The reign of Charles the First, succeeded by the Commonwealth of
England, forms a period unparalleled by any preceding one in the annals
of mankind. It was for the English nation the great result of all former
attempts to ascertain and to secure the just freedom of the subject. The
prerogative of the sovereign and the rights of the people were often
imagined to be mutual encroachments, and were long involved in
contradiction, in an age of unsettled opinions and disputed principles.
At length the conflicting parties of monarchy and democracy, in the
weakness of their passions, discovered how much each required the other
for its protector. This age offers the finest speculations in human
nature; it opens a protracted scene of glory and of infamy; all that
elevates, and all that humiliates our kind, wrestling together, and
expiring in a career of glorious deeds, of revolting crimes, and even of
ludicrous infirmities!
The French Revolution is the commentary of the English; and a commentary
at times more important than the text which it elucidates. It has thrown
a freshness over the antiquity of our own history; and, on returning to
it, we seem to possess the feelings, and to be agitated by the
interests, of contemporaries. The circumstances and the persons which so
many imagine had passed away, have been reproduced under our own eyes.
In other histories we accept the knowledge of the characters and the
incidents on the evidence of the historian; but here we may take them
from our own conviction, since to extinct names and to past events we
can apply the reality which we ourselves have witnessed.
Charles the First had scarcely ascended the throne ere he discovered
that in his new parliament he was married to a sullen bride: the
youthful monarch, with the impatience of a lover, warm with hope and
glory, was ungraciously repulsed even in the first favours! The
prediction of his father remained, like the handwriting on the wall;
but, seated on the throne, Hope was more congenial to youth than
Prophecy.
As soon as Charles the First could assemble a parliament, he addressed
them with an earnestness, in which the simplicity of words and thoughts
strongly contrasted with the oratorical harangues of the late monarch.
It cannot be alleged against Charles the First, that he preceded the
parliament in the war of words. He courted their affections; and even in
this manner of reception, amidst the dignity of the regal office,
studiously showed his exterior respect by the marked solemnity of their
first meeting. As yet uncrowned, on the day on which he first addressed
the Lords and Commons, he wore his crown, and vailed it at the opening,
and on the close of his speech; a circumstance to which the parliament
had not been accustomed. Another ceremony gave still greater solemnity
to the meeting; the king would not enter into business till they had
united in prayer. He commanded the doors to be closed, and a bishop to
perform the office. The suddenness of this unexpected command
disconcerted the catholic lords, of whom the less rigid knelt, and the
moderate stood: there was one startled papist who did nothing but cross
himself![286]
The speech may be found in Rushworth; the friendly tone must be shown
here.
I hope that you do remember that you were pleased to employ me to
advise my father to break off the treaties (with Spain). I came into
this business willingly and freely, like a young man, and
consequently rashly; but it was by your interest--your engagement. I
pray you to remember, that this being my _first action_, and begun by
_your advice and entreaty_, what a great dishonour it were to you and
me that it should fail for that assistance you are able to give me!
This effusion excited no sympathy in the house. They voted not a seventh
part of the expenditure necessary to proceed with a war, into which, as
a popular measure, they themselves had forced the king.
At Oxford the king again reminded them that he was engaged in a war
"from their desires and advice." He expresses his disappointment at
their insufficient grant, "far short to set forth the navy now
preparing." The speech preserves the same simplicity.
Still no echo of kindness responded in the house. It was, however,
asserted, in a vague and quibbling manner, that "though a former
parliament did engage the king in a war, yet, (if things were managed by
a contrary design, and the treasure misemployed) _this parliament is not
bound by another parliament_:" and they added a cruel mockery, "that the
king should help the cause of the Palatinate with _his own_
_money_!"--this foolish war, which James and Charles had so long borne
their reproaches for having avoided as hopeless, but which the puritanic
party, as well as others, had continually urged as necessary for the
maintenance of the protestant cause in Europe.
Still no supplies! but protestations of duty, and petitions about
grievances, which it had been difficult to specify. In their
"Declaration" they style his Majesty "Our dear and dread sovereign," and
themselves "his poor Commons:" but they concede no point--they offer no
aid! The king was not yet disposed to quarrel, though he had in vain
pressed for dispatch of business, lest the season should be lost for the
navy; again reminding them, that "it was the _first request_ that he
ever made unto them!" On the pretence of the plague at Oxford, Charles
prorogued parliament, with a promise to reassemble in the winter.
There were a few whose hearts had still a pulse to vibrate with the
distresses of a youthful monarch, perplexed by a war which they
themselves had raised. But others, of a more republican complexion,
rejected "_Necessity_, as a dangerous counsellor, which would be always
furnishing arguments for supplies. If the king was in danger and
necessity, those ought to answer for it who have put both king and
kingdom into this peril: and if the state of things would not admit a
redress of grievances, there cannot be so much _necessity for money_."
The first parliament abandoned the king!
Charles now had no other means to despatch the army and fleet, in a bad
season, but by borrowing money on privy seals: these were letters, where
the loan exacted was as small as the style was humble. They specified,
"that this loan, without inconvenience to any, is only intended for the
service of the public. Such private helps for public services which
cannot be deferred," the king premises, had been often resorted to; but
this "being the _first time_ that we have required anything in this
kind, we require but _that sum which few men would deny a friend_." As
far as I can discover, the highest sum assessed from great personages
was twenty pounds! The king was willing to suffer any mortification,
even that of a charitable solicitation, rather than endure the obdurate
insults of parliament! All donations were received, from ten pounds to
five shillings: this was the mockery of an alms-basket! Yet with
contributions and savings so trivial, and exacted with such a warm
appeal to their feelings, was the king to send out a fleet with ten
thousand men--to take Cadiz!
