THE RISING OF THE SCOTS
1635-1640
[Sidenote: England in 1635.]
When Weston died in 1635 six years had passed without a Parliament, and
the Crown was at the height of its power. Its financial difficulties
seemed coming to an end. The long peace, the rigid economy of
administration, the use of forgotten rights and vexatious monopolies,
had now halved the amount of debt, while they had raised the revenue to
a level with the royal expenditure. Charles had no need of subsidies;
and without the need of subsidies he saw no ground for again
encountering the opposition of Parliament. The religious difficulty gave
him as little anxiety. If Laud was taking harsh courses with the
Puritans, he seemed to be successful in his struggle with Puritanism.
The most able among its ministers were silenced or deprived. The most
earnest of its laymen were flying over seas. But there was no show of
opposition to the reforms of the Primate or the High Commission. In the
two dependent kingdoms all appeared to be going well. In Scotland
Charles had begun quietly to carry further his father's schemes for
religious uniformity; but there was no voice of protest. In Ireland
Wentworth could point to a submissive Parliament and a well-equipped
army, ready to serve the king on either side St. George's Channel. The
one solitary anxiety of Charles, in fact, lay in the aspect of foreign
affairs. The union of Holland and of France had done the work that
England had failed to do in saving German Protestantism from the grasp
of the House of Austria. But if their union was of service to Germany,
it brought danger to England. France was its ancient foe. The commercial
supremacy of the Dutch was threatening English trade. The junction of
their fleets would at once enable them to challenge the right of
dominion which England claimed over the Channel. And at this moment
rumours came of a scheme of partition by which the Spanish Netherlands
were to be shared between the French and the Dutch, and by which Dunkirk
was at once to be attacked and given into the hands of France.
[Sidenote: Ship-money.]
To suffer the extension of France along the shores of the Netherlands
had seemed impossible to English statesmen from the days of Elizabeth.
To surrender the command of the Channel was equally galling to the
national pride. Even Weston, fond as he was of peace, had seen the need
of putting a strong fleet upon the seas; and in 1634 Spain engaged to
defray part of the expense of equipping such a fleet in the hope that
the king's demand would bring on war with Holland and with France. But
money had to be found at home, and as Charles would not hear of the
gathering of a Parliament means had to be got by a new stretch of
prerogative. The legal research of Noy, one of the law-officers of the
Crown, found precedents among the records in the Tower for the provision
of ships for the king's use by the port-towns of the kingdom, and for
the furnishing of their equipment by the maritime counties. The
precedents dated from times when no permanent fleet existed, and when
sea warfare could only be waged by vessels lent for the moment by the
various ports. But they were seized as a means of equipping a permanent
navy without cost to the Exchequer; the first demand of ships was soon
commuted into a demand of money for the provision of ships; and the
writs for the payment of ship-money which were issued to London and
other coast-towns were enforced by fine and imprisonment. The money was
paid, and in 1635 a fleet put to sea. The Spaniards however were too
poor to fulfil their share of the bargain; they sent neither money nor
vessels; and Charles shrank from a contest single-handed with France and
the Dutch. But with the death of the Earl of Portland a bolder hand
seized the reins of power. To Laud as to Wentworth the system of Weston
had hardly seemed government at all. In the correspondence which passed
between the two ministers the king was censured as over-cautious, the
Star Chamber as feeble, the judges as over-scrupulous. "I am for
Thorough," the one writes to the other in alternate fits of impatience
at the slow progress they are making. Wentworth was anxious that his
good work might not "be spoiled on that side." Laud echoed the wish,
while he envied the free course of the Lord Lieutenant. "You have a good
deal of humour here," he writes, "for your proceeding. Go on a' God's
name. I have done with expecting of Thorough on this side."
[Sidenote: The new ship-money.]
