Upon Edward’s death in 1483, the crown for a moment rested on the head
of his young son, Edward V, only to be snatched away in favor of the
lad’s uncle Richard III. Richard received from Parliament in 1484 a
grant of tunnage and poundage and the subsidy on wool for life.[265]
His death on Bosworth Field the next year gave the world no opportunity
to see what use he would make of the freedom which Parliament thus gave
him.
[Prohibition of benevolences, 1484]
During the brief three years of Richard’s ascendancy, however, there
occurred an assertion of right and its complementary statute which
assume great importance in the light of later events. When Richard was
invited to become king, he was presented with a remarkable address,
which, among other things, cited the benevolences of the late reign
as “extorcions, ... agenst the Lawes of God and Man,” and as more
intolerable than “jopardye of deth.”[266] At his only Parliament, held
in 1484, benevolences were declared unlawful, and were to be “dampned
and annulled forever.”[267]
[The Tudors]
Henry VII, the first of the Tudors, ascended the throne upon the
successful issue of the battle of Bosworth. The wonder of the era
which he introduced lies not in any increase in the powers of
Parliament, but rather that they existed at all when the period
closed. The one hundred and twenty years of the Tudor epoch exhibits
no progress toward the realization of parliamentary supremacy; on the
other hand, the trend was in the opposite direction. The Tudors were
not tyrannical enough to rouse opposition to the fever heat as did
John; they knew rather how to bridle their despotism in time to check
revolt, and especially how to make unlawful acts assume the aspect of
legality. Furthermore, the immense activity of commerce, the progress
of literature, the religious reconstitution during the sixteenth
century, were in themselves reasons for slow advance in matters of
government; the stress of trade consequent upon the discovery of a
new world, the absorbing interest in new subjects for thought, the
intensity and magnitude of new religious conceptions, engaged the minds
of men on subjects other than those of Parliament and king. As long
as these worked in apparent harmony and the results did not greatly
offend, men were content to let well enough alone. So it was that the
Tudors, surrounding themselves with a new nobility attached to the
throne by reasons of their very origin and continuance, were able to
follow their own devices and raise money almost as seemed to them good.
[Parliaments of Henry VII The “new-found” subsidy]
In all the twenty-four years of Henry VII’s reign he called Parliament
only seven times, and six of the seven Parliaments sat within the first
eleven years of his kingship. Each was the occasion of a demand for
money. At his first Parliament, that of 1485, he received a grant of
tunnage and poundage and a subsidy on wool for life.[268] Three years
later, however, the consequences of heavy taxation were disastrous.
Need arising for the enlistment of an army with which to aid the Duke
of Brittany against the King of France, a tax was devised which not
only exacted a tenth of incomes from freeholders, but applied as well
to movables, laying imposition upon articles used in trade and even
merchants’ stocks. This “new-found subsidy” proved so intolerable to
the lower classes that a great insurrection broke out in the north
against it.[269] The king with Tudor wisdom, remitted some £48,000
of the £75,000 which the tax was designed to raise, and Parliament
gave him in return a fifteenth and tenth. In 1497, a similar rebellion
occurred in Cornwall against a tax levied for the Scotch War.
With these examples of parliamentary taxation before him, Henry turned
away to fields at once more profitable and less dangerous, at least in
their immediate consequences.
[Morton’s crotch]
He turned to the old expedient of the benevolence, despite the statute
of Richard III prohibiting its imposition. The methods used in laying
a benevolence are illustrated in the famous account by Lord Francis
Bacon of the dilemma devised by Bishop Morton, Henry’s Chancellor, “to
raise up the benevolence to a higher rate; and some called it his fork
and some his crotch. For he had couched an article in the instructions
to the commissioners who were to levy the benevolence, that if they
met with any that were sparing, they should tell them that they must
needs have, because they laid up; and if they were spenders, they must
needs have, because it was seen in their port and manner of living;
so neither kind came amiss.”[270] Parliament, subservient to the
king, actually registered for the moment its approval of the practice
of levying benevolences, when in 1492 it passed the “Shoring or
Under-propping Act” making debts still owing on gifts promised to the
king legally collectable.
The benevolence was not the only means by which the ingenious monarch
increased his income. Like Edward IV, he revived obsolete statutes and
rigorously exacted fines in consequence of every infraction of them;
but worse than that was his perversion of every function of the courts
of law into a means of extortion. His odious instruments in that work
were Richard Empson and Edmund Dudly who later were made to suffer for
the evil practices of the father in the reign of the son. Beside these
forms of imposition, the king pushed to the extreme the exaction of
feudal dues accruing to the crown.
[Henry VIII’s early taxation]
Henry VIII succeeded to the crown in 1509. With his hand always on
the pulse of the nation, he knew when he could carry his designs into
execution and when he must wait for a fever to subside. His attitude
toward taxation was not characterized by the same uniform regard for
constitutional formalities that distinguished his other acts, nor was
Parliament on the other hand quite as subservient to his will as in
matters farther from their purses. His first Parliament showed its
trust in him by granting tunnage and poundage for life, but with the
distinct provision that it be not taken into precedent. Beside this,
the Parliaments of 1513 and 1514 made generous grants of a poll-tax,
of a fifteenth and tenth and of two subsidies of six pence in the
pound.[271] Despite the magnitude of the grant, no opposition seems to
have been provoked, an unfailing sign of increasing wealth.
[Cardinal Wolsey’s breach of privilege, 1523]
At the Parliament of 1523, the first since 1515, Cardinal Wolsey
committed a distinct breach of Parliamentary privilege. Under Henry IV
it had been admitted by the king that both houses of Parliament were
to commune apart, and that the king should have no knowledge of the
progress of a grant until the two houses be of one accord.[272] Wolsey,
as representative of the royal power, reversed the usual process. Going
into the House of Commons with all his following, “with his maces,
his pillars, his pole-axes, his cross, his hatte, and the great seale
too,”--in the words of the speaker, Sir Thomas More,--he asked for
no less than £800,000 and required that it be paid in four years; he
suggested that it “be raised out of the fifth part of every man’s goods
and lands.”
To the demand of the cardinal the commons maintained perfect silence.
The speaker “with many probable arguments endeavoured to shew the
cardinal that his manner of coming thither was neither expedient
nor agreeable to the ancient liberties of that House.”[273] Wolsey
thereupon departed in a rage. The next day the matter was argued by
the commons and the contention was made that “though some men were
well-monied, yet in general it was known that the fifth of men’s goods
was not in plate or money, but in stock and cattle. And that to pay
away all their coin would alter the whole frame and intercourse of
things.”[274] For fifteen days the commons debated the question and
at the end of that time granted to the king a graduated property tax,
much smaller in amount and covering four years in the payment. Wolsey’s
displeasure was very great and he made a second journey to the commons
in the hope that he might induce them to be more generous. He told them
that he “desired to reason with those who opposed his demands.” He
was answered that “it was the order of that House to hear, and not to
reason but amongst themselves.”[275] Thus rebuffed, the cardinal went
away.
[Henry’s commissions and benevolences]
Henry did without Parliament for the next seven years, but he was
not deprived thereby of money with which to carry on the business of
government. In 1526, commissions were issued for the collection of a
sixth from the goods of the laity and a fourth from the clergy.[276]
The people immediately evinced their knowledge of the law and
complained that the proceedings were illegal; the clergy led the
movement asserting that “the King could take no man’s goods without
the authority of Parliament.”[277] The people began to murmur and
insurrection seemed imminent. “If men should geue their goodes by a
Commission,” they said, “then wer it worse than the taxes of Fraunce,
and so England should be bond and not free.”[278] In Suffolk rebellion
actually broke out; in London and in Kent the people were in a ferment.
Henry, being what he was and knowing the nature of his subjects,
eased the tension by shoving the responsibility of the measure on to
the shoulders of Wolsey,[279] and declared that he would receive no
money save as an “amiable graunte,” which was collected in 1528, and
was nothing more agreeable than a benevolence. To this the citizens
of London raised objection on the ground of the statute of Richard
III. The judges thereupon handed down an opinion that that statute,
being the work of an usurper, was void. Thus did the courts evince
their subservience to the crown, and showed themselves as open to
royal influence as the tribunals of the Stuarts a hundred years
later.[280] So in theory Henry’s attempt at arbitrary taxation was
frustrated; in practice, however, the imposition, though its burden
was transferred from the turbulent lower classes to the more amenable
people of substance, merely underwent a change of name. The exaction
was unparliamentary whether it was levied as a king’s tax or under the
thin guise of a benevolence.
[Forced loans, 1522 and 1544]
But Henry had other strings to his bow, and of these the forced
loan was one which served him well. In 1522 commissioners were
appointed throughout the kingdom to ascertain the value of every
man’s possessions and to require a certain part for the king, on
the understanding that they be repaid out of the grants from the
next Parliament. The promise of repayment was under the king’s privy
seal.[281] In 1544, forced loans were again exacted, this time from
all persons rated at £50 and more per annum. Parliament, subservient
to the king, far from protesting because of these arbitrary demands
upon the pockets of the people, in two instances released the king
from liability to payment. In 1529, Parliament “for themselves and all
the whole body of the realm which they represent, freely, liberally,
and absolutely, give and grant unto the King’s highness ... all and
every sum and sums of money which to them and every of them, is,
ought, or might be due by reason of any money ... advanced or paid
by way of trust or loan.”[282] This caused much murmuring, but, as
Hall’s Chronicle rightly puts it, “Ther was no remedy.” In 1544 a
similar act of a servile Parliament not only gives the king the funds
borrowed under the forced loan of 1542, but commands the refunding of
sums already paid by him to his creditors in discharge of debts so
incurred.[283]
[Profits of the English Reformation]
The Reformation in England redounded to the financial benefit of the
Crown. In 1532 the clergy were relieved by act of Parliament from
the payment of annates or first fruits, the sums which the ordaining
authorities exacted from those accorded any preferment in the church,
and which amounted sometimes to as much as a year’s income from
the benefice. The exactions were denounced as having risen by “an
uncharitable custom, grounded upon no just or good title,” and through
them “great and inestimable sums of money have been daily conveyed out
of this realm, to the impoverishment of the same, and to the advantage
of the court of Rome.”[284] The same Parliament, meeting for its fifth
session on the 15th January, 1533-4, reënacted the statute without
the contingencies which had conditioned the other.[285] Closely
following came a statute that deprived the Pope of his petty exactions
which for generations he had drawn from the English Church. Thus were
discontinued peter-pence, procurations, fruits, fees for dispensations,
licenses, faculties and grants.[286] The sixth session of this
Parliament, meeting at the end of the year 1534, turned the procedure
into comedy by attaching to “the King’s imperial crown forever” the
first-fruits and tenths of the annual income of all ecclesiastical
benefices, the very payments which it had declared to be in conformity
with an “uncharitable custom.”[287]
[Parliament the confirming authority in clerical grants]
Furthermore, at the session of 1533-4, Parliament had laid very
definite restrictions upon the clergy in the matter of regular
taxation.[288] Since the early part of the fourteenth century, indeed,
almost since the beginning of Parliament itself, the lesser clergy
had attended the sessions with great irregularity, and had voted
their taxes for the most part in provincial assemblies. Now, however,
came the general prohibition that the clergy should not enact or
execute ordinances binding upon themselves without the king’s license
and without his approval when once they were made. Included within
the meaning of this prohibition was the granting of taxes. From
thenceforward until the time of Charles II, when, without any special
enactment but by simple process of evolution, the clergy began to be
taxed in the same manner and according to the same rate as the laity,
clerical grants were submitted to Parliament for confirmation.
