ELIZABETH'S YEARS OF TRIUMPH. 1587-1603
LEADING DATES
Reign of Elizabeth, 1558-1603
Drake singes the King of Spain's beard 1587
The defeat of the Armada 1588
The rising of O'Neill 1594
The taking of Cadiz 1596
Essex arrives in Ireland 1599
Mountjoy arrives in Ireland 1600
The Monopolies withdrawn 1601
Conquest of Ireland, and death of Elizabeth 1603
1. =The Singeing of the King of Spain's Beard. 1587.=--After Mary's
execution Philip claimed the crown of England for himself or his
daughter the Infanta Isabella, on the plea that he was descended
from a daughter of John of Gaunt, and prepared a great fleet in the
Spanish and Portuguese harbours for the invasion of England. In
attempting to overthrow Elizabeth he was eager not merely to
suppress English Protestantism, but to put an end to English
smuggling and piracy in Spanish America, and to stop the assistance
given by Englishmen to the Netherlanders who had rebelled against
him. Before his fleet was ready to sail Drake appeared off his
coast, running into his ports, burning his store-ships, and thus
making an invasion impossible for that year (=1587=). Drake, as he
said on his return, had singed the king of Spain's beard.
2. =The Approach of the Armada. 1588.=--The Invincible Armada,[18]
as some foolish Spaniards called Philip's great fleet, set out at
last in =1588=. It was to sail up the Channel to Flanders, and to
transport Parma and his army to England. Parma's soldiers were the
best disciplined veterans in Europe, while Elizabeth's were raw
militia, who had never seen a shot fired in actual war. If,
therefore, Parma succeeded in landing, it would probably go hard
with England. It was, therefore, in England's interest to fight the
Armada at sea rather than on land.
[Footnote 18: 'Armada' was the Spanish name for any armed fleet.]
[Illustration: Sir Martin Frobisher, died 1594: from a picture
belonging to the Earl of Carlisle.]
3. =The Equipment of the Armada. 1588.=--Even at sea the odds were
in appearance against the English. The Spanish ships were not indeed
so much larger than the largest English vessels as has often been
said, but they were somewhat larger, and they were built so as to
rise much higher out of the water, and to carry a greater number of
men. In fact, the superiority was all on the English side. In great
military or naval struggles the superiority of the victor is usually
a superiority of intelligence, which shows itself in the preparation
of weapons as much as in conduct in action. The Spanish ships were
prepared for a mode of warfare which had hitherto been customary. In
such ships the soldiers were more numerous than the sailors, and the
decks were raised high above the water, in order that the soldiers
might command with their muskets the decks of smaller vessels at
close quarters. The Spaniards, trusting to this method of fighting,
had not troubled themselves to improve their marine artillery. The
cannon of their largest ships were few, and the shot which they were
capable of firing was light. Philip's system of requiring absolute
submission in Church and State had resulted in an uninventive frame
of mind in those who carried out his orders. He had himself shown
how little he cared for ability in his selection of an admiral for
his fleet. That post having become vacant by the death of the best
seaman in Spain, Philip ordered the Duke of Medina Sidonia to take
his place. The Duke answered--with perfect truth--that he knew
nothing about the sea and nothing about war; but Philip, in spite of
his candour, bade him go, and go he did.
4. =The Equipment of the English Fleet. 1588.=--Very different was
the equipment of the English fleet. Composed partly of the queen's
ships, but mainly of volunteers from every port, it was commanded by
Lord Howard of Effingham, a Catholic by conviction. The very
presence of such a man was a token of a patriotic fervour of which
Philip and the Jesuits had taken no account, but which made the
great majority of Catholics draw their swords for their queen and
country. With him were old sailors like Frobisher, who had made his
way through the ice of Arctic seas, or like Drake, who had beaten
Spaniards till they knew their own superiority. That superiority was
based not merely on greater skill as sailors, but on the possession
of better ships. English shipbuilders had adopted an improved style
of naval architecture, having constructed vessels which would sail
faster and be more easily handled than those of the older fashion,
and--what was of still greater importance--had built them so as to
carry more and heavier cannon. Hence, the English fleet, on board of
which the number of sailors exceeded that of the soldiers, was in
reality--if only it could avoid fighting at close quarters--far
superior to that of the enemy.