With feelings such as these Laud no sooner took the direction of affairs
than a more vigorous and unscrupulous impulse made itself felt. Far from
being drawn from his projects by the desertion of Spain, Charles was
encouraged to carry them out by his own efforts. It was determined to
strengthen the fleet; and funds for this purpose were raised by an
extension of the levy of ship-money. The pretence of precedents was
thrown aside, and Laud resolved to find a permanent revenue in the
conversion of the "ship-money," till now levied on ports and the
maritime counties, into a general tax imposed by the royal will upon the
whole country. The sum expected from the tax was no less than a quarter
of a million a year. "I know no reason," Wentworth had written
significantly, "but you may as well rule the common lawyers in England
as I, poor beagle, do here"; and the judges no sooner declared the new
impost to be legal than he drew the logical deduction from their
decision. "Since it is lawful for the king to impose a tax for the
equipment of the navy, it must be equally so for the levy of an army:
and the same reason which authorizes him to levy an army to resist, will
authorize him to carry that army abroad that he may prevent invasion.
Moreover what is law in England is law also in Scotland and Ireland. The
decision of the judges will therefore make the king absolute at home and
formidable abroad. Let him only abstain from war for a few years that he
may habituate his subjects to the payment of that tax, and in the end he
will find himself more powerful and respected than any of his
predecessors." "The debt of the Crown being taken off," he wrote to
Charles, "you may govern at your will."
[Sidenote: John Hampden.]
But there were men who saw the danger to freedom in this levy of
ship-money as clearly as Wentworth himself. The bulk of the country
party abandoned all hope of English freedom. There was a sudden revival
of the emigration to New England; and men of blood and fortune now
prepared to seek a new home in the West. Lord Warwick secured the
proprietorship of the Connecticut valley. Lord Saye and Sele and Lord
Brooke began negotiations for transporting themselves to the New World.
Oliver Cromwell is said, by a doubtful tradition, to have only been
prevented from crossing the seas by a royal embargo. It is more certain
that John Hampden purchased a tract of land on the Narragansett. No
visionary danger would have brought the soul of Hampden to the thought
of flight. He was sprung of an ancient line, which had been true to the
House of Lancaster in the Wars of the Roses, and whose fidelity had been
rewarded by the favour of the Tudors. On the brow of the Chilterns an
opening in the woods has borne the name of "the Queen's Gap" ever since
Griffith Hampden cleared an avenue for one of Elizabeth's visits to his
stately home. His grandson, John, was born at the close of the Queen's
reign; the dissipations of youth were cut short by an early marriage at
twenty-five to a wife he loved; and the young squire settled down to a
life of study and religion. His wealth and lineage opened to him a
career such as other men were choosing at the Stuart court. Few English
commoners had wider possessions; and under James it was easy to purchase
a peerage by servility and hard cash. "If my son will seek for his
honour," wrote his mother from the court, "tell him now to come, for
here are multitudes of lords a-making!" But Hampden had nobler aims than
a peerage. From the first his choice was made to stand by the side of
those who were struggling for English freedom; and at the age of
twenty-six he took his seat in the memorable Parliament of 1621. Young
as he was, his ability at once carried him to the front; he was employed
in "managing conferences with the Lords" and other weighty business, and
became the friend of Eliot and of Pym. He was again returned to the two
first Parliaments of Charles; and his firm refusal to contribute to
forced loans at the close of the second marked the quiet firmness of his
temper. "I could be content to lend," he replied to the demand of the
Council, "but for fear to draw on myself that curse in Magna Charta
which should be read twice a year against those that do infringe it." He
was rewarded with so close an imprisonment in the Tower, "that he never
afterwards did look the same man he was before." But a prison had no
force to bend the steady patriotism of John Hampden, and he again took a
prominent part in the Parliament of 1628, especially on the religious
questions which came under debate.
With the dissolution of this Parliament Hampden again withdrew to his
home, the home that, however disguised by tasteless changes without,
still stands unaltered within on a rise of the Chilterns, its
Elizabethan hall girt round with galleries and stately staircases
winding up beneath shadowy portraits in ruffs and farthingales. Around
are the quiet undulations of the chalk-country, billowy heavings and
sinkings as of some primaeval sea suddenly hushed into motionlessness,
soft slopes of grey grass or brown-red corn falling gently to dry
bottoms, woodland flung here and there in masses over the hills. A
country of fine and lucid air, of far shadowy distances, of hollows
tenderly veiled by mist, graceful everywhere with a flowing
unaccentuated grace, as though Hampden's own temper had grown out of it.