Henry VIII died in 1547. Notwithstanding the heavy taxation,
parliamentary and unparliamentary, which had been exacted during his
reign, he remained popular with the great majority of his subjects
to his death. His many vices were counterbalanced by his successful
wars, the heavy taxation by the growing trade of England, and his
semi-independence of Parliament by most efficient administration.
[Elizabeth’s accession, 1558]
After the lapse of eleven years, which in so far as they concern the
evolution of the taxing power of Parliament, composed in effect an
interregnum, Elizabeth succeeded to the throne of England. Elizabeth’s
government was a despotism and was illegal; but it was so by
sufferance, not because the nation was ignorant of its true character
or because the people were unable to control it. When in later years
the attempt was made to create a despotism against the voice of the
people, the result was a Cromwell and his Charles I. Queen Elizabeth
was loved by her subjects and they put their trust in her. The sympathy
existing between queen and people could not be illustrated better
than by the following anecdote, which suggests that under her rule
benevolences were really made with the good will of the givers.
The queen, being at Coventry, is presented by the mayor with a purse
heavily filled with gold.
“I have few such gifts, Mr. Mayor,” says the queen; “it is a hundred
pounds in gold!”
“Please, your grace,” the mayor answers, “it is a great deal more we
give you.”
“What is it?” asks the queen.
“It is,” the mayor replies, “the hearts of your loving subjects.”
And the queen makes answer, “We thank you, Mr. Mayor; it is a great
deal more indeed.”[289]
[Liberality of Elizabeth’s Parliaments. Her
extra-Parliamentary exactions]
Subsidies were granted in Parliament with liberality and readiness.
Forced loans were indeed exacted from the wealthy, but Elizabeth took
care to repay honorably and as promptly as she could. A means of
revenue which relieved her from the frequent necessity of applying to
Parliament was the granting of monopolies, based upon the right of the
crown to assure to an inventor or orginator the exclusive benefits of
his invention or innovation. By 1601, however, the royal power had
encroached so far upon the rights of the individual that the grants
of monopoly comprised exclusive control over many of the necessaries
of life. The list which was read in the House of Commons in 1601,
included:--currants, iron, powder, cards, transportation of leather,
vinegar, sea-coal, lead, oil, starch, glass, and even salt. The matter
had been first discussed in the Parliament of 1571, was brought up
again in 1597, and in 1601 Elizabeth with the tact which she could
summon on occasion, sent a message to the House to allay if possible
the agitation which was going on there over the subject of monopolies.
It gave satisfaction. “Understanding that divers patents” so ran the
message, “which she had granted had been grievous to her subjects,
some should be presently repealed, some superseded, and none put in
execution but such as should first have a trial according to the law
for the good of the people.”[290] Thus was this means of indirect
taxation by the crown done away with, until the time when James I,
putting his clumsy shoulder to the wheel, should seek to introduce it
again.
[Commons assert their right to originate money bills, 1593]
Toward the close of the reign of Elizabeth there was another evidence
of the growing realization on the part of the commons that their powers
were not to be tampered with. In this instance, the vindication was not
against the prerogative of the sovereign, but against an arrogation of
power on the part of the House of Lords. The incident was based upon
the decreasing liberality of the commons in the years after the Armada.
They had risen nobly to the defense of the nation against the peril,
but, with the passing of it, their generosity had faded. In 1593, it
was represented that, though the queen had spent upon the war some
£1,030,000 of her own, the grants of the commons persisted in being
inadequate. A message was sent down from the lords which remarked upon
the need for a supply and requested the appointment of a committee of
conference. Sir Robert Cecil, reporting from the committee, stated
that the lords would assent to no smaller grant than three entire
subsidies.[291] The commons, on the other hand, had shown a disposition
to grant no more than two. Francis Bacon stated the issue. He yielded
to the subsidy, “but disliked,” he said, “that this house should join
with the upper house in granting it. For the custom and privilege of
this house hath always been, first to make offer of the subsidies from
hence, then to the upper house; except it were that they present a bill
unto this house, with desire of our assent thereto, and then to send
it up again.”[292] The commons refused to have further conference
with the lords, so determined were they to vindicate their right to
originate money bills, by the vote 217 to 128. Notwithstanding this
scrupulous adherence to principle, they accepted the suggestion and
came forward with a grant of three subsidies, six tenths and six
fifteenths.
The death of Queen Elizabeth in 1603, brought to an end the Tudor
period and cleared the throne for James Stuart. The Tudor era was one
which can be passed lightly over in a strict account of progress toward
parliamentary supremacy in taxation. In such a study the period of the
Tudors is a bywater. Yet the fact that the principles enunciated in
the years prior to their accession stayed alive despite the attacks of
Tudor subtlety, points to a vitality sufficient to down the Stuarts,
and to establish permanent parliamentary control over the laying of
taxes.
VII
THE STUARTS: 1603-1689
[Divine right as against Parliamentary supremacy]
THE theory of divine right, by which the Stuarts laid claim to a
sovereignty as irresponsible as it was far-reaching, in practice came
into direct conflict with another theory which had been taking shape
for some four centuries, the supremacy of Parliament. In the field
of taxation the issue is scarcely less apparent. Parliament asserted
the supremacy of its will over all kinds of taxes, indirect as well
as direct. The crown, on the other hand, hesitating to close with the
representatives of the people over a question of their authority in
direct taxation, maintained that unchecked royal power extended to
indirect taxes, including duties at the ports. Furthermore, the crown,
whenever occasion arose, sought to elude the hold of Parliament upon
direct taxation, by resorting to the familiar resources of benevolences
and the sale of monopolies, and at last to the levy of ship money.
With the issue so direct, the great question was that of strength.
Should the crown with its array of adherents, upholding as their ideal
the perfect exercise of the royal prerogative, prove itself stronger
than the House of Commons? Or were the commons to prevail, standing
for the principle that the representatives of the people sitting in
Parliament should have complete control over the public purse?
[James I, 1603-1625]
James Stuart, swollen with intellectual pride, was, according to the
Duc de Sully, “the wisest fool in Europe.” Worse than his vanity were
his unsteadiness and his insincerity, traceable, perhaps, to the
Italian-Gallic stock whence he was bred.[293] Divine right, a doctrine
by its nature offensive to Englishmen, was in him doubly hateful
because he was not born king, but was proclaimed by the Council, an act
ratified, however, by popular voice, and subsequently acquiesced in by
Parliament.[294] In the matter of religion, he was not more agreeable;
suspected at times of plots to further Roman Catholicism, he assumed
toward the Puritans especial animosity, they standing in his mind not
so much as preachers of religion as propagandists of republicanism.
[James I dictates the composition of the Commons, 1604]
He wasted no time in getting things started. In the proclamation
by which he summoned his first Parliament, he assumed the power of
dictating what manner of men should compose it, and directed that his
Court of Chancery should decide whether or not the certificates of
election fulfilled the royal conditions, “and if any shall be found to
be made contrarie to this proclamation, the same is to be rejected as
unlawful and insufficient.”[295] The commons, however, shortly after
their convening, vindicated their privilege in the case of Goodwin
and Fortescue, and succeeded in maintaining thereafter their right
to decide upon the legality of returns.[296] In their “Apology of
the House of Commons, made to the king, touching their Privileges,”
nearly at the close of this session, the commons complained against the
monopolies possessed by the great trading companies in the face of many
statutes to the contrary, and the oppressive exercise of the ancient
prerogative of purveyance.[297]
[James receives tunnage and poundage for life]
In the department of regular taxation, however, James at first adopted
a conciliatory attitude. On the 26th June, 1604, James sent to the
commons a letter “written with his own hand but corrected as to the
spelling,” in which he expressed his pleasure as to a subsidy.[298] He
stated his confidence in their good-will, assuring them “in the word
of a King” that he would “be so far from taking it unkindly, their not
offering” to him a subsidy, and that he would “only interpret it to
proceed from the care they have, that our people should not have any
occasion of distaste.” James’s letter accomplished for him what may
well have been his purpose; the commons immediately granted to him
tunnage and poundage for the space of his life.[299]
[Royal poverty]
At the two subsequent sessions of 1605-6 and 1606-7 there was constant
friction between king and commons, yet there were no very remarkable
assertions of royal prerogative or of parliamentary privilege. At the
session of 1605, Parliament granted the king three entire subsidies and
six fifteenths, designed principally to meet the royal indebtedness,
some of which held over since the time of Elizabeth.[300] After the
prorogation, James called no session of Parliament until the 9th
February, 1609-10.
But James could not meet his obligations with the ordinary revenues of
the crown. He was spending between £500,000 and £600,000 a year, and
his income was in the neighborhood of £400,000; his annual deficit,
therefore, was not far from £150,000.[301] James was obliged to turn
elsewhere, and the consequence of his action was the famous Bate
Case, the decision in which was a step toward freeing the king from
parliamentary control over his revenues.