This expedition, like so many similar attempts from the days of Charles
the First to those of the great Lord Chatham, and to our own--concluded
in a nullity! Charles, disappointed in this predatory attempt, in
despair called his _second_ parliament--as he says, "in the midst of his
necessities--and to learn from them how he was to frame his course and
counsels."
The Commons, as duteously as ever, profess that "No king was ever dearer
to his people, and that they really intend to assist his majesty in such
a way as may make him safe at home and feared abroad"--but it was to be
on condition that he would be graciously pleased to accept "the
information and advice of parliament in discovering the causes of the
great evils, and redress their grievances." The king accepted this "as a
satisfactory answer;" but Charles comprehended their drift--"You
specially aim at the Duke of Buckingham; what he hath done to change
your minds I wot not." The style of the king now first betrays angered
feelings; the secret cause of the uncomplying conduct of the Commons was
hatred of the favourite--but the king saw that they designed to control
the executive government, and he could ascribe their antipathy to
Buckingham but to the capriciousness of popular favour; for not long ago
he had heard Buckingham hailed as "their saviour." In the zeal and
firmness of his affections, Charles always considered that he himself
was aimed at in the person of his confidant, his companion, and his
minister!
Some of "the bold speakers," as the heads of the opposition are
frequently designated in the manuscript letters, have now risen into
notice. Sir John Eliot, Dr. Turner, Sir Dudley Digges, Mr. Clement Coke,
poured themselves forth in a vehement, not to say seditious style, with
invectives more daring than had ever before thundered in the House of
Commons! The king now told them--"I come to show your errors, and, as I
may call it, _unparliamentary proceedings of parliament_." The lord
keeper then assured them, that "when the irregular humours of _some
particular persons_ were settled, the king would hear and answer all
just grievances; but the king would have them also to know that he was
equally jealous to the contempt of his royal rights, which his majesty
would not suffer to be violated by any pretended course of
parliamentary liberty. The king considered the parliament as his
council; but there was a difference between councilling and controlling,
and between liberty and the abuse of liberty." He finished by noticing
their extraordinary proceedings in their impeachment of Buckingham. The
king, resuming his speech, remarkably reproached the parliament--
Now that you have all things according to your wishes, and that _I am
so far engaged that you think there is no retreat, now you begin to
set the dice, and make your own game_. But I pray you be not
deceived; it is not a parliamentary way, nor is it a way to deal with
a king. Mr. Clement Coke told you, "It was better to be eaten up by a
foreign enemy than to be destroyed at home!" Indeed, I think it more
honour for a king to be invaded and almost destroyed by a foreign
enemy than to _be despised by his own subjects_.
The king concluded by asserting his privilege to call or to forbid
parliaments.
The style of "the bold speakers" appeared at least as early as in April;
I trace their spirit in letters of the times, which furnish facts and
expressions that do not appear in our printed documents.
Among the earliest of our patriots, and finally the great victim of his
exertions, was Sir John Eliot, vice-admiral of Devonshire. He, in a tone
which "rolled back to Jove his own bolts," and startled even the writer,
who was himself biassed to the popular party, "made a resolute, I doubt
whether a timely, speech." He adds Eliot asserted that "They came not
thither either to do what the king should command them, nor to abstain
when he forbade them; they came to continue constant, and to maintain
their privileges. They would not give their posterity a cause to curse
them for losing their privileges by restraint, which their forefathers
had left them."[287]
On the 8th of May the impeachment of the duke was opened by Sir Dudley
Digges, who compared the duke to a meteor exhaled out of putrid matter.
He was followed by Glanville, Selden, and others. On this first day the
duke sat out-facing his accusers and out-braving their accusations,
which the more highly exasperated the house.[288] On the following day
the duke was absent, when the epilogue to this mighty piece was
elaborately delivered by Sir John Eliot, with a force of declamation and
a boldness of personal allusion which have not been surpassed in the
invectives of the modern Junius.
Eliot, after expatiating on the favourite's ambition in procuring and
getting into his hands the greatest offices of strength and power in the
kingdom, and the means by which he had obtained them, drew a picture of
"the inward character of the duke's mind." The duke's plurality of
offices reminded him "of a chimerical beast called by the ancients
_Stellionatus_, so blurred, so spotted, so full of foul lines that they
knew not what to make of it! In setting up himself he hath set upon the
kingdom's revenues, the fountain of supply, and the nerves of the land.
He intercepts, consumes, and exhausts the revenues of the crown; and, by
emptying the veins the blood should run in, he hath cast the kingdom
into a high consumption." He descends to criminate the duke's
magnificent tastes; he who had something of a congenial nature; for
Eliot was a man of fine literature. "Infinite sums of money, and mass of
land exceeding the value of money, contributions in parliament have been
heaped upon him; and how have they been employed? Upon costly furniture,
sumptuous feasting, and magnificent building, _the visible evidence of
the express exhausting of the state_!"