[Illustration: The Spanish Armada. Fight between the English and
Spanish fleets off the Isle of Wight, July 25, 1588: from tapestry
formerly in the House of Lords.]
5. =The Defeat of the Armada. 1588.=--When the Armada was sighted at
the mouth of the Channel, the English commander was playing bowls
with his captains on Plymouth Hoe. Drake refused to break off his
amusement, saying that there was time to finish the game and to beat
the Spaniards too. The wind was blowing strongly from the
south-west, and he recommended Lord Howard to let the Spaniards
pass, that the English fleet might follow them up with the wind
behind it. When once they had gone by they were at the mercy of
their English pursuers, who kept out of their way whenever the
Spaniards turned in pursuit. The superiority of the English gunnery
soon told, and, after losing ships in the voyage up the Channel, the
Armada put into Calais. The English captains sent in fire-ships and
drove the Spaniards out. Then came a fight off Gravelines--if fight
it could be called--in which the helpless mass of the Armada was
riddled with English shot. The wind rose into a storm, and pursuers
and pursued were driven on past the coast of Flanders, where Parma's
soldiers were blockaded by a Dutch fleet. Parma had hoped that the
Armada when it came would set him free, and convoy him across to
England. As he saw the tall ships of Spain hurrying past before the
enemy and the storm, he learnt that the enterprise on which he had
set his heart could never be carried out.
6. =The Destruction of the Armada. 1588.=--The Spanish fleet was
driven northwards without hope of return, and narrowly escaped wreck
on the flats of Holland. "There was never anything pleased me
better," wrote Drake, as he followed hard, "than seeing the enemy
flying with a southerly wind to the northwards.... With the grace of
God, if we live, I doubt not, ere it be long, so to handle the
matter with the Duke of Sidonia as he shall wish himself at St. Mary
Port[19] amongst his orange trees." Before long even Drake had had
enough. Elizabeth, having with her usual economy kept the ships
short of powder, they were forced to come back. The Spaniards had
been too roughly handled to return home by the way they came. Round
the north of Scotland and the west of Ireland they went, strewing
the coast with wrecks. About 120 of their ships had entered the
Channel, but only 54 returned. "I sent you," said Philip to his
admiral, "to fight against men, and not with the winds." Elizabeth,
too, credited the storms with her success. She struck a medal with
the inscription, "God blew with his wind and they were scattered."
The winds had done their part, but the victory was mainly due to the
seamanship of English mariners and the skill of English shipwrights.
[Footnote 19: A place near Cadiz where the Duke's residence was.]
[Illustration: Sir Walter Raleigh (1552-1618) and his eldest son
Walter, at the age of eight: from a picture, dated 1602, belonging
to Sir J. F. Lennard, Bart.]
7. =Philip II. and France. 1588-1593.=--Philip's hopes of
controlling France were before long baffled as completely as his
hopes of controlling England. In =1588= Guise, the partisan of
Spain, was murdered at Blois by the order of the king in his very
presence. In =1589= Henry III. was murdered in revenge by a fanatic,
and the Huguenot king of Navarre claimed the crown as Henry IV. The
League declared that no Huguenot should reign in France. A struggle
ensued, and twice when Henry seemed to be gaining the upper hand
Philip sent Parma to aid the League. The feeling of the French
people was against a Huguenot king, but it was also against Spanish
interference. When in =1593= Henry IV. declared himself a Catholic,
Paris cheerfully submitted to him, and its example was speedily
followed by the rest of France. Elizabeth saw in Henry IV. a king
whose position as a national sovereign resisting Spanish
interference much resembled her own, and in =1589= and again in
=1591= she sent him men and money. A close alliance against Spain
sprang up between France and England.