[The Bate Case]
In 1603, in answer to the agitation against the great monopolies, an
Eastern trading company, known as the Levant Company, surrendered its
charter. This company, amongst other privileges, had enjoyed the right
of collecting a duty on currants from other merchants trading in them,
and paid to the crown in return for the franchise £4,000 a year. When,
therefore, the company yielded up its charter, the crown was the loser
by £4,000 annually. In order to make up for the loss, the crown itself
proceeded to lay a duty on currants.[302] In 1605, the Levant Company
again received a charter, but James levied upon it, nevertheless, his
duty on currants, the rate being five shillings on the hundred-weight
over and above that granted to him by Parliament in its tunnage and
poundage bill. It was a merchant of the Levant Company, John Bate, who
raised the question of the legality of the imposition. The case was
taken to the Court of Exchequer for decision. Had the barons confined
themselves to the strict laws of the matter, there would not have been
great ground for objection to their decision. Precedent drawn from the
time of the Tudors and statutes of the same period, were capable of
being brought forward in a fair adjudication of the case, and would
have substantiated the contention of the crown, thus returning customs
exactions, nearly to the situation of 1300.[303] The fact that the
four barons decided the case unanimously against John Bate could not,
therefore, be reasonably reprehended. But they permitted themselves to
slip off into philosophical generalizations which struck the people as
absolutist in tenor.
[Opinions of the Barons in the Bate Case]
“It seemeth to me strange,” says Baron Clarke in his opinion, “that
any subjects would contend with the King in this high point of
prerogative.... As it is not a kingdom without subjects and government,
so he is not a king without revenues.... The revenue of the Crown is
the very essential part of the Crown, and he who rendeth that from the
king pulleth also his crown from his head, for it cannot be separated
from the crown.” He proceeded to advance the opinion that the Statute
of Edward III[304] which prohibited to the crown the right of levying
new impositions on wool, woolfells, and leather, and which provided
that there be only imposed “the custom and subsidy granted to the
king,” had no effect in the present instance, because it extended to
Edward III alone, “and shall not bind his successors, for it is a
principal part of the Crown of England which the King cannot diminish.”
The opinion of Chief Baron Fleming was scarcely less sweeping. “The
King’s power is double,” he said, “ordinary and absolute.... That
of the ordinary is for the profit of particular subjects, for the
execution of civil justice ... in the ordinary courts, and nominated
... with us the common law; and these laws cannot be changed without
Parliament.... The absolute power of the king is not that which is
converted or executed to private use, ... but is only that which is
applied to the general benefit of the people.... This power is not
guided by the rules which direct only at the common law, and is most
properly named policy and government.... The matter in question is
material matter of state, and ought to be ruled by the rules of
policy, and if it be so, the king hath done well to execute his
extraordinary power. All customs, be they old or new, are no other but
the effects and issues of trades and commerce with foreign nations; but
all commerce and affairs with foreigners ... are made by the absolute
power of the king; and he who hath power of causes hath power also of
effects.”[305]
[The position of Parliament]
Parliament took its stand on the subject of the impositions even before
the decision was published. In the Petition of Grievances sent up by
the commons at the end of the session of 1606, a list which contained
so many complaints that James remarked that “they had sent an oyes
through the nation to find them,” the plea was made that no such duty
could be demanded legally without the consent of Parliament. The
decision was announced to them when they reassembled in November 1606,
but they took no action and for a time the matter rested.
[The Book of Rates published under decision in the Bate Case,
1608]
But it was James himself who, in his characteristic tactless obstinacy,
forced the issue. On the 29th July, 1608, taking advantage of the
Bate decision, he published under the authority of the Great Seal
his Book of Rates, which laid heavy duties upon almost all articles
of merchandise, “to be forever hereafter paid to the king and his
successors on pain of his displeasure.”[306] The statement of James’s
own views on the subject could not be more clearly put than he himself
expressed them in the commission for the levy of the impositions
addressed to the Earl of Salisbury, Treasurer of England. “This special
power and prerogative,” he asserted, “(amongst many others) hath both
by men of understanding in all ages and by the laws of all nations
been yielded and acknowledged to be proper and inherent in the persons
of princes, that they may according to their several occasions raise
to themselves such fit and competent means by levying of customs and
impositions upon merchandise transported out of their kingdom or
brought into their dominions ... as to their wisdoms and discretions
may seem convenient.”[307]
[Remonstrance from the Commons, 1609-10]
Even with the money thus obtained, James was obliged at last after a
lapse of nearly two years and a half to turn to Parliament. He summoned
it for the 9th February 1609-10. The commons, almost unanimously
opposed to the exercise of the royal prerogative in the matter of
the imposition, came prepared to dispute the decision in the Bate
Case. The discussion, carried on in the face of a royal prohibition,
was managed by Hakewill, Yelverton, and Whitelocke.[308] The upshot
was a remonstrance in which the commons reminded the king that “the
policy and constitution of this your kingdom appropriates unto the
kings of this realm, with the assent of the Parliament, as well the
sovereign power of making laws as that of taxing or imposing upon
the subjects’ goods or merchandises wherein they have justly such a
property as may not without their consent, be altered or changed.”
Further, they pointed to the former occasions when the commons had
complained in Parliament of similar impositions, and upon which redress
was forthcoming. Reference was made to the action of “famous kings,”
who “agreed that this old fundamental right should be further declared
and established by act of Parliament, wherein it is provided that no
such charges should ever be laid upon the people without their common
consent, as may appear by sundry records of former times.” They went on
to say, “We, therefore, your Majesty’s most humble Commons assembled
in Parliament, following the examples of this worthy case of our
ancestors, and out of a duty to those for whom we serve, finding that
your Majesty, without advice or consent of Parliament, hath lately, in
time of peace, set both greater impositions, and far more in number
than any of your noble ancestors did in time of war, have with all
humility presumed to present this most just and necessary petition unto
your Majesty: That all impositions set without the assent of Parliament
may be quite abolished and taken away; and that your Majesty, in
imitation likewise of your noble progenitors, will be pleased that
a law may be made during this session of Parliament to declare that
all impositions set or to be set, upon your people, their goods and
merchandises, save only by common assent in the Parliament, are and
shall be void.”[309] The outcome was unsatisfactory. A bill framed
to prohibit further impositions than those already in existence, was
passed by the House of Commons, but was cast out in the upper chamber.
The king was still able to cover himself with the decision in the Bate
Case.
[Cowel’s “Interpreter”]
The attitude of James toward a book “lately published by one Doctor
Cowel” and esteemed to “contain certain matters of scandal and offence
toward the high court of Parliament,”[310] all but brought him into
active conflict with the commons. This publication called “The
Interpreter” contained a defense of the royal prerogative in such terms
as greatly to offend the power of Parliament. Doctor Cowel had this to
say under the head of “Subsidy:”
“... A tax or tribute assessed by Parliament, and granted by the
Commons to be levied of every subject according to the value of his
lands or goods, after the rate of 4_s._ in the pound for land and
2_s._ 8_d._ for goods, as it is not commonly used at this day. Some
hold opinion that this subsidy is granted by the subject to the Prince,
in recompense or consideration, that whereas the Prince of his absolute
power might make laws of himself, he doth of favor admit the consent of
his subjects therein, that all things in their own confession may be
done with the greater indifferency.”[311]
King James had been thoughtless enough to let fall words of
commendation for the book, and his approval was followed by a request
from the commons for a conference with the lords. James, however,
wisely withdrew from his position and issued a proclamation prohibiting
the further circulation of the work and recalling the copies already
issued. Thus did the storm blow over.
[The “Great Contract,” 1610]
At this same session of Parliament, James, through the Lord Treasurer,
offered to accept a composition for the incidents of feudal tenure,
including the right of purveyance. By this so-called Great Contract,
Parliament was to provide for an annual payment to the king of
£200,000. But the idea, which at first was distasteful to the commons,
shortly became equally out of favor with the king. The amount of money
required seemed excessive, and the commons feared that it might make
the king independent of them. The king, on the other hand, arrived
ultimately at the conclusion that by careful manipulation he could
readily increase his income to a sum larger than that stated in the
Great Contract. Final consideration was put over to the session of
Parliament called for the 16th October following. At the last moment,
however, when an agreement seemed by no means hopeless, a religious
misunderstanding intervened, and the negotiations fell through.
The matter of a subsidy was treated with somewhat greater favor,
though with small generosity. Parliament granted the king one entire
subsidy and one fifteenth and tenth.[312] Parliament was dissolved
9th February, 1611, and for three years James tried to carry on his
government without it.
[Petty extortion after the dissolution of Parliament]
James’s attempt at absolutism was not a financial success; a court
which was as extravagant as it was dissolute helped him increase his
deficit; he ran behind about £200,000 a year, notwithstanding the
fact that he set in motion all the machinery of petty extortion that
he dared. He tried to force loans on the security of his privy seal
but frequently met with refusal from which there was no appeal. The
jurisdiction of the Star Chamber was used as a means to lay fines which
were usually unjust and always excessive. He sold peerages and raised
money on the crown lands, and induced the French king and the Dutch to
pay up old debts owing to England.
[James’s second Parliament, 1614, known as the “Addled
Parliament”]
His enormous annual deficit forced him in 1614 to summon his second
Parliament. It came with a great and active majority lined up against
the king. It speedily passed by a unanimous vote a resolution against
the king’s right of imposing taxes without the consent of Parliament,
and demanded a conference on that subject with the House of Lords;[313]
the lords, however, turned to the judges hoping to obtain from them
enlightenment on the legal points involved, but the judges, by the
words of Chief Justice Coke, refused to render an extra-judicial
opinion. The conference was then refused. The king, becoming impatient
at the delay of the commons in accomplishing the purpose for which
he had summoned them to Parliament, with his usual failure to adapt
himself to circumstances, sent a message to the House threatening a
dissolution of Parliament unless procedure were immediately taken in
the direction of granting supplies.[314] The commons met the issue
squarely; they said that they were determined to conclude the matter
of the impositions before granting a supply. On the 7th of June, two
months and two days after the date upon which it had been convened,
James redeemed his word and dissolved Parliament. It had not passed
a single bill and thus earned the title by which it is known to
history,--the “Addled” Parliament. But it had succeeded in maintaining
its principle of making supply wait upon redress of grievances, and
some of its members had shot barbed shafts at the king, wherefore James
locked up those who had aimed most surely.
