THE KING AND HIS PREROGATIVE.
[Sidenote: Difficulty in raising funds.]
The great difficulty in governing without a Parliament was how to
raise 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
point. 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.
[Sidenote: The king's resources.]
[Sidenote: Modes of raising money.]
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.
[Sidenote: Parliaments abandoned.]
[Sidenote: The government attaches the property of a member of
Parliament.]
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.
[Sidenote: Confusion in the House of Commons.]
[Sidenote: Resolutions.]
[Sidenote: The Commons refuse to admit the king's 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 then
was going 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.
[Sidenote: Members imprisoned.]
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.
[Sidenote: Dissolution of Parliament.]
[Sidenote: The king in the House of Lords.]
[Sidenote: The king's speech on dissolving Parliament.]
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 a 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.
[Sidenote: The king resolves to do without Parliaments.]
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.
[Sidenote: 1630.]
[Sidenote: Forced loans.]
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.
[Sidenote: Monopolies of the necessaries of life.]
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.
[Sidenote: Tonnage and poundage.]
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 wanted 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.
[Sidenote: Ship money.]
[Sidenote: Origin of these taxes.]
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.
[Sidenote: 1636.]
[Sidenote: John Hampden.]
[Sidenote: He refuses to pay ship money.]
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.
[Sidenote: Hampden's trial.]
It resulted as Hampden had foreseen. The trial attracted universal
attention. It was a great spectacle to see a man of fortune and
standing like him, 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 him, and even a part 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.
[Sidenote: 1638.]
[Sidenote: He is compelled to pay.]
[Sidenote: A fleet raised.]
[Sidenote: Its exploits among the herring-busses.]
The king's government gained the victory, ostensibly, in this contest,
and Hampden had to pay his 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.
[Sidenote: Court of the Star Chamber.]
[Sidenote: Its constitution.]
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.
[Sidenote: Trial by jury.]
[Sidenote: No jury in the Star Chamber.]
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.
[Sidenote: Crimes tried by the Star Chamber.]
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.
[Sidenote: Origin of the term.]
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 prettiest of them, 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.
[Sidenote: Immense power of the Court of Star Chamber.]
[Sidenote: Oppressive fines.]
However this may be, the court of the Star Chamber was an engine of
prodigious power in the hands of Charles's government. It helped 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.
[Sidenote: King's forests.]
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.
[Sidenote: Offences against the king and his lords.]
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 wanting 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.
[Sidenote: A gentleman fined for resenting an insult.]
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.
[Sidenote: Murmurs silenced.]
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.
[Sidenote: 1633.]
[Sidenote: The kingdom of Scotland.]
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.
[Sidenote: The king visits Scotland.]
[Sidenote: He is crowned there.]
[Sidenote: The king returns to London.]
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.
[Sidenote: Increasing discontent.]
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.