8. =Maritime Enterprises. 1589-1596.=--It was chiefly at sea,
however, that Englishmen revenged themselves for the attack of the
Armada. In =1592= Drake and Sir John Norris sacked Corunna but
failed to take Lisbon. Other less notable sailors plundered and
destroyed in the West Indies. In =1595= Drake died at sea. In the
same year Sir Walter Raleigh, who was alike distinguished as a
courtier, a soldier, and a sailor, sailed up the Orinoco in search
of wealth. In =1596= Raleigh, together with Lord Howard of Effingham
and the young Earl of Essex, who was in high favour with the Queen,
took and sacked Cadiz. Essex was generous and impetuous, but
intensely vain, and the victory was followed by a squabble between
the commanders as to their respective merits.
9. =Increasing Prosperity.=--It was not so much the victories as the
energy which made the victories possible that diffused wealth and
prosperity over England. Trade grew together with piracy and war.
Manufactures increased, and the manufacturers growing in numbers
needed to be fed. Landed proprietors, in consequence, found it
profitable to grow corn instead of turning their arable lands into
pasture, as they had done at the beginning of the century. The
complaints about inclosures (see pp. 368, 415) died away. The
results of wealth appeared in the show and splendour of the court,
where men decked themselves in gorgeous attire, but still more in
the gradual rise of the general standard of comfort.
10. =Buildings.=--Even in Mary's days the good food of Englishmen
had been the wonder of foreigners. "These English," said a Spaniard,
"have their houses of sticks and dirt, but they fare commonly as
well as the king." In Elizabeth's time the houses were improved.
Many windows, which had, except in the houses of the great, been
guarded with horn or lattice, were now glazed, and even in the
mansions of the nobility large windows stood in striking contrast
with the narrow openings of the buildings of the middle ages. Glass
was welcome, because men no longer lived--as they had lived in the
days when internal wars were frequent--in fortified castles, where,
for the sake of defence, the openings were narrow and infrequent.
Elizabethan manor-houses, as they are now termed, sometimes built in
the shape of the letter E, in honour, as is sometimes supposed, of
the Queen's name, rose all over the country to take the place of the
old castles. They had chimneys to carry off the smoke, which, in
former days, had, in all but the largest houses, been allowed to
escape through a hole in the roof. See pp. 466, 467, 469-471.
[Illustration: A mounted soldier at the end of the sixteenth
century: from a broadside printed in 1596.]
[Illustration: Wollaton Hall, Nottinghamshire; built by Thorpe for
Sir Francis Willoughby about 1580-1588.]
[Illustration: Hardwick Hall, Derbyshire; built by Elizabeth,
Countess of Shrewsbury, about 1597.]
11. =Furniture.=--The furniture within the houses underwent a change
as great as the houses themselves. When Elizabeth came to the throne
people of the middle class were content to lie on a straw pallet,
with a log of wood, or at the best a bag of chaff, under their
heads. It was a common saying that pillows were fit only for sick
women. Before many years had passed comfortable bedding had been
introduced. Pewter platters and tin spoons replaced wooden ones.
Along with these improvements was noticed a universal chase after
wealth, and farmers complained that landlords not only exacted
higher rents, but themselves engaged in the sale of the produce of
their lands.