[Resort to extortion]
With the hope gone of securing a grant, James had to return to his old
courses of obtaining income. Forced loans, monopolies, heavy fines,
feudal payments rigorously exacted, and the systematic extortion of
benevolences, figured in his programme. The Council sent out orders
to all the sheriffs and magistrates to send in contributions from all
men of ability to pay; to those who refused, suggestions were made of
impending evil. The judges of assize were especially urged to recommend
payments. The benevolences netted less than £43,000 for the three years
during which they were made.[315]
[Case of Oliver St. John]
But the nation did not submit tamely. Several counties sent up
protests against the demand, recalling in defense of their position
the Statute of Richard III which forbade the levying of “exactions,
called benevolences.” The refusal of Oliver St. John to the request for
a benevolence by the mayor of Marlborough, brought him into immediate
conflict with the king. His written reply to the mayor maintained the
illegality of the demand on the ground that it was contrary to Magna
Carta and to the Statute of Richard III. He further charged the king
with breaking his coronation oath, and declared that all who paid the
benevolence were incriminated with him. He was haled before the Star
Chamber and sentenced by it to pay a fine of £5,000 and to imprisonment
during the king’s pleasure. Thus it was that James tried to rule
without a Parliament.
[James’s third Parliament, 1620-21]
But the rule could not long continue. James summoned his third
Parliament for the 30th January, 1620-21. He addressed both Houses
in a conciliatory manner, hopefully and with many promises. “For you
to hunt after grievances,” he said, “to the prejudice of your king
and yourselves, is not the errand: deal with me as I deserve at your
hands; I will leave nothing undone that becomes a just king, if you
deal with me accordingly.”[316] The commons were in a good temper and a
reconciliation seemed far more likely to eventuate than a struggle.
[Supply waits upon redress of grievances]
As for the royal advice about grievances, the commons were slow to
take it. When, shortly after the beginning of the session, it was
moved that the House proceed to the consideration of a supply, it
was stated that supply and redress of grievances should go “hand in
hand together,” that they were “as twins; to go together and have no
precedency.”[317] It was resolved that the business of the supply
be not decided independently of a consideration of grievances and
of a petition to the king for freedom of speech, thus recalling the
imprisonment of members in 1614 at the time of the dissolution of the
Addled Parliament.
[Revival of impeachment by the Commons]
High in the list of grievances was the granting of monopolies. Patents
of monopoly subserved a number of diverse purposes, some of which were
entirely legitimate. Objection could not be made to restrictions in
the sale of certain commodities such as liquors and explosives, nor to
the assurance given to an inventor that he had an exclusive right to
profits accruing from his invention. But James was free with his grants
of monopoly for the enrichment of his courtiers and himself. Parliament
laid by the heels the monopolists who had most abused their privileges,
and impeached and condemned Sir Giles Mompesson and Sir Francis
Mitchell.[318]
[Granting of a supply]
Before the judgment was given, however, but not before it was clearly
discernible what was to be the trend of events, the commons set
themselves to the consideration of a supply bill and on the 18th March
passed it unanimously. It provided for two entire subsidies. “In the
midst of their inquiries into public grievances, the commons had
thought fit to consider the necessities of the State and grant the king
a supply.”[319]
[James in a temper adjourns Parliament]
The major part of the session was spent in reforming abuses, both
by impeaching the officials responsible for them, and by framing
legislation for their correction. Chief amongst those who fell under
condemnation at the bar of the House of Lords was Lord Francis
Bacon, Lord Chancellor of England, convicted of bribery. King James
in the early part of the session seemed not out of sympathy with
these efforts to reform the administration, but as time wore on and
the commons still busied themselves with investigations of official
misconduct, he wearied, and on the 28th May, the Lord Treasurer
declared to the lords the king’s determination to adjourn Parliament.
Two of the five reasons assigned for the adjournment were these:
“For that the profits of his Majesty’s revenues are, as it were, at
a stand;” and “The omission of the State.”[320] A week later, after
great complaint by the commons, the session was adjourned to reassemble
on the 14th November. Throughout the four months during which it had
sat, no complaint had been registered against the impositions at the
outports. Apparently the commons were willing for the moment to let
them rest, or else, as is more likely, were quite unmindful of them.
[Dilatory action on a subsidy]
Parliament met on the 20th November for its final session. Lord
Treasurer Cranfield reported that the exchequer was depleted, that the
two subsidies which had been granted the previous March had been spent
in furthering the interests of James’s son-in-law, Frederic, Elector
Palatine, and “that the business now in hand required a great and
speedy supply.”[321] It was understood that the cost of maintaining an
army in the Palatinate would be not far from £900,000 a year. The Lord
Treasurer wished “that the Commons would so handle this business as to
make his Majesty in love with the Parliaments.”
But they took some time to consider it. At the end of the first week,
the commons resolved in committee of the whole house upon a single
subsidy, which, since it was to be levied doubly upon papists, would
provide some £100,000 for the prosecution of war in the Palatine.[322]
That was as near an actual grant as the commons came during the
session. On the 1st December, they fell into a conflict with the king
over matters of privilege, which had its rise in the imprisonment of
Sir Edwin Sandys during the last recess of Parliament, presumably for
utterances made in the House. There were petitions to James and replies
from him, culminating in a remarkable Protestation asserting the right
of free speech in the House.[323] On the day of the presentation of this
Protestation, the 18th December, James adjourned Parliament to the 8th
February; he then sent for the Journal of the House of Commons and tore
from it the objectionable entry with his own hand. In the stress of these
events, the proposed subsidy was allowed to slip out of mind; only did
the lords propose a meeting with the commons to consider a supply, and
this came to naught. On the 6th January, 1621-22, James saw fit not
to await the reassembling of Parliament, but issued a proclamation
of dissolution in which he denounced those who had questioned his
prerogatives in the House of Commons as “ill-tempered spirits.” Then he
committed to prison such of them as he regarded as being most hostile,
amongst whom were Sir Edward Coke, Pym, Selden, and Mallory.[324]
[James’s last Parliament, 1623-24]
[Supply granted for the Palatine war]
James convened his last Parliament on the 19th February, 1623-24. In
the interval which had elapsed since the dissolution, James recovered
his conciliatory attitude toward the commons. The plan of marrying the
Prince of Wales, the young Prince Charles, to the Infanta of Spain,
had been given up, and thus Englishmen were relieved of what to them
had been a pro-popish plot, and had been deprecated again and again as
the odious Spanish Match. The programme with respect to the Palatinate
favored by the king was that favored by the commons, and the reign
of James seemed to be approaching a happy conclusion. The commons
came forward with a grant of three subsidies and three fifteenths and
tenths, providing a somewhat greater sum than £300,000.[325] The money
was voted on the condition that, in order to insure its application to
the naval and military establishments, it be paid into the hands of
commissioners appointed by the commons, and be expended by them upon
direction of the council of war. The sympathy existing between king and
Parliament was further exhibited in the successful passage of an act
forbidding monopolies in the sale of any merchandise or in practicing
any trade, the only legislative act of constructive importance in his
reign.[326] Parliament was dissolved on the 29th May, 1624.
[Death of James I, 27th March, 1625]
Less than a year later King James died. Apparently at the end of
his reign he was learning wisdom for he was beginning to understand
Parliament. He left his crown to the keeping of a son who had in no
wise profited by the father’s experience. Charles I, brought up in an
atmosphere of divine right, was predisposed to pursue that theory to
the end. But worse than that, in arguing his melancholy destiny, was
his faithlessness. An odious policy executed without respect for truth
brought him at last to death outside his palace of Whitehall.
[First Parliament of Charles]
[Worry about the supply]
The first Parliament of Charles I recalls vividly the mid-reign
experiences of James. It convened on the 18th June, 1625, and was
met with a request for a large and unconditional grant with which
to prosecute the war which Charles had inherited from his father.
The commons, however, were careful; they looked rather for a solid
establishment of government at home than for a war abroad. Breaking
the habit of two centuries, they offered Charles tunnage and poundage
for a year instead of the term of his life, a measure which, because
of lack of precedent, was rejected in the House of Lords; and granted
only two subsidies.[327] On the 10th August, the chancellor delivered
a message to the commons from the king. He desired “a present answer
about his supply: If not, he will take care of their healths more than
they themselves, and make as good a shift for his present occasions
as he could.”[328] The House spent the rest of the day debating the
matter, and on the next proceeded in the consideration of grievances,
postponing the supply. Delay the king would not brook; perceiving that
the commons were bent upon a redress of grievances before the granting
of further aid, and because in the debates they had presumed “to
reflect upon some great persons near himself,” on the 12th August he
dissolved Parliament,[329] and looked to his privy seal as a means of
revenue.
[His second Parliament. Buckingham]
[A grant with hard conditions]
Six months later, on the 6th February, 1625-26, Charles opened his
second Parliament and met with no better success. The commons did not
consider immediately the question of a supply, but to the immense
irritation of the king, proceeded to inquire into the conduct of the
Duke of Buckingham, the favorite of Charles. He sent a message to the
commons saying that he would “not allow any of his servants to be
questioned amongst them, much less such as are of eminent place and
near unto him.” But the chief significance of his message was in its
conclusion. “I wish you would hasten my supply,” so it ran, “or else it
will be worse for yourselves; for if any ill happen, I think I shall be
the last that shall feel it.”[330] The commons replied with a grant of
three subsidies and three fifteenths, but the conditions were such as
to make it almost worse for Charles than no grant at all. The bill was
not to be brought in until the king should have given answer to their
list of grievances, and among the grievances the Duke of Buckingham was
chief.[331] Later a fourth subsidy was added and a movement was put on
foot to give Charles tunnage and poundage for life; but in the bill it
was specified that a remonstrance should be drawn up against his taking
those duties without the previous consent of Parliament.[332] Then
the commons went on with their formal impeachment of Buckingham. But
before the matter was settled, and consequently before the Commons had
made final grants of the promised subsidies, Charles, in the hope of
relieving the desperate plight of his favorite, dissolved Parliament,
on the 15th June.
