King James died in March 1625, in the fifty-ninth year of his age, and
was succeeded by his son CHARLES, now twenty five years of age. One of
the first acts of the young king was to marry the Princess Henrietta
Maria, daughter of Henry IV of France, and a Catholic. This was an
unfortunate step for the House of Stuart, for the two eldest sons of
the king and queen, though educated as Protestants, were influenced in
some measure by the religious creed of their mother, so that they
ultimately became Catholics; and this, in the case of the second son,
James II, led to the family being expelled from the British throne.
After breaking off the proposed match with the Princess Mary of Spain,
Britain eagerly threw itself into a war with that country, which was
still continued. To supply the expenses of that contest, and of a
still more unnecessary one into which he was driven with France, the
king applied to Parliament, but was met there with so many complaints
as to his government, and such a keen spirit of popular liberty, that
he deemed it necessary to revive a practice followed by other
sovereigns, and particularly Elizabeth, of compelling his subjects to
grant him gifts, or, as they were called, _benevolences_, and also to
furnish ships at their own charge, for carrying on the war. Such
expedients, barely tolerated under the happy reign of Elizabeth, could
not be endured in this age, when the people and the Parliament were so
much more alive to their rights. A general discontent spread over the
nation. The Commons, seeing that if the king could support the state
by self-raised taxes, he would soon become independent of all control
from his Parliaments, resolved to take every measure in their power to
check his proceedings. They also assailed him respecting a right which
he assumed to imprison his subjects upon his own warrant, and to
detain them as long as he pleased. Having made an inquiry into the
ancient powers of the crown, before these powers had been vitiated by
the tyrannical Tudors, they embodied the result in what was called a
PETITION OF RIGHT, which they presented to him as an ordinary bill, or
rather as a second Magna Charta, for replacing the privileges of the
people, and particularly their exemption from arbitrary taxes and
imprisonment, upon a fixed basis. With great difficulty Charles was
prevailed upon to give his sanction to this bill (1628); but his
disputes with Parliament soon after ran to such a height, that he
dissolved it in a fit of indignation, resolving never more to call it
together. About the same time his favorite minister, the Duke of
Buckingham, was assassinated at Portsmouth, and Charles resolved
thenceforward to be in a great measure his own minister, and to trust
chiefly for the support of his government to the English hierarchy, to
whose faith he was a devoted adherent, and who were, in turn, the most
loyal of his subjects. His chief counselor was Laud, Archbishop of
Canterbury, a man of narrow and bigoted spirit, and who made it his
duty rather to increase than to diminish the ceremonies of the English
church, although the tendency of the age was decidedly favorable to
their diminution. For some years Charles governed the country entirely
as an irresponsible despot, levying taxes by his own orders, and
imprisoning such persons as were obnoxious to him, in utter defiance
of the Petition of Right. The Puritans, or church reformers, suffered
most severely under this system of things. They were dragged in great
numbers before an arbitrary court called the Star-Chamber, which
professed to take cognizance of offenses against the king’s
prerogative, and against religion; and sometimes men venerable for
piety, learning, and worth, were scourged through the streets of
London, and had their ears cut off, and their noses slit, for merely
differing in opinion, on the most speculative of all subjects, with
the king and his clergy. The great body of the people beheld these
proceedings with horror, and only a fitting occasion was wanted for
giving expression and effect to the public feeling.