12. =Growing Strength of the House of Commons.=--This increase of
general prosperity could not but strengthen the House of Commons. It
was mainly composed of country gentlemen, and it had been the policy
of the Tudors to rely upon that class as a counterpoise to the old
nobility. Many of the country gentlemen were employed as Justices of
the Peace, and Elizabeth had gladly increased their powers. When,
therefore, they came to fulfil their duties as members of
Parliament, they were not mere talkers unacquainted with business,
but practical men, who had been used to deal with their own local
affairs before being called on to discuss the affairs of the
country. Various causes made their opinions more important as the
reign went on. In the first place, the national uprising against
Spain drew with it a rapid increase of Protestantism in the younger
generation, and, for this reason, the House of Commons, which, at
the beginning of the reign, represented only a Protestant minority
in the nation itself (see p. 428), at the end of the reign
represented a Protestant majority, and gained strength in
consequence. In the second place, Puritanism tended to develop
independence of character, whilst the queen was not only unable to
overawe the Puritan members of the House, but, unlike her father,
had no means of keeping the more worldly-minded in submission by the
distribution of abbey lands.
[Illustration: E-shaped house, Beaudesert, Staffordshire; built by
Thomas, Lord Paget, about 1601.]
13. =Archbishop Whitgift and the Court of High Commission.
1583.=--The Jesuit attack in =1580= and =1581= strengthened the
queen's resolution to put an end to the divisions which weakened the
English Church, as she was still afraid lest Puritanism, if
unchecked, might give offence to her more moderately-minded subjects
and drive them into the arms of the Papacy. In =1583=, on Grindal's
death, she appointed to the Archbishopric of Canterbury Whitgift,
who had taken a leading part in opposing Cartwright (see p. 446).
Whitgift held that as questions about vestments and ceremonies were
unimportant, the queen's pleasure in such matters ought to be the
rule of the Church. He was, however, a strict disciplinarian, and he
was as anxious as the queen to force into conformity those clergy
who broke the unity of the Church for the sake of what he regarded
as mere crotchets of their own, especially as some of them were
violent assailants of the established order. In virtue of a clause
in the Act of Supremacy, passed in =1559=, the queen had in that
year erected a Court of High Commission. Though many laymen were
members of this court, they seldom attended its sittings, and it was
practically managed by bishops and ecclesiastical lawyers. Its
business was to enforce conformity on the clergy, and now under
Whitgift it acted most energetically, sitting permanently, and
driving from their livings and committing to prison clergymen who
refused to conform.
14. =The House of Commons and Puritanism. 1584.=--The severity of
the High Commission roused some of the Puritan clergy to attempt--in
private meetings--to bring into existence something of the system of
Presbyterianism, but the attempt was soon abandoned. Few amongst the
Protestant laity had any liking for Presbyterianism, which they
regarded as oppressive and intolerant, and it had no deep roots even
amongst the Puritan clergy. If many members of the House of Commons
were attracted to Puritanism, as opposed to Presbyterianism, it was
partly because at the time of a national struggle against Rome, they
preferred those amongst the clergy whose views were most
antagonistic to those of Rome; but still more because they admired
the Puritans as defenders of morality. Not only were the Church
courts oppressive and meddlesome, but plain men were disgusted at a
system in which ignorant and lazy ministers who conformed to the
Prayer Book were left untouched, whilst able and energetic preachers
who refused to adopt its ceremonies were silenced.
[Illustration: Ingestre Hall, Staffordshire; built about 1601.]
15. =The Separatists.=--The desire for a higher standard of
morality, which made so many support the Puritan demand for a
further reformation of the Church, drove others to denounce the
Church as apostate. Robert Browne, a clergyman, was the first to
declare in favour of a system which was neither Episcopal nor
Presbyterian. He held it to be the duty of all true Christians to
separate themselves from the Church, and to form congregations
apart, to which only those whose religion and morality were beyond
question should be admitted. These separatists, as they called
themselves, were known as Brownists in common speech. Unfortunately
their zeal made them uncharitably contemptuous of those who were
less zealous than themselves, and it was from amongst them that
there came forth--beginning in =1588=--a series of virulent and
libellous attacks on the bishops, known as the Marprelate Tracts,
printed anonymously at a secret press. Browne and his followers
advocated complete religious liberty--denying the right of the
State to interfere with the conscience. The doctrine was too
advanced for general acceptance, and the violence of the Marprelate
Tracts gave offence even to the Puritans. Englishmen might differ as
to what sort of church the national church should be, but almost all
were as yet agreed that there ought to be one national church and
not a number of disconnected sects. In =1593= an act of Parliament
was passed imposing punishment on those who attended conventicles or
private religious assemblies, and in the course of the year three of
the leading separatists--Barrow, Greenwood, and Penry--were hanged,
on charges of sedition.