As we look on it, we recall the "flowing courtesy to all men," the
"seeming humility and submission of judgement," the "rare affability and
temper in debate," that woke admiration and regard even in the fiercest
of his opponents. But beneath the outer grace of Hampden's demeanour lay
a soul of steel. Buried as he seemed in the affections of his home, the
great patriot waited patiently for the hour of freedom that he knew must
come. Around him gathered the men that were to stand by his side in the
future struggle. He had been the bosom friend of Eliot till the victim
of the king's resentment lay dead in the Tower. He was now the
bosom-friend of Pym. His mother had been a daughter of the great
Cromwell house at Hinchinbrook, and he was thus closely linked by blood
to Oliver Cromwell and connected with Oliver St. John. The marriages of
two daughters united him to the Knightleys and the Lynes. Selden and
Whitelock were among his closest counsellors. It was in steady commune
with these that the years passed by, while outer eyes saw in him only a
Puritan squire of a cultured sort, popular among his tenantry and
punctual at Quarter-Sessions, with "an exceeding propenseness to field
sports" and "busy in the embellishment of his estate, of which he was
very fond."
[Sidenote: Hampden and ship-money.]
At last the quiet patience was broken by the news of the ship-money, and
of a writ addressed to the High Sheriff, Sir Peter Temple of Stave,
ordering him to raise L4500 on the county of Buckingham. Hampden's
resolve was soon known. In the January of 1636 a return was made of the
payments for ship-money from the village of Great Kimble at the foot of
the Chilterns round which his chief property lay, and at the head of
those who refused to pay stood the name of John Hampden. For a while
matters moved slowly; and it was not till the close of June that a
Council warrant summoned the High Sheriff to account for arrears.
Hampden meanwhile had been taking counsel in the spring with Whitelock
and others of his friends concerning the means of bringing the matter to
a legal issue. Charles was as eager to appeal to the law as Hampden
himself; but he followed his father's usage in privately consulting the
judges on the subject of his claim, and it was not till the February of
1637 that their answer asserted its legality. The king at once made
their opinion public in the faith that all resistance would cease. But
the days were gone by when the voice of the judges was taken
submissively for law by Englishmen. They had seen the dismissal of Coke
and of Crewe. They knew that in matters of the prerogative the judges
admitted a right of interference and of dictation on the part of the
Crown. "The judges," Sir Harbottle Grimston could say in the Long
Parliament, "the judges have overthrown the law, as the bishops
religion!" What Hampden aimed at was not the judgement of such judges,
but an open trial where England might hear, in spite of the silence of
Parliament, a discussion of this great inroad on its freedom. His wishes
were realized at last by the issue in May of a writ from the Exchequer,
calling on him to show cause why payment of ship-money for his lands
should not be made.
[Sidenote: Charles and Scotland.]
The news of Hampden's resistance thrilled through the country at a
moment when men were roused by news of resistance in the north. Since
the accession of James Scotland had bent with a seeming tameness before
aggression after aggression. Its pulpits had been bridled. Its boldest
ministers had been sent into exile. Its General Assembly had been
brought to submission by the Crown. Its Church had been forced to accept
bishops, if not with all their old powers, still with authority as
permanent superintendents of the diocesan synods. The ministers and
elders had been deprived of their right of excommunicating offenders,
save with a bishop's sanction. A Court of High Commission enforced the
supremacy of the Crown. But with this enforcement of his royal authority
James was content. He had no wish for a doctrinal change, or for the
bringing about of a strict uniformity with the Church of England. It was
in vain that Laud in his earlier days invited James to draw his Scotch
subjects "to a nearer conjunction with the liturgy and canons of this
nation." "I sent him back again," said the shrewd old king, "with the
frivolous draft he had drawn. For all that, he feared not my anger, but
assaulted me again with another ill-fangled platform to make that
stubborn Kirk stoop more to the English platform; but I durst not play
fast and loose with my word. He knows not the stomach of that people."
The earlier policy of Charles followed his father's line of action. It
effected little save a partial restoration of Church-lands, which the
lords were forced to surrender. But Laud's vigorous action made itself
felt. His first acts were directed rather to points of outer observance
than to any attack on the actual fabric of Presbyterian organization.
The estates were induced to withdraw the control of ecclesiastical
apparel from the Assembly, and to commit it to the Crown; and this step
was soon followed by a resumption of their episcopal costume on the part
of the Scotch bishops. When the Bishop of Moray preached before Charles
in his rochet, on the king's visit to Edinburgh in 1633, it was the
first instance of its use since the Reformation. The innovation was
followed by the issue of a Royal warrant which directed all ministers to
use the surplice in divine worship.