[Forced loans at the rating of a subsidy]
The dissolution left Charles without the means with which to carry on
the proposed war with Spain. He turned again to old expedients; he
forced loans, exacted benevolences, and suspended penal laws for a
consideration. The loans took the form of a general levy according to
the well-known rate of the subsidy and were thus in effect assessments
of a general tax by the arbitrary power of the crown. Of great
importance in the light of subsequent history, was the requisition made
upon the seaport towns for ships armed and equipped, the precursor of
the demand for ship money. Imprisonment, impressment into the royal
navy, the quartering of soldiers upon the inhabitants, the dismissal
from offices held of the crown, were the several rewards of those
sufficiently courageous to stand by the principle that taxes be laid
only by the assent of Parliament.[333] By an order in Council it was
declared, “that all customs, duties, and imposts on all goods and
merchandizes exported and imported, which, for many ages had been
continued, and esteemed a principal and necessary part of the revenue
of the crown, should be levied and paid.” The hope was expressed that
these levies “might receive an absolute settlement by Parliament,” when
that body should again assemble.[334]
[Charles’s third Parliament, 1627-28]
[Threats of non-Parliamentary exaction]
Not being content with the financial difficulties incident to the war
with Spain, Charles, at the suggestion of Buckingham, slipped into
a war with France. Buckingham led an expedition to the Isle of Rhé,
met with disaster and ignominy, and succeeded in using up the ready
money of the king. Charles had to call his third Parliament in order
to obtain supplies. It met 17th March, 1627-28. The king attempted to
propitiate the commons by releasing the prisoners whom he still held
for refusing to meet the demand for the general loan. In his opening
speech, Charles took the wrong tack. “There is none here,” he said,
“but knows that common danger is the cause of this Parliament, and
that supply at this time is the chief end of it.... If you, (which God
forbid) 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, to save that which the follies
of some particular men may otherwise hazard to lose.”[335] Nor was this
bold assertion of the divine right of a king to put his hand in the
pockets of his subjects enough. The lord keeper said in addition, “This
way (of obtaining a supply), as his Majesty hath told you, he hath
chosen, not as the only way, but as the fittest; not as destitute of
others, but as most agreeable to the goodness of his own most gracious
disposition, and to the desire and weal of his people. If this be
deferred, necessity and the sword of the enemy will make way to others.
Remember his Majesty’s admonition: I say, remember it.”[336]
[Grievances have precedence]
[Denunciation of extortions]
The House immediately set itself to the consideration of grievances,
chief amongst which were “raising money by loans, by benevolences, and
privy seals: and what was too fresh in memory, the imprisonment of
certain gentlemen who refused to lend.”[337] The matter of a supply
was debated, but passed by in favor of the grievances. On the 3rd
April, the commons agreed unanimously to certain highly significant
resolutions against the powers assumed by the king. “No freeman ought
to be committed, or detained in prison, or otherwise restrained,” they
said, “by command of the king, or the Privy Council, or any other,”
except for lawful cause expressed in a lawful warrant; and “that
the ancient and undoubted right of every freeman is, that he hath a
full and absolute property in his goods and estate; and that no tax,
tallage, loan, benevolence, or other like charge, ought to be commanded
or levied by the king or his ministers, without common assent of
Parliament.”[338]
For the space of two months the commons and the House of Lords engaged
themselves in conference and separately in the consideration of a
petition defining, the rights asserted in the resolutions. On the part
of the commons the chief advocates were Selden, Littleton, and Digges;
Sir Edward Coke, whose unwillingness to bend the judicial knee to King
James had procured his dismissal long since from the chief-justiceship;
and Noy, the genius who was shortly to turn against the Commons and
in his invention of ship money furnish a means whereby to lay taxes
without parliamentary assent. The interest of the crown was defended by
attorney-general Heath and Sergent Ashley. The king was in a dilemma;
he could not permit the petition to be brought in, in parliamentary
form, and he could not dissolve Parliament without losing five
subsidies which the commons had signified their willingness to grant
him.[339] He therefore tried to steer a middle course; he offered to
Parliament his royal word not to imprison unjustly and expressed his
willingness to confirm the charters. Coke, however, insisted upon a
specific statement of issues; any such hazy settlement of difficulties
as the king proposed was unlikely to be permanent; definiteness was
essential. To that end he proposed the drawing up of a Petition of
Right.
[The Petition of Right]
When the instrument was at last drawn up, it was sent to the House
of Lords. The lords attempted to introduce an amendment designed “to
leave entire that sovereign power,” as the proposed change itself ran,
“wherewith your Majesty is trusted for the protection, safety and
happiness of your people;”[340] but the commons would have none of it,
and at last the lords yielded their assent. The king at first gave a
cumbersome, evasive answer to the petition which was in reality no
answer at all,[341] and roused thereby a storm of indignation, which
exhibited itself in a movement to censure Buckingham. This the king
averted by signing the Petition of Right in the usual manner, and
received in consequence his five subsidies.[342]
[The statutes cited in the Petition]
The Petition which thus became a regularly passed Act of Parliament,
is of transcendent importance in the development of the control of
the people over the public purse. In terms absolutely unequivocal,
it asserts that “your subjects have inherited this freedom, that they
should not be compelled to contribute to any tax, tallage, aid, or
other like charge, not set by common consent in Parliament.” The
statutory sources whence that freedom was inherited are cited in
detail. The citations, are, however, ill-taken. _Statutum de tallagio
non concedendo_ was in all likelihood no statute at all, but a
chronicler’s abstract of Edward I’s Confirmatio Cartarum, or perhaps an
unauthoritative copy of the pardon which was granted to Humfrey Bohun
and Roger Bigod at approximately the same time with the Confirmation
of the Charters. It is not unlikely that the citation of the statute
of the 25th of Edward III was an error; at any rate, the text of the
statute has not been discovered,[343] and the date at which it was said
to be enacted was at the height of the great plague, a time scarcely
adapted to the assertion of a great constitutional principle. But
the precise historical foundation upon which Sir Edward Coke and his
associates based their charges against the king, is of quite secondary
importance. The true value of the Petition of Right lies in this, that
Charles I had been obliged to subscribe to a statutory provision by
which no man thereafter was to “be compelled to make or yield any gift,
loan, benevolence, tax, or such like charge, without common consent by
Act of Parliament.” That was indeed supremely important.
[The Petition of Right and customs duties]
But the language of the Petition of Right might reasonably be taken
to refer only to internal taxes and that the matter of customs
duties, the charges upon merchandise at the outports, was left still
in the air. Protests had indeed been made against the exaction of
these duties by the crown, especially during the reign of James in
the great agitation over the Book of Rates, but no statute had been
passed providing definitely for parliamentary control. To that end,
the commons delayed the passage of a bill which gave the king tunnage
and poundage for life, pending the acceptance by him of a remonstrance
against impositions. The remonstrance as framed by the commons declared
that “there ought not any imposition to be laid upon the goods of
merchants, exported or imported, _without the common consent by Act
of Parliament_.”[344] It further made assertion that the laying of
impositions at the outports was contrary to the Petition of Right. The
king’s attitude was decisive; before the remonstrance was handed to
him, he evaded the issue by proroguing Parliament. Never, so he said,
would he give away tunnage and poundage; he must needs retain them for
himself. The session ended 26th June, 1628.[345]
[Tunnage and poundage]
During the six months which elapsed before the reassembling of
Parliament, Charles continued to levy tunnage and poundage upon his
own authority, relying still upon the decision in the Bate Case for
his justification. Several merchants who refused to pay were promptly
clapped into prison; among those whose goods were seized for the same
reason was Henry Rolles, a member of the House of Commons. The second
session of Parliament was called for the 20th January, 1628-29; the
commons came together with no pretense of smothering their indignation
against the conduct of the king. A number of plans were brought forward
as means of rectifying the abuses. The evident determination of the
commons to conclude the matter, daunted the king. Summoning both Houses
to Whitehall, he renounced the right of levying tunnage and poundage.
“It ever was, and still is my meaning,” so were his words, “by the gift
of my people to enjoy it, and my intention in my speech at the end
of the last session was not to challenge tunnage and poundage as of
right, but _de bene esse_, showing you the necessity, not the right,
by which I was to take it until you had granted it to me, assuring
myself according to your general professions that you wanted time and
not good-will to give it me.”[346] For a moment it appeared as though
this abandonment of position by the king would end the conflict. Three
days after his reception of the Houses at Whitehall, Mr. Secretary
Cooke moved the reading of a bill granting him tunnage and poundage for
life. But it never passed. The commons were distracted by a question
of religious innovation, talked at great length over their religious
grievances, and allowed their momentary flush of cordial feeling
toward the king to cool. Mr. Secretary Cooke on the two days following
that upon which he made his motion regarding tunnage and poundage,
delivered messages from Charles urging haste in the consideration of
the measure.[347] On the 2nd February, the commons acknowledged the
receipt of the messages, but rather than pass a bill satisfactory to
the king in this particular, they stated their intent to “proceed with
religion.”[348]
On the 19th February they began a lengthy consideration of the breach
of privilege committed against the House of Commons in the seizure
of the goods of Henry Rolles, the merchant member of the House, who
had refused payment of tunnage and poundage during the recent recess.
The officers who had participated in the seizure of his goods were
summoned before the commons that they might answer for contempt. The
stand was taken against the king on this ground of privilege, instead,
as Pym advised, of objecting on the broad constitutional ground that
Parliament had not granted the tax. This hostility was too much for the
conciliatory spirit which Charles had evinced at the opening of the
session. Through Mr. Secretary Cooke, he announced his unwillingness
to have his officers questioned, since “what they did was by his own
direct command, or by order of the council-board, his Majesty himself
being present, and therefore, would not have it divided from his
act.”[349]
[Tumult in the Commons]
The question was fought out on the 2nd March, when the commons
reassembled after a brief recess. The king, hoping to arrange the
difficulty privately with the leaders of the House, ordered the
recess to be continued until the 10th March. To this the commons
entered vigorous protest; at the putting of the question, the vote was
overwhelmingly against adjournment. The speaker, Sir John Finch, in
obedience to the royal will, attempted to leave his chair, and thus
break up the session; but Holles and Valentine, two members most eager
for the consideration of the matters pressing for attention, pushed him
back into his seat. Sir John Eliot, who had drawn up three resolutions
expressing the mind of the commons on the questions of religion and
taxation, read them above the uproar. The speaker and the clerk refused
to put the vote and the king’s guard was already on its way to make
a forcible end to the proceedings. At the moment when the guardsmen
were at the door, Holles read the resolutions and they were carried
by acclamation. The House then adjourned in a tumult until the 10th
March.[350]
The resolutions were most explicit. The two which concerned the
impositions said: “Whosoever shall counsel or advise the taking and
levying of the subsidies of tunnage and poundage, not being granted
by Parliament, or shall be an actor and instrument therein, shall be
likewise reputed an innovator in the government and a capital enemy
to this kingdom and commonwealth.” And: “If any merchant or other
person whatsoever shall voluntarily yield or pay the said subsidies of
tunnage and poundage not being granted by Parliament, he shall likewise
be reputed a betrayer of the liberty of England, and an enemy to the
same.”[351]
When the House reconvened on the 10th March, the king dissolved
Parliament without further ado. With respect to such of the commons as
merited his displeasure he remarked that the vipers amongst them would
meet with their rewards.