16. =Whitgift and Hooker.=--The Church of England would certainly
not have sustained itself against the Puritans unless it had found a
champion of a higher order than Whitgift. Whitgift maintained its
organisation, but he did no more. Cranmer, at the beginning of the
Reformation, had declared the Bible as interpreted by the writers of
the first six centuries to be the test of doctrine, but this
assertion had been met during the greater part of Elizabeth's reign,
on the one hand by the Catholics, who asserted that the Church of
the first six centuries differed much from the Church of England of
their day, and on the other hand by the Puritans, who asserted that
the testimony of the first six centuries was irrelevant, and that
the Bible alone was to be consulted. Whitgift had called both
parties to obedience, on the ground that they ought to submit to the
queen in indifferent matters. Hooker in the opening of his
_Ecclesiastical Polity_ called the Puritans to peace. "This unhappy
controversy," he declared, "about the received ceremonies and
discipline of the Church of England, which hath so long time
withdrawn so many of her ministers from their principal work and
employed their studies in contentious oppositions, hath, by the
unnatural growth and dangerous fruits thereof, made known to the
world that it never received blessing from the Father of peace."
Hooker's teaching was distinguished by the importance which he
assigned to 'law,' as against the blind acceptance of Papal
decisions on the one side and against the Puritan reverence for the
letter of the scriptures on the other. The Puritans were wrong, as
he taught, not because they disobeyed the queen, but because they
did not recognise that God revealed Himself in the natural laws of
the world as well as in the letter of Scripture. "Of law," he wrote,
"there can be no less acknowledged than that her seat is the bosom
of God, her voice the harmony of the world: all things in heaven and
earth do her homage--the very least as feeling her care, and the
greatest as not exempted from her power: both angels and men and
creatures of what condition soever--though each in different sort
and manner, yet all with universal consent--admiring her as the
mother of their peace and joy." It was therefore unnecessary,
according to Hooker's teaching, to defend certain usages on the
ground of their sanction by tradition or by Papal authority, as it
was unreasonable to attack them on the ground that they were not
mentioned in Scripture. It was sufficient that they were fitting
expressions of the feelings of reverence which had been implanted by
God in human nature itself.
[Illustration: Coaches in the reign of Elizabeth: from
_Archæologia_.]
17. =Spenser, Shakspere, and Bacon.=--With the stately periods of
Hooker English prose entered on a new stage. For the first time it
sought to charm and to invigorate, as well as to inform the world.
In Spenser and Shakspere are to be discerned the same influences as
those which made Hooker great. They, too, are filled with reverence
for the reign of law. Spenser, in his _Faerie Queen_, set forth the
greatness of man in following the laws which rule the moral
world--the laws of purity and temperance and justice; whilst
Shakspere, in the plays which he now began to pour forth, taught
them to recognise the penalties which follow hard on him who
disregards not only the moral but also the physical laws of the
world in which he lives, and to appraise the worth of man by what he
is and not by the dogmas which he accepts. That nothing might be
wanting to point out the ways in which future generations were to
walk, young Francis Bacon began to dream of a larger science than
had hitherto been possible--a science based on a reverent inquiry
into the laws of nature.
[Illustration: William Shakspere: from the bust on his tomb at
Stratford-on-Avon.]
