I acknowledge the act you glance at was of an extraordinary kind;
and might seem, by implication at least, to deliver up the entire
legislative authority into the hands of the sovereign. But there is a
wide difference between the crown’s usurping this strange power, and
the parliament’s bestowing it. The case was (and nothing could be more
fortunate for the nation) that at the time when the people were least
able to controul their prince, their prince’s affairs constrained him
to court his people. For the rejection of the papal power and the
reformation of religion were things of that high nature, and so full
of hazard, that no expedient was to be overlooked, which tended to
make the execution of these projects safe or easy. Hence it was, that
no steps were taken by the crown but with the consent and approbation
of the two houses. And if these were compelled by the circumstances
of their situation to favour their prince’s interest or caprice by
absurd and inconsistent compliances, this benefit at least they
drew to themselves, that their power by that means would appear the
greater and more unquestionable. For what indeed could display the
omnipotency of parliaments more than their being called in to make and
unmake the measures of government, and give a sanction, as it were, to
contradictions? Of which there cannot be a stronger instance than the
changes they made from time to time, as HENRY VIII’s passions swayed
him, in the rule of succession.
Thus we see that, through the entire reigns of the house of TUDOR,
that is, the most despotic and arbitrary of our princes, the forms
of liberty were still kept up, and the constitution maintained, even
amidst the advantages of all sorts which offered for the destruction of
both. The parliament indeed was obsequious, was servile, was directed,
if you will; but every proceeding was authorised and confirmed by
parliament. The king in the mean time found himself at his ease;
perhaps believed himself absolute, and considered his application to
parliaments as an act of mere grace and popular condescension. At
least, after so long experience of their submission, the elder JAMES
certainly thought himself at liberty to entertain this belief of them.
But he was the first of our princes that durst avow this belief plainly
and openly. He was stimulated, no doubt, to this usurpation of power
in _England_, by the memory of his former subjection, of servitude
rather, to the imperious church of _Scotland_. But this was not all.
Succeeding to so fair a patrimony as that of a mighty kingdom, where
little or no opposition had been made for some reigns to the will of
the sovereign; to a kingdom too, securely settled in the possession
of its favoured religion, which had occasioned all the dangers, and
produced all the condescension, of the preceding princes; bringing,
besides, with him to the succession, an undisputed title and the
additional splendor of another crown; all these advantages meeting
in his person at that point of time, he ventured to give way to his
natural love of dominion, and told the people to their face, that the
pretended rights of their parliaments were but the free gifts and
graces of their kings: that every high point of government, that is,
every point which he chose to call by that name, was wrapt up in the
awful mystery of his prerogative: and, in a word, that “it was sedition
for them to dispute what a king may do in the height of his power[13].”
Such, you know, was the language, the public language to his
parliaments, of JAMES THE FIRST. But these pretences, which might have
been suffered perhaps, or could not have been opposed, under the TUDOR
line, were unluckily out of season, and would not pass on a people who
knew their own rights, had saved to themselves the exercise of them,
and came now at length to feel and understand their importance. For,
as I before observed, the principal cause that had lifted the crown so
high, was the depression of the barons. The great property which had
made them so formidable, was dispersed into other hands. The nobility
were therefore too low to give any umbrage to the crown. But the
commons were rising apace; and in a century had grown to that height,
that on the accession of the _Scotch_ family, the point of time when
the new king dreamed of nothing but absolute sovereignty[14], they were
now in a condition to assert the public liberty, and, as the event
shewed but too soon, to snatch the sceptre itself out of their king’s
hands.
However, in that interval of the dormant power of the commons it
was, that the prerogative made the largest shoots, till in the end
it threatened to overshadow law and liberty. And, though the general
reason is to be sought in the humiliation of the church, the low estate
of the barons, and the unexerted, because as yet unfelt, greatness of
the commons, the solution will be defective if we stop here. For the
regal authority, so limited by the ancient constitution, and by the
continued use of parliaments, could never in this short space have
advanced itself beyond all bounds, if other reasons had not co-operated
with the state of the people; if some more powerful and special causes
had not conspired to throw round the person of the sovereign those rays
of sacred opinion, which are the real strength as well as gilding of a
crown.
Of these I have occasionally mentioned several; such as “the personal
character and virtues of the princes themselves; the high adventurous
designs in which they were engaged; the interest, the people found
or promised to themselves in supporting their power; the constant
successes of their administration; and the unremitting spirit and
vigour with which it was carried on and maintained.” All these
considerations could not but dispose the people to look up with
reverence to a crown, which presented nothing to their view but what
was fitted to take their admiration, or imprint esteem. Yet all these
had failed of procuring to majesty that profound submission which
was paid to it, or of elevating the prince to that high conceit of
independency which so thoroughly possessed the imagination of King
JAMES, if an event of a very singular nature, and big with important
consequences, had not given the proper occasion to both.