[Charles’s eleven years without Parliament, 1629-40]
With the dissolution of his third Parliament, Charles entered upon a
new epoch in his reign; and at the conclusion of it, he found that his
game had been for too heavy stakes, and that he had lost. For eleven
years he did without a Parliament. He began by issuing a Declaration
addressed to his “loving subjects” in which he told the history of the
late session from his own point of view,--that he was in extreme need
of money with which to meet the necessities of England and relieve the
“miserable afflicted state” of Protestants abroad, that Parliament had
proved itself intractable, and had greatly delayed, contrary to all
precedent, in the matter of tunnage and poundage; not only that, but
upon his graciously yielding to Parliament the power of granting him
tunnage and poundage, it had raised up still another cause for delay in
the case of Henry Holles.[352] In a proclamation issued two weeks later
he plainly exhibited his intention to rule without a Parliament; “the
calling, continuing, and dissolving of them,” he said, “being always in
the King’s own power. And his Majesty shall be more inclinable to meet
in Parliament again when his people shall see more clearly into his
intents and actions, when such as have bred this interruption shall
receive their condign punishment.”[353]
[His financial expedients]
He imprisoned accordingly Holles, Strode, Sir John Eliot and others
whom he included amongst the vipers of the commons, and removed such
of them to the Tower as were able to sue out their writs of habeas
corpus, in order that he might thus elude the service of the writs. But
imprisonment was scarcely a means of relief to the king’s financial
exigencies. He turned to expedients which were exceedingly oppressive,
and most of them clearly illegal. He rigorously extorted tunnage and
poundage by the arbitrary authority of the crown; he reëstablished the
monopolies abolished under James I, and applied them to nearly every
article in common use; he revived laws long since dead and applied them
stringently for the sake of their fines; he revived forest legislation
and increased the limits of the royal woodlands, mulcting the owners of
adjoining property for encroachment; he searched titles of estates for
defects which would make them liable to reversion to the crown; he went
back to the old practice of compulsory knighthood for those who had
£40 or more in lands or rents.
[Ship money, first writ, 20th October, 1634]
But the supreme grievance was the extortion of ship money. Sir William
Noy, lately leader in the commons in defense of popular power against
royal prerogative, now become by the grace of the king attorney-general
and a chief supporter of that same royal prerogative, shut himself up
in the Tower for some days that he might better consult the ancient
authorities. “Shaking off the dust of ages from parchments in the
Tower,” says Hallam, “this man of venal diligence and prostituted
learning discovered that the seaports and even maritime counties had
in early times been sometimes called upon to furnish ships for the
public service; nay there were instances for a similar demand upon some
inland places.”[354] The first writ of ship money was directed to the
magistrates of London and other seaport towns, and was issued on the
20th October, 1634. It recited the depredations of pirates, “Turks,
enemies of the Christian name,” and the prevalence of war upon the
continent. It enjoined upon the magistrates the furnishing of ships
of specific tonnage and equipage by the 1st of the following March.
They were empowered to assess all the inhabitants according to their
substance, both for the fitting out of the ships and the maintenance
of their crews for the space of six months. Refusals to pay were
punishable by imprisonment. The writ was issued by the king with the
advice of the Privy Council.[355]
[The true occasion for the levy]
The show of precedent was barely an extenuation, not a justification
of the demand. As a matter of fact, it was virtually an extortion of a
tax, and as such was a distinct violation of the Petition of Right.
London, being the only port in the kingdom capable of constructing and
equipping ships of the character designated in the writs, was the only
town able to make literal compliance with the demand. The rest were
obliged to make money payments. But the matter was to come up later in
the courts, and the legality or illegality of the writs was there to
be decided. As for the occasion of the requisition denominated in the
ordinance, that was false. The design was not against “Turks, enemies
of the Christian name,” but against the Dutch Republic. Charles had
proposed a secret treaty with Spain whereby the government of the
Lowlanders should be overthrown and its territory be divided between
England and Spain.[356] Not only was this act of Charles a breach of
his recent great compact with the nation, but it had for its purpose
an act of aggression against the people who stood for the highest
political ideals then known in Europe, and was based on a lie.
[Second writ, 4th August, 1635. Its general application]
Sir John Finch, the chief justice of common pleas, the same who, as
speaker of the commons, had been forcibly held in his chair in order
to keep the House in session at the close of the last Parliament,
undertook the levying of ship money upon the death of Noy; he
advanced the fortunes of the writs by making them applicable to the
entire kingdom. On the 4th August, 1635, the demand made its second
appearance; it was to cover not only the needs of a navy, but to
furnish “a spring and magazine that should have no bottom, and for an
everlasting supply for all occasions.”[357] Instructions were included
in the writs to the sheriffs, by which the ships could be compounded
for by the counties, and the amount transmitted to the treasurer of the
navy for his Majesty’s uses. Payment was to be enforced.
[Third writ, 9th October, 1636]
A year later, the 9th October, 1636, the third assessment was laid.
Murmuring against the writs, which was common enough amongst the lower
classes in 1635, now spread to men of great position. The earls of
Danby and Warwick and other peers protested to the king, not so much
against the amount of the tax, as against the unconstitutional manner
of its levy. But Charles found it too profitable a means of income to
let go; he was the richer each year by some £200,000.
[Extra-judicial opinions]
The courts, however, seemed of contrary mind to the rest of the nation.
In November, 1635, at the instance of Sir John Finch, the following
extra-judicial opinion was delivered by the judges:--“I am of the
opinion that, as when the benefit doth more particularly redound to
the ports or maritime parts, as in case of piracy or depredations upon
the seas, that the charge hath been, and may be lawfully imposed upon
them according to precedents of former times; so when the good and
safety of the kingdom in general is concerned, and the whole kingdom
in danger (of which his Majesty is the only judge), then the charge of
the defence ought to be borne by all the realm in general. This I hold
agreeably both to law and reason.”[358]
On the 7th February, 1637, Charles laid the case before the judges of
the Exchequer extra-judicially in much the same terms as the opinion
of 1635. He requested an answer to the following question:--“When
the good and safety of the Kingdom in general is concerned, and the
whole Kingdom in danger, whether may not the King, by writ under the
Great Seal of England, command all the subjects of our Kingdom at
their charge to provide and furnish such a number of ships, with men,
victuals, and munition, and for such time as we shall think fit for the
defence and safeguard of the kingdom from such danger and peril, and
by law compel the doing thereof, in case of refusal or refractoriness:
and whether in such a case is not the King the sole judge both of the
danger, and when and how the same is to be prevented and avoided?”[359]
The opinion of the judges was ostensibly unanimous in favor of the
crown; Coke and Hutton as a matter of fact dissented, but subscribed on
the principle that the opinion of the majority should be that of the
whole body.
[Hampden’s Case, 1637]
In the face of this sweeping and conclusive opinion delivered privately
to the king, there was apparently no hope for any one who should have
to answer in that court for refusal. Shortly thereafter, however,
such a case came up. John Hampden, a gentleman of Buckinghamshire, had
refused to pay the assessment of 20_s._ which was laid upon some of his
lands, and by reason of his refusal was summoned to the Exchequer. He
appeared and answered to the charge in November, 1637. He was defended
by the brilliant Oliver St. John and Mr. Holborne. Solicitor General
Littleton and Attorney General Bankes conducted the case for the crown.
The question upon which the case was argued may be phrased as follows:
“Whether the king had a right on his own allegation of public danger
to require an inland county to furnish ships, or a prescribed sum of
money by way of commutation, for the defense of the kingdom?”[360] The
argument for Hampden can be summed up under five heads:
[The case for the defendant]
I. The law and constitution of England provide certain ordinary
revenues for the defense of the realm. These comprehend the military
forces provided by those holding lands by military tenure; the
liability of the Cinque Ports and others holding similarly to provide
a quota of ships, by reason of their tenure; the feudal and other
revenues inherent in the crown; the customs on wool and leather, and
tunnage and poundage, and other special dues which were wont to be
granted to the king in time of danger.[361]
II. The law and constitution of England provide certain extraordinary
revenues when the ordinary revenues should prove insufficient, and for
the defense of the realm. Chief among these were the subsidies and aids
which were granted in Parliament. That Parliament was the only body
capable of levying these charges was exhibited by the fact that the
kings of England were wont to denominate their arbitrary exactions as
“loans” and “benevolences.”
III. The statutes of the realm provided in most emphatic language
that no tax should be levied on the subject without the consent of
Parliament. The charter of the Conqueror, Magna Carta, especially
Confirmatio Cartarum and De Tallagio non Concedendo, the statutes
passed subsequently under Edward III, and more than all the others,
the Petition of Right, showed the utter illegality of the ship money.
IV. The citations by the crown of exactions similar to the ship money
did not demonstrate the lawfulness of the demand; they merely showed
precedents of such a general levy. The case must be decided by law, not
by precedents,--“_judicandum est legibus non exemplis_.”
V. In the present instance, the perils which the king cited were
insufficient to justify an unusual demand for money. The precedent of
the arbitrary actions of Queen Elizabeth at the time of the Armada
could in no wise be taken as a justification for so great an exercise
of the prerogative when the nation was at peace with the world; the
piratical acts of Turkish corsairs or even the insolence of rival
neighbors could not be reckoned amongst those imminent perils for which
a Parliament could provide too tardily.[362]
[A judgment for the crown]
The judgment was in favor of the crown seven to five. Three of
the minority based their decision upon the particular rather than
on general grounds; Croke and Hutton, however, denied the general
contention of the crown absolutely. Croke maintained that taxation
save by authority of Parliament is contrary to the common law and to
the statutes; that the exaction could not be defended upon the plea
of imminent danger; and that the extension to inland counties was not
legal or warranted by any legal precedent. The seven judges whose
opinions were favorable to the king, upheld the prerogative of the
crown as against the legislative power of Parliament. Sir John Finch,
chief justice of the common pleas, stated their attitude clearly.