[Sidenote: The new Liturgy.]
The enforcement of the surplice woke Scotland from its torpor, and alarm
at once spread through the country. Quarterly meetings were held in
parishes with fasting and prayer to consult on the dangers which
threatened religion, and ministers who conformed to the new ceremonies
were rebuked and deserted by their congregations. The popular discontent
soon found leaders in the Scotch nobles. Threatened in power by the
attempts of the Crown to narrow their legal jurisdiction, in purse by
projects for the resumption and restoration to the Church of the
bishops' lands, irritated by the restoration of the prelates to their
old rank, by their reintroduction to Parliament and the Council, by the
nomination of Archbishop Spottiswood to the post of Chancellor, and
above all by the setting up again the worrying bishops' courts, the
nobles with Lord Lorne at their head stood sullenly aloof from the new
system. But Charles was indifferent to the discontent which his measures
were rousing. Under Laud's pressure he was resolved to put an end to the
Presbyterian character of the Scotch Church altogether, and to bring it
to a uniformity with the Church of England in organization and ritual.
With this view a book of Canons was issued in 1636 on the sole
authority of the king. These Canons placed the government of the Church
absolutely in the hands of its bishops; and made a bishop's licence
necessary for instruction and for the publication of books. The
authority of the prelates indeed was jealously subordinated to the
supremacy of the Crown. No Church Assembly might be summoned but by the
king, no alteration in worship or discipline introduced but by his
permission. As daring a stretch of the prerogative superseded what was
known as Knox's Liturgy--the book of Common Order drawn up on the
Genevan model by that Reformer, and generally used throughout
Scotland--by a new Liturgy based on the English Book of Common Prayer.
[Sidenote: Its rejection.]
The Liturgy and Canons had been Laud's own handiwork; in their
composition the General Assembly had neither been consulted nor
recognized; and taken together they formed the code of a political and
ecclesiastical system which aimed at reducing Scotland to an utter
subjection to the Crown. To enforce them on the land was to effect a
revolution of the most serious kind. The books however were backed by a
royal injunction, and Laud flattered himself that the revolution had
been wrought. But the patience of Scotland found an end at last. In the
summer of 1637, while England was waiting for the opening of the great
cause of ship-money, peremptory orders from the king forced the clergy
of Edinburgh to introduce the new service into their churches. On the
23rd of July the Prayer-Book was used at the church of St. Giles. But
the book was no sooner opened than a murmur ran through the
congregation, and the murmur grew into a formidable riot. The church was
cleared, and the service read; but the rising discontent frightened the
judges into a decision that the royal writ enjoined the purchase, not
the use, of the Prayer-Book, and its use was at once discontinued. The
angry orders which came from England for its restoration were met by a
shower of protests from every part of Scotland. The ministers of Fife
pleaded boldly the want of any confirmation of the book by a General
Assembly. "This Church," they exclaimed, "is a free and independent
Church, just as this kingdom is a free and independent kingdom." The
Duke of Lennox alone took sixty-eight petitions with him to the Court;
while ministers, nobles, and gentry poured into Edinburgh to organize a
national resistance.
[Sidenote: The temper of England.]
The effect of these events in Scotland was at once seen in the open
demonstration of discontent south of the border. The prison with which
Laud had rewarded Prynne's dumpy quarto had tamed his spirit so little
that a new tract, written within its walls, denounced the bishops as
devouring wolves and lords of Lucifer. A fellow-prisoner, John
Bastwick, declared in his "Litany" that "Hell was broke loose, and the
devils in surplices, hoods, copes, and rochets were come amongst us."
Burton, a London clergyman silenced by the High Commission, called on
all Christians to resist the bishops as "robbers of souls, limbs of the
beast, and factors of Antichrist." Raving of this sort might well have
been passed by, had not the general sympathy with Prynne and his
fellow-pamphleteers, when Laud dragged them in 1637 before the Star
Chamber as "trumpets of sedition," shown how fast the tide of general
anger against the Government was rising. The three culprits listened
with defiance to their sentence of exposure in the pillory and
imprisonment for life; and the crowd who filled Palace Yard to witness
their punishment groaned at the cutting off of their ears, and "gave a
great shout" when Prynne urged that the sentence on him was contrary to
law. A hundred thousand Londoners lined the road as they passed on the
way to prison; and the journey of these "Martyrs," as the spectators
called them, was like a triumphal progress. Startled as he was at the
sudden burst of popular feeling, Laud remained dauntless as ever.
