kingdoms, just as a
man can, in this country, inherit two farms, which may, nevertheless,
be at a distance from each other, and managed separately. Now,
although Charles had, from the death of his father, exercised
sovereignty over the realm of Scotland, he had not been crowned, nor
had even visited Scotland. The people of Scotland felt somewhat
neglected. They murmured that their common monarch gave all his
attention to the sister and rival kingdom. They said that if the king
did not consider the Scottish crown worth coming after, they might,
perhaps, look out for some other way of disposing of it.
The king, accordingly, in 1633, began to make preparations for a royal
progress into Scotland. He first issued a proclamation requiring a
proper supply of provisions to be collected at the several points of
his proposed route, and specified the route, and the length of stay
which he should make in each place. He set out on the 13th of May with
a splendid retinue. He stopped at the seats of several of the nobility
on the way, to enjoy the hospitalities and entertainments which they
had prepared for him. He proceeded so slowly that it was a month
before he reached the frontier. Here all his English servants and
retinue retired from their posts, and their places were supplied by
Scotchmen who had been previously appointed, and who were awaiting his
arrival. He entered Edinburgh with great pomp and parade, all Scotland
flocking to the capital to witness the festivities. The coronation
took place three days afterward. He met the Scotch Parliament, and,
for form's sake, took a part in the proceedings, so as actually to
exercise his royal authority as King of Scotland. This being over, he
was conducted in great state back to Berwick, which is on the
frontier, and thence he returned by rapid journeys to London.
The king dissolved his last Parliament in 1629. He had now been
endeavoring for four or five years to govern alone. He succeeded
tolerably well, so far as external appearances indicated, up to this
time. There was, however, beneath the surface, a deep-seated
discontent, which was constantly widening and extending, and, soon
after the return of the king from Scotland, real difficulties
gradually arose, by which he was, in the end, compelled to call a
Parliament again. What these difficulties were will be explained in
the subsequent chapters.