“No act of Parliament,” he said, “can bar a king of his regality, as
that no lands should hold of him, or bar him of the allegiance of his
subjects or the relative on his part, as trust and power to defend his
people; therefore acts of Parliament to take away his royal power in
the defense of his kingdom are void; they are void acts of Parliament
to bind the king not to command the subjects, their persons, and
goods, and I say their money too; for no acts of Parliament make any
difference.”[363]
The effect of this decision upon the minds of the people was immediate;
it changed the payment of the ship money from a semi-voluntary gift
to the king into an extortion enforced by him. Previously they had
supposed that the ship money was paid out of sufferance, that if it
became too heavy, an appeal to the courts would be sufficient to remove
it; now they felt that the king had them by the throat and could force
them to do as he willed. Never was there a clearer issue; the king and
his prerogative against the commons and their long-developing rights;
the power of the king to levy taxes upon his own arbitrary authority
against taxation by the will of the taxed as expressed in Parliament.
[The Short Parliament, 1640]
The Scottish rebellion of 1638 which was waged for the defense of
religious freedom, and the interval of peace, beginning the 18th
June, 1639, which was used by Scots and English alike as a period of
armament, proved too much for Charles’s irregular financial supply.
Reluctantly he called his Fourth Parliament, commonly known as the
Short Parliament, for the 13th April, 1640. The assembly was, strange
to say, most moderate and loyal to the king. Charles through the
ex-Speaker Sir John Finch, now Lord Keeper, asked for a large supply
immediately, saying that he would listen to grievances afterwards.[364]
[Clash between the Houses]
The commons recalled instances wherein the royal word had been broken,
and preferred to withhold supply until the end of the session,
according to their familiar habit. They proceeded to inquire into the
Hampden case, and considered in detail the various occasions upon
which the law had been broken during their eleven years’ recess.
They appointed a committee to confer with the lords over a long list
of grievances, divided into the three departments of innovations in
religion, invasions of private property, and breaches of parliamentary
privilege.[365] At this Charles came forward with a gigantic piece of
tactlessness; thinking he saw a hole through which he could escape,
he tried to win the lords to his standard. Applying to them, they
voted and communicated to the House of Commons that “his Majesty’s
supply should have the precedency, and be resolved on before any other
matter whatsoever.”[366] To the commons this appeared an arrant breach
of privilege, it being their right that money bills should originate
in their House. The lords immediately adopted a conciliatory tone;
they renounced any intention of offending the commons. “The bill of
subsidies,” they admitted, “ought to have its inception and beginning
in your House; and that when it comes up to their lordships, and is by
them agreed unto, it must be returned back to you and be by your House
presented.”[367]
The king had reason to regret his intrusion since the dispute which he
had caused delayed a supply from the commons so much the more. He now
had recourse to a compromise. He offered the withdrawal of his claim
to ship money in consideration of a grant of twelve subsidies,[368]
payable in three years. The commons, perceiving that the proposition,
if acceded to, involved the tacit admission that the ship money
had been justly laid, insomuch as its removal was obtainable only
by purchase, refused to enter into the agreement. But the effect of
the message was not quite lost; on the contrary it seemed as though
the king would shortly receive his grant. At the moment when the
commons were on the point of deciding upon a supply, the amount to
be determined subsequently, Sir Henry Vane, secretary of state,
precipitated a crisis. He asserted that the supply would not be
accepted unless it were to the amount and in the manner designated in
the king’s message.[369] The next day, the 5th May, the king dissolved
his three-weeks-old Parliament, to his own great distress and the
trepidation of the nation.
[Dissolution of Parliament]
Charles employed the six months which intervened between the
dissolution of Parliament and the summons of the Long Parliament in
his usual occupations. He locked up several members of the House. He
exacted forced loans, created new monopolies, and levied ship money.
Prosecutions followed swiftly upon refusals to pay. “Coat and conduct
money,” a new exaction from the counties, was demanded to cover the
traveling expenses of recruits on their way to fight against the Scots.
He obtained six subsidies from the clergy whom he illegally kept in
convocation after the dissolution of Parliament.
[Sitting of the Long Parliament, 3rd November, 1640]
The wind of opposition was rising to a gale. With the sitting of the
Long Parliament, which convened on the 3rd November, 1640, the tempest
broke. The immediate occasion of the summons was the universal demand
of the people and the peers for a session of Parliament, coupled
with emptiness of the treasury which came with the commencement of
the disastrous Scottish war. The composition of the commons was
overwhelmingly anti-regal;[370] the popular leaders had been at work
in the counties ever since the dissolution of the Short Parliament
looking to the return of a strong majority in opposition to the king.
The assembly convened full of the idea that “they had now had an
opportunity to make their country happy by removing all grievances and
pulling up the causes of them by the roots, if all men would do their
duties.”[371]
Parliament lost no time in setting about its work. Proceedings were
immediately instituted looking to the impeachment of the Earl of
Strafford, Archbishop Laud, Finch, and six of the judges who had
figured in the ship money case. Various victims of the tyrannical
jurisdiction of the Star Chamber were set at liberty. The commons
exhibited their uncompromising hostility to the king by voting
assistance to their “brethren” the Scots, whose army was in possession
of much territory on the English side of the border. They granted them
£25,000 a month as long as their stay in England should be needful, and
in addition £300,000 as an indemnity.
[Royal exaction of tunnage and poundage declared illegal]
With such acts of open opposition to the king in process, it was
natural that Parliament should set itself to clean up all the abuses
which of recent times had crept into the government. Its actions were
not subversive of the constitution; on the contrary it left unassailed
many prerogatives of the king. On the 22nd June, 1641, Parliament
granted to the king tunnage and poundage for a length of time somewhat
less than two months[372] and in the same bill declared, “that it is
and hath been the ancient right of the subjects of this realm, that no
subsidy, custom, impost, or other charge whatsoever ought or may be
laid or imposed upon any merchandise exported or imported by subjects,
denizens, or aliens without common consent in Parliament.”[373] The Act
prescribed also the punishment which should be inflicted upon officers
who in time to come should exact payments not sanctioned by Parliament.
They were to “incur and sustain the pains, penalties, and forfeitures
ordained and provided by the Statute of Provision and Premunire made in
the sixteenth year of King Richard II, and shall also from thenceforth
be disabled during his life to see or implead any person in any action
real, mixed, or personal, or in any court whatsoever.” Thus was it
enacted that tunnage and poundage exacted by authority of the crown
was illegal, and protected merchants from being sued by the customs
officers in case of refusal to pay the unlawful imposition. The king
received tunnage and poundage by six subsequent acts for short terms
down to the 2nd July, 1642.
[The Ship Money Act, 7th August, 1641]
Six weeks later, on the 7th August, 1641, Parliament turned its
attention toward the matter of ship money. On that date it passed an
“Act for the declaring unlawful and void the late proceedings touching
Ship-Money, and for the vacating of all records and process concerning
the same.”[374] The act cites the Hampden Case and others of a similar
nature and outlines the plea of the royal prerogative as given in the
extra-judicial opinion of the judges. It condemns “all which writs and
proceedings” as being “utterly against the law of the land.” In greater
detail it enacts “that the said charge imposed upon the subject for
the providing and furnishing of ships commonly called ship money, and
the said extra-judicial opinion of the said justices ... and the said
judgment against John Hampden, were and are contrary to and against the
laws and statutes of this realm, the right of property, the liberty
of the subjects, former resolutions in Parliament and the Petition
of Right.” The act also provided that all particulars desired in the
Petition of Right should be “strictly holden and observed as in the
same Petition they are prayed and expressed.” The ship writs and the
Hampden judgment are specifically annulled.[375]
Thus came to an end the long chain of statutes which Parliament
from its inception had been forging to fetter the arms of the king
straining toward the prize of arbitrary taxation. The virtue of the
Long Parliament is thus commented upon by Hallam: “In the first place,”
he says, “it will appear ... that they made scarce any material change
in our constitution, such as it had been established and recognized
under the house of Plantagenet.... Thus in by far the greater part of
the enactments of 1641, the monarchy lost nothing that it anciently
possessed; and the balance of our constitution might seem rather to
have been restored to its former equipoise, than to have undergone
any change.... It is to be observed in the second place, that by these
salutary restrictions, and some new retrenchments of pernicious or
abused prerogative the Long Parliament formed our constitution such
nearly as it now exists.”[376] The legislation of 1641 in effect
restored to Parliament what power it nominally held two centuries
before.
[The Grand Remonstrance, 1st December, 1641]
A current of reaction now set in favorable to the king. The leaders in
the commons discovered that the popular support to their measures was
becoming weak, that the royalist party was recruiting adherents from
the former supporters of the opposition, that their own backing was by
a party, not by the nation. With the hope of winning back full national
adherence to Parliament, the Grand Remonstrance was framed by the House
of Commons and presented to the king, on the 1st December 1641.[377] It
purported to show the present state of the kingdom, the evil conditions
which Parliament had succeeded in bettering, and the darkness of the
future, if support were withdrawn from Parliament. With respect to
taxation, the Remonstrance recites the various illegalities and abuses
which the crown had practiced and the steps which the commons had taken
to provide for their correction. For future safeguard against their
return it suggests “that for the better preservation of the liberties
and laws, all illegal grievances and exactions should be presented and
punished at the sessions and assizes; and that judges and justices
should be sworn to the due execution of the Petition of Right and other
laws.”
[The Puritan Revolution]
With the delivery of the Grand Remonstrance, the contest for
Parliamentary taxation became of relatively small moment in the great
conflicts of the Puritan Revolution. The struggle over the impeachment
of Pym and the popular leaders in the House, the attempt of the king
to secure absolute command of the militia, the battles on the field
and in the House of Commons during the Civil War, the events which led
up to the execution of Charles--these were neither immediately caused
by the conflict over taxation nor did they have immediate effect upon
it. Taxation up to 1641 was a prime cause of opposition to the crown;
thereafter it ceased to be of so great importance.