Prynne's entertainers, as he passed through the country, were summoned
before the Star Chamber, while the censorship struck fiercer blows at
the Puritan press. But the real danger lay not in the libels of silly
zealots, but in the attitude of Scotland, and in the effect which was
being produced in England at large by the trial of Hampden. Wentworth
was looking on from Ireland with cool insolence at the contest between a
subject and the Crown. "Mr. Hampden," he wrote, "is a great brother; and
the genius of that faction of people leads them always to oppose, both
civilly and ecclesiastically, all that ever authority ordains." But
England looked on with other eyes. "The eyes of all men," owns
Clarendon, "were fixed upon him as their _Pater Patriae_ and the pilot
who must steer the vessel through the tempests and storms that
threatened it." In November and December 1637 the cause of ship-money
was solemnly argued for twelve days before the full bench of judges. It
was proved that the tax in past times had been levied only in cases of
sudden emergency, and confined to the coast and port towns alone, and
that even the show of legality had been taken from it by formal statute,
and by the Petition of Right.
[Sidenote: The judgement on ship-money.]
The case was adjourned, but its discussion told not merely on England,
but on the temper of the Scots. Charles had replied to their petitions
by a simple order to all strangers to leave the capital. But the Council
at Edinburgh was unable to enforce his order; and the nobles and gentry
before dispersing to their homes petitioned against the bishops,
resolved not to own the jurisdiction of their courts, and named in
November 1637 a body of delegates, under the odd title of "the Tables."
These delegates carried on through the winter a series of negotiations
with the Crown. The negotiations were interrupted in the spring of 1638
by a renewed order for their dispersion, and for the acceptance of a
Prayer-Book; while the judges in England delivered in June their
long-delayed decision on Hampden's case. Two judges only pronounced in
his favour; though three followed them on technical grounds. The
majority, seven in number, laid down the broad principle that no statute
prohibiting arbitrary taxation could be pleaded against the king's will.
"I never read or heard," said Judge Berkeley, "that lex was rex, but it
is common and most true that rex is lex." Finch, the Chief-Justice,
summed up the opinions of his fellow-judges. "Acts of Parliament to take
away the king's royal power in the defence of his kingdom are void," he
said: "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."
[Sidenote: The Covenant.]
The case was ended; and Charles looked for the Puritans to give way. But
keener eyes discerned that a new spirit of resistance had been stirred
by the trial. The insolence of Wentworth was exchanged for a tone of
angry terror. "I wish Mr. Hampden and others to his likeness," the Lord
Deputy wrote bitterly from Ireland, "were well whipt into their right
senses." Amidst the exultation of the Court over the decision of the
judges, Wentworth saw clearly that Hampden's work had been done. Legal
and temperate as his course had been, he had roused England to a sense
of the danger to her freedom, and forced into light the real character
of the royal claims. How stern and bitter the temper even of the noblest
Puritans had become at last we see in the poem which Milton produced at
this time, his elegy of "Lycidas." Its grave and tender lament is broken
by a sudden flash of indignation at the dangers around the Church, at
the "blind mouths that scarce themselves know how to hold a sheephook,"
and to whom "the hungry sheep look up, and are not fed," while "the grim
wolf" of Rome "with privy paw daily devours apace, and nothing said!"
The stern resolve of the people to demand justice on their tyrants spoke
in his threat of the axe. Strafford and Laud, and Charles himself, had
yet to reckon with "that two-handed engine at the door" which stood
"ready to smite once, and smite no more." But stern as was the general
resolve, there was no need for immediate action, for the difficulties
which were gathering in the north were certain to bring a strain on the
Government which would force it to seek support from the people. The
king's demand for immediate submission, which reached Scotland while
England was waiting for the Hampden judgement, in the spring of 1638,
gathered the whole body of remonstrants together round "the Tables" at
Stirling; and a protestation, read at Edinburgh, was followed, on
Johnston of Warriston's suggestion, by a renewal of the Covenant with
God which had been drawn up and sworn to in a previous hour of peril,
when Mary was still plotting against Protestantism, and Spain was
preparing its Armada. "We promise and swear," ran the solemn engagement
at its close, "by the great name of the Lord our God, to continue in the
profession and obedience of the said religion, and that we shall defend
the same, and resist all their contrary errors and corruptions,
according to our vocation and the utmost of that power which God has put
into our hands all the days of our life."