[Accession of Charles II, 1660]
Charles II came to the throne in 1660 after the English people had
made an eleven years’ trial of a military despotism under a good
and moderate despot. His first Parliament, that of 1660, granted
him the proceeds of the customs for life. During the period of the
Commonwealth, the freedom from the feudal charges had been most
agreeable to those holding of the crown. Consequently, this Parliament
set itself to regulate the confused system of military tenure by the
simple expedient of abolition. The Great Contract which had been
proposed under James I for the same purpose, had been advocated in
vain. Now, however, the effort was successful. The feudal incidents,
such as wardships, marriages, knight’s service, as well as the three
feudal aids, knighting the king’s son, ransoming the king, and
furnishing dowry for his eldest daughter, were done away with. By this
great deprivation, the royal revenue was naturally much prejudiced.
Parliament made up the loss by granting to the crown an hereditary
excise on beer and some other liquors, increasing the royal revenue to
the annual value of £1,200,000.[378]
[Appropriation of supplies, 1665]
In 1665 the expenses incident to the Dutch War made it possible to
establish a principle which had been touched upon from time to time
since the days of Henry III. Sir George Downing, in the subsidy bill
of that year, introduced the provision that the money raised in
accordance with the bill, £1,250,000, be applicable solely to the
prosecution of the war, and that the money could not be paid out by
the Exchequer save by special warrant stating that as the purpose of
the payment. Clarendon opposed the measure as an encroachment upon the
honor of the crown, but Charles himself was not averse to it, mainly
by reason of his belief that the promised revenue would be thus more
acceptable to bankers as the security for loans. The appointment in the
following year of a commission to examine the public accounts in order
to determine the faithfulness with which the provision was carried
out, clinched the principle underlying its original passage. The bill
was the natural consequence of the liberty of appropriation enjoyed
under the Commonwealth. The exercise of the principle of appropriating
supplies in detail was not carried to its full extent until after
1689. Its importance is difficult to overestimate. It placed the
executive power in a position of perfect dependence upon the will of
Parliament, for the money requisite for any administrative act was to
be forthcoming only in accordance with the previously expressed intent
of Parliament.
[Reign of James II, 1685-88]
The reign of James II, who came to the throne in 1685 at the death
of Charles, was retrogressive. He assumed the crown with the full
intention of exercising arbitrary authority, and if he had not tried to
substitute Catholicism for the Established Church, there is little to
show that he would not at least for a time have succeeded. Before the
summons of his Parliament, which he called reluctantly notwithstanding
a lapse of five years under Charles without one, he continued to
himself the payment of the customs duties by proclamation. This illegal
act met with no serious objection from Parliament when it met. Nor
was this all; Parliament raised the permanent revenue of the king to
the annual amount of £2,000,000, and on the suppression of Monmouth’s
rebellion, gave him £700,000 more wherewith to support a standing army.
Thus did Parliament make James financially independent, provided he
was content to live within reason, and gave him an army in addition.
This was a combination of powers which on the Continent had sufficed to
create despotisms.
[William and Mary]
That it did not create a despotism in England is not greatly to be
wondered at. James set himself to fighting the battle of the Roman
Catholic church in England. The result was almost immediate disaster.
On the 5th November, 1688, William, Prince of Orange, and Stadtholder
of the United Provinces, landed at Torbay in Devonshire. He was
requested by seventy of the lords spiritual and temporal (all who
were then in London), by the members of the House of Commons which
met in the last Parliament of Charles II, and the corporation of the
City of London, to assume the provisional government of the kingdom
pending a session of Parliament. This was called for the 22nd January,
1688-89. On the 13th February following, a tender of the crown was
made to William, on the conditions denominated in the recently framed
Declaration of Right. In it the illegal acts of King James were recited
and the announcement was made that the throne had been abdicated;
it was asserted also that certain specified acts of King James were
illegal, and a resolution was appended settling the crown on William
and Mary. William, speaking for himself and for the Princess Mary,
“thankfully accepted what had been offered them.”
[The Bill of Rights, 1689]
The Declaration of Right, with some slight but essential changes,
was incorporated at the second session of this Parliament, the 25th
October, 1689, in statutory form known subsequently as the Bill of
Rights.[379] In the matter of taxation, it sums up in a few clauses the
whole principle which had been in course of evolution since the German
chieftains received gifts of cattle and fruits from their people.
It states that King James “did endeavor to subvert and extirpate ...
the laws and liberties of this kingdom ... by levying money for and to
the use of the crown, by pretense of prerogative, for other time and in
other manner than the same was granted by Parliament.” Then follows the
definite assertion, “that levying money for or to the use of the crown
by pretense of prerogative, without grant of Parliament for longer time
or in other manner than the same is or shall be granted, is illegal.”
The clause which gave to these statements the force of law, emphasizes
the power of Parliament. “All which their Majesties are contented and
pleased,” so it goes, “shall be declared, enacted, and established
by authority of this present Parliament, and shall stand, remain,
and be the law of this realm forever; and the same are by their said
Majesties, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords spiritual
and temporal, and Commons, in Parliament assembled, and by the
authority of the same, declared, enacted and established accordingly.”
With the passing of the Bill of Rights the principle was vindicated in
its fullness that Parliament rather than the crown has the power to
tax. Within Parliament itself the power of laying taxes had undergone
further differentiation in that the House of Commons claimed the
sole right of initiating tax levies. The theory deduced therefrom,
that the House of Commons has sole control over money bills and that
interference by the House of Lords is an assumption of power beyond
the constitutional rights of that House, came up for fuller definition
220 years later. The corollary principle that Parliament has the power
to appropriate supplies for specific purposes and that it can demand
an accounting for the money so appropriated were accorded general
acquiescence then and thereafter.
INDEX
Accounts, examination of, 186-188;
appointment of treasurers under Richard II, 191-194;
under Charles II, 303;
after Bill of Rights, 308.
Aid _pur fille marier_, Edward I, 121.
Ancient Customs, rate stated, 165.
Anglo-Saxons, their early ideas of taxation, 3.
Appropriation of Supplies, 184-186;
declaration under Henry VI, 210;
under Charles II, 303-304;
after Bill of Rights, 308.
Assize of Arms, 35.
_Auxilium vicecomitis_, 27, 29.
Bate Case, 241-242;
opinions of the Barons, 242-244;
position of Parliament, 244;
Book of Rates, 245;
remonstrance by Parliament, 246-248.
Becket, Thomas, his controversy with Henry II, 27-30.
Benevolence, a form of extortion, 214;
prohibiting statute of Richard III, 216-217;
Morton’s Crotch, 220;
Shoring or Under-propping Act, 221;
Henry VIII’s “amiable graunte,” 225;
under James I, 253;
St. John’s Case, 253-254;
under Charles I, 264, 267, 272, 294.
Bigod, Roger, dispute with Edward I, 135-138.
Bill of Rights, 306-308.
Bohun, Humfrey, dispute with Edward I, 135-138.
Book of Rates, 245.
Buckingham, 262-264, 265, 269.
Burghers, at Parliament of 1265, 102-103;
acquire function of taxing, 116-119.
_Carta Mercatoria_, 158;
complaint against, 162.
Carucage, 43, note 1;
imposition by Richard I, 43;
a revival of the Danegeld, 35, note 1;
levy of 1198, 44;
“assessed” by the Common Council, 77-78.
Charles I, his accession, 261;
signs Petition of Right, 269;
renounces tunnage and poundage, 274-275;
rules without Parliament, 279.
Charles II, his accession, 302;
death, 304.
Clergy, John’s antagonism of, 55;
need of their assent to taxation recognized, 125;
meet separately, 131, note 1;
attempted taxation of by Parliament, 1449, 210;
taxation after English Reformation, 228-230.
_Clericis laicos_, 133, note 1;
tendency to disregard, 1297, 142, 145;
adduced in 1301, 156.
Common Council, no provision for London representatives made in Magna
Carta, 66;
its composition, 66-68;
representation, 68-69;
part in taxation in early years of Henry III, 77-78;
grants a tax on movables, 1224, 79-81;
instances of refusal, 1232 and 1237, 81-82;
refuses a grant, 1242, 85;
its control over taxation in 1250, 91-92;
knights of the shires called, 1254, 92-94;
its control of disbursements, see Disbursements.
Commons, House of, foreshadowed in Parliament of 1265, 102, 103;
meets separately, 189, 190;
initiation of tax levies, 205-208, 308;
composition dictated by James I, 238;
revival of impeachment, 256;
breach of privilege in Short Parliament, 293.
_Commune Concilium_, see Common Council.
Conditional grant, early instance of, 1224, 79-80;
repetitions, 81-82.
_Confirmatio Cartarum_, action prior to, 142-144;
signed by Edward I, 145;
analysis of tax clauses, 146-150;
marks a stage in Parliamentary taxation, 152-153.
Contributions, voluntary, among the early Germans, 2, 3.
Cowel’s “Interpreter,” 248.
Customs, in early England, 113, note 1;
_Carta Mercatoria_, 158;
statutory provision for control by Parliament, Edward III, 177-178;
persistence of the struggle over customs, 179-180;
Bate Case, 242-244;
Book of Rates, 245;
collection ordered by Charles I, 265;
omission in Petition of Right, 273.
See also under New Customs, Ancient Customs.
Danegeld, origin 991 and early instances, 6-7;
authority for its exaction, 8-9;
reimposition under the Conqueror, 15-16;
under William Rufus, 18;
Stephen’s promise of abolition, 25-26;
supposed cause of Woodstock Controversy, 27, note 3;
its disappearance from the Rolls, 35, and note 1;
revival as “carucage,” 35, 43.
_De tallagio non concedendo_, 150-151, 159, 167;
cited in Petition of Right, 271.
Disbursements, rejection of commission for, 82-83, 85;
demand for supervision of, 87-88;
Matthew Paris’s scheme, 88.
Distraint of Knighthood, 117, 123;
resorted to by Charles I, 281;
made illegal, 299, note 1.
Divine right, etc., in taxation, 236;
assertion by Charles I, 266.
Domesday Survey, 17.
Duties, Bate Case, 242-244;
Book of Rates, 245.
See under Customs.
Edward I, accession, 107;
his character, 107-108;
dispute over foreign service, 134-137;
his financial preparations for the Gascon expedition, 1297, 140;
his part in attainment of Parliamentary taxation, 153;
last years of his reign, 157-159;
his death, 159.
Edward II, his accession, 159-160;
deposition, 169.
Edward III, accession and coronation, 169-170;
death of, 188.