[Sidenote: Charles and Scotland.]
The Covenant was signed in the churchyard of the Greyfriars at Edinburgh
on the first of March, in a tumult of enthusiasm, "with such content and
joy as those who, having long before been outlaws and rebels, are
admitted again into covenant with God." Gentlemen and nobles rode with
the document in their pockets over the country, gathering subscriptions
to it, while the ministers pressed for a general consent to it from the
pulpit. But pressure was needless. "Such was the zeal of subscribers
that for a while many subscribed with tears on their cheeks"; some were
indeed reputed to have "drawn their own blood and used it in place of
ink to underwrite their names." The force given to Scottish freedom by
this revival of religious fervour was seen in the new tone adopted by
the Covenanters. The Marquis of Hamilton, who came as Royal Commissioner
to put an end to the quarrel, was at once met by demands for an
abolition of the Court of High Commission, the withdrawal of the Books
of Canons and Common Prayer, a free Parliament, and a free General
Assembly. He threatened war; but the threat proved fruitless, and even
the Scotch Council pressed Charles to give fuller satisfaction to the
people. "I will rather die," the king wrote to Hamilton, "than yield to
these impertinent and damnable demands"; but it was needful to gain
time. "The discontents at home," wrote Lord Northumberland to Wentworth,
"do rather increase than lessen"; and Charles was without money or men.
It was in vain that he begged for a loan from Spain on promise of
declaring war against Holland, or that he tried to procure two thousand
troops from Flanders, with which to occupy Edinburgh. The loan and
troops were both refused, and some contributions offered by the English
Catholics did little to recruit the Exchequer.
[Sidenote: The Scotch Revolution.]
Charles had directed the Marquis to delay any decisive breach till the
royal fleet appeared in the Forth; but it was hard to equip a fleet at
all. Scotland in fact was sooner ready for war than the king. The Scotch
volunteers who had been serving in the Thirty Years War streamed home
at the call of their brethren; and General Leslie, a veteran trained
under Gustavus, came from Sweden to take the command of the new forces.
A voluntary war tax was levied in every shire. Charles was so utterly
taken by surprise that he saw no choice but to yield, if but for the
moment, to the Scottish demands. Hamilton announced that the king
allowed the Covenant, the service book was revoked; a pledge was given
that the power of the bishops should be lessened; a Parliament was
promised for the coming year; and a General Assembly summoned at once.
The Assembly met at Glasgow in November 1638; it had been chosen
according to the old form which James had annulled, and its 144
ministers were backed by 96 lay elders amongst whom all the leading
Covenanters found a place. They had hardly met when, at the news of
their design to attack the Bishops, Hamilton declared the Assembly
dissolved. But the Church claimed its old freedom of meeting apart from
any licence from kings; and by an almost unanimous vote the Assembly
resolved to continue its session. Its acts were an undoing of all that
the Stuarts had done. The two books of Canons and Common Prayer, the
High Commission, the Articles of Perth, were all set aside as invalid.
Episcopacy was abjured, the bishops were deposed from their office, and
the system of Presbyterianism re-established in its fullest extent.
[Sidenote: The Scotch War.]
Scotland was fighting England's battle as well as her own. The bold
assertion of a people's right to frame its own religion was a practical
carrying out of the claim which had been made by the English Parliament
of 1629. But Charles was as resolute to resist it now as then. He was
firm in his resolve of war, and the strong remonstrances of his Scotch
councillors against it were met by a fierce pressure from Wentworth and
Laud. Both felt that the question had ceased to be one for Scotland
only; they saw that a concession to the Scots must now be fatal to the
political and ecclesiastical system they had built up in Ireland and
England alike. In both countries those who opposed the Government were
looking to the rising in the North. They were suspicious of
correspondence between the Puritans in England and the Scotch leaders;
and whether these suspicions were true or no, of the sympathy with which
the proceedings at Edinburgh were watched south of the Border there
could be little doubt. It was with the conviction that the whole Stuart
system was at stake that the two ministers pressed for war. But angered
as he was, Charles was a Scotchman, and a Scotch king; and he shrank
from a march with English troops into his hereditary kingdom. He counted
rather on the sympathy of the northern clans and of Huntly, on the
impression produced by the appearance of Hamilton with a fleet in the
Forth, and by the suspension of trade with Holland, than on any actual
force of arms from the South. The 20,000 men he gathered at York were to
serve rather as a demonstration, and to protect the border, than as an
invading force. But again his plans broke down before the activity and
resolution of the Scots. The news that Charles was gathering an army at
York, and reckoning for support on the clans of the north, was answered
in the spring of 1639 by the seizure of Edinburgh, Dumbarton, and
Stirling; while 10,000 well-equipped troops under Leslie and the Earl of
Montrose entered Aberdeen, and brought the Earl of Huntly a prisoner to
the south. Instead of overawing the country, the appearance of the royal
fleet in the Forth was the signal for Leslie's march with 20,000 men to
the Border. Charles had hardly pushed across the Tweed, when the "old
little crooked soldier," encamping on the hill of Dunse Law, a few miles
from Berwick, fairly offered him battle.
[Sidenote: Scotland and France.]
The king's threats at once broke down. Charles had a somewhat stronger
force than Leslie, but his men had no will to fight; and he was forced
to evade a battle by consenting to the gathering of a free Assembly and
of a Scotch Parliament. But he had no purpose of being bound by terms
which had been wrested from him by rebel subjects. In his eyes the
pacification at Berwick was a mere suspension of arms; and the king's
summons of Wentworth from Ireland was a proof that violent measures
were in preparation. The Scotch leaders were far from deceiving
themselves as to the king's purpose; and in the struggle which they
foresaw they sought aid from a power which Scotch tradition had looked
on for centuries as the natural ally of their country. The jealousy
between France and England had long been smouldering, and only the
weakness of Charles and the caution of Richelieu had prevented its
bursting into open flame. In the weary negotiations which the English
king still carried on for the restoration of his nephew to the
Palatinate, he had till now been counting rather on the friendly
mediation of Spain with the Emperor than on any efforts of France or its
Protestant allies. At this moment however a strange piece of fortune
brought about a sudden change in his policy. A Spanish fleet, which had
been attacked by the Dutch in the Channel, took refuge under the guns of
Dover; and Spain appealed for its protection to the friendship of the
king. But Charles saw in the incident a chance of winning the Palatinate
without a blow. He at once opened negotiations with Richelieu. He
offered to suffer the Spanish vessels to be destroyed, if France would
pledge itself to restore his nephew. Richelieu on the other hand would
only consent to his restoration if Charles would take an active part in
the war. But the negotiations were suddenly cut short by the daring of
the Dutch. In spite of the king's threats they attacked the Spanish
fleet as it lay in English waters, and drove it broken to Ostend. Such
an act of defiance could only embitter the enmity which Charles already
felt towards France and its Dutch allies; and Richelieu grasped gladly
at the Scotch revolt as a means of hindering England from joining in the
war. His agents opened communications with the Scottish leaders; and
applications for its aid were forwarded by the Scots to the French
court.
[Sidenote: The Short Parliament.]
The discovery of this correspondence roused anew the hopes of the king.
He was resolved not to yield to rebels; and the proceedings in Scotland
since the pacification of Berwick seemed to him mere rebellion. A fresh
General Assembly adopted as valid the acts of its predecessor. The
Parliament only met to demand that the council should be responsible to
it for its course of government. The king prorogued both that he might
use the weapon which fortune had thrown into his hand. He never doubted
that if he appealed to the country English loyalty would rise to support
him against Scottish treason. He yielded at last to the counsels of
Wentworth. Wentworth was still for war. He had never ceased to urge that
the Scots should be whipped back to their border; and the king now
avowed his concurrence in this policy by raising him to the earldom of
Strafford, and from the post of Lord Deputy to that of Lord Lieutenant.
Strafford agreed with Charles that a Parliament should be summoned, the
correspondence laid before it, and advantage taken of the burst of
indignation on which the king counted to procure a heavy subsidy. But he
had foreseen that it might refuse all aid; and in such a case the Earl
and the Council held that the King would have a right to fall back on
"extraordinary means." Strafford himself hurried to Ireland to read a
practical lesson to the English Parliament. In fourteen days he had
procured four subsidies from the Irish Commons, and set on foot a force
of 8000 men to take part in the attack on the Scots. He came back,
flushed with his success, in time for the meeting of the Houses at
Westminster in the middle of April 1640. But the lesson failed in its
effect. Statesmen like Hampden and Pym were not fools enough to aid the
great enemy of English freedom against men who had risen for freedom
across the Tweed. Every member of the Commons knew that Scotland was
fighting the battle of English liberty. All hope of bringing them to any
attack upon the Scots proved fruitless. The intercepted letters were
quietly set aside; and the Commons declared as of old that redress of
grievances must precede any grant of supplies. No subsidy could be
granted till security was had for religion, for property, and for the
liberties of Parliament. An offer to relinquish ship-money proved
fruitless; and after three weeks sitting the "Short Parliament" was
dissolved. "Things must go worse before they go better" was the cool
comment of St. John. But the country was strangely moved. After eleven
years of personal rule, its hopes had risen again with the summons of
the Houses to Westminster; and their rough dismissal after a three weeks
sitting brought all patience to an end. "So great a defection in the
kingdom," wrote Lord Northumberland, "hath not been known in the memory
of man."
[Sidenote: The Bishops' War.]
Strafford alone stood undaunted. He had provided for the resolve of the
Parliament by the decision of the Council that in such a case the king
might resort to "extraordinary means"; and he now urged that by the act
of the Commons Charles was "freed from all rule of government," and
entitled to supply himself at his will. The Irish army, he said, was at
the king's command, and Scotland could be subdued in a single summer. He
was bent, in fact, on war; and he took command of the royal army, which
again advanced to the north. But the Scots were as ready for war as
Strafford. As early as March they had reassembled their army; and their
Parliament commissioned the Committee of Estates, of which Argyle was
the most influential member, to carry on the government. Encouraged by
the refusal of the English Houses to grant supplies, they now published
a new manifesto and resolved to meet the march of Strafford's army by an
advance into England. On the twentieth of August the Scotch army crossed
the Border; Montrose being the first to set foot on English soil.
Forcing the passage of the Tyne in the face of an English detachment,
they occupied Newcastle, and despatched from that town their proposals
of peace. They prayed the king to consider their grievances, and "with
the advice and consent of the Estates of England convened in Parliament,
to settle a firm and desirable peace." The prayer was backed by
preparations for a march upon York, where Charles had abandoned himself
to despair. The warlike bluster of Strafford had broken utterly down the
moment he attempted to take the field. His troops were a mere mob; and
neither by threats nor prayers could the earl recall them to their duty.
He was forced to own that two months were needed before they could be
fit for action. Charles was driven again to open negotiations with the
Scots, and to buy a respite in their advance by a promise of pay for
their army and by leaving Northumberland and Durham in their hands as
pledges for the fulfilment of his engagements. But the truce only met
half his difficulties. Behind him England was all but in revolt. The
Treasury was empty, and London and the East India merchants alike
refused a loan. The London apprentices mobbed Laud at Lambeth, and
broke up the sittings of the High Commission at St. Paul's. The war was
denounced everywhere as "the Bishops' War," and the new levies murdered
officers whom they suspected of Papistry, broke down altar-rails in
every church they passed, and deserted to their homes. To all but
Strafford it was plain that the system of Charles had broken hopelessly
down. Two peers, Lord Wharton and Lord Howard, ventured to lay before
the king himself a petition for peace with the Scots; and though
Strafford arrested and proposed to shoot them as mutineers, the English
Council shrank from desperate courses. But if desperate courses were not
taken, there was nothing for it but to give way. Penniless, without an
army, with a people all but in revolt, the obstinate temper of the king
still strove to escape from the humiliation of calling a Parliament. He
summoned a Great Council of the Peers at York. But his project broke
down before its general repudiation by the nobles; and with wrath and
shame at his heart Charles was driven to summon again the Houses to
Westminster.