18. =Condition of the Catholics. 1588-1603.=--Bacon cared for many
matters, and one of his earliest recommendations to Elizabeth had
been to make a distinction between the Catholics who would take an
oath to defend her against all enemies and those who would not. The
patriotism with which many Catholics had taken her side when the
Armada appeared ought to have procured the acceptance of this
proposal. It is seldom, however, that either men or nations change
their ways till long after the time when they ought to change them.
Spain and the Pope still threatened, and all Catholics were still
treated as allies of Spain and the Pope, and the laws against them
were made even more severe during the remainder of the reign.
19. =Irish Difficulties. 1583-1594.=--The dread of a renewal of a
Spanish invasion was productive of even greater mischief in Ireland
than in England. After the suppression of the Desmond insurrection,
an attempt was made to colonise the desolate lands of Munster (see
p. 453) with English. The attempt failed, chiefly because--though
courtiers willingly accepted large grants of lands--English farmers
refused to go to Ireland in sufficient numbers to till the soil. On
the other hand, Irishmen enough reappeared to claim their old lands,
to rob, and sometimes murder, the few settlers who came from
England. The settlers retaliated by acts of violence. All over
Ireland the soldiers, left without pay, spoiled and maltreated the
unfortunate inhabitants. The Irish, exasperated by their cruelty,
longed for someone to take up their cause, and in =1594= a rising in
Ulster was headed by Hugh O'Neill, known in England as the Earl of
Tyrone. How bitter the Irish feeling was against England is shown by
the fact that the other Ulster chiefs, who usually quarrelled with
one another, now placed themselves under O'Neill.
20. =O'Neill and the Earl of Essex. 1595-1600.=--In =1595= O'Neill
applied to the king of Spain for help; but Spain was weaker now than
in former years, and though Philip promised help, he died in =1598=
without fulfilling his engagement, being succeeded by his son,
Philip III. In the same year O'Neill utterly defeated an English
army under Bagenal on the Blackwater. All Celtic Ireland rose in his
support, and in =1599= Elizabeth sent her favourite, Essex, to
conquer Ireland in good earnest, lest it should fall into the hands
of the king of Spain. Essex, through mismanagement, failed entirely,
and after a great part of his army had melted away he came back to
England without leave. On his arrival, knowing Elizabeth's fondness
for him, he hoped to surprise her into forgiveness of his
disobedience, and rushed into Elizabeth's presence in his muddy and
travel-stained clothes.
[Illustration: Robert Devereux, second Earl of Essex, K.G.;
1567-1601: from a painting by Van Somer, dated 1599, belonging to
the Earl of Essex.]
[Illustration: Queen Elizabeth, 1558-1603: from a painting belonging
to the University of Cambridge.]
21. =Essex's Imprisonment and Execution. 1599-1601.=--The queen, who
was not accustomed to allow even her favourites to run away from
their posts without permission, ordered him into confinement. In
=1600=, indeed, she restored him to liberty, but forbade him to come
to court. Essex could not brook the disgrace, especially as the
queen made him suffer in his pocket for his misconduct. As she had
little money to give away, Elizabeth was in the habit of rewarding
her courtiers by grants of monopoly--that is to say, of the sole
right of selling certain articles, thus enabling them to make a
profit by asking a higher price than they could have got if they had
been subjected to competition. To Essex she had given a monopoly of
sweet wines for a term of years, and now that the term was at an end
she refused to renew the grant. Early in =1601= Essex--professing
not to want to injure the queen, but merely to force her to change
her ministers--rode at the head of a few followers into the City,
calling on the citizens to rise in his favour. He was promptly
arrested, and in the course of the enquiries made into his conduct
it was discovered that when he was in Ireland he had entered into
treasonable negotiations with James VI. At his trial, Bacon, who had
been most kindly treated by Essex, shocked at the disclosure of
these traitorous proceedings, turned against him, and, as a lawyer,
argued strongly that he had been guilty. The Earl was convicted and
executed.
22. =Mountjoy's Conquest of Ireland. 1600-1603.=--In =1600=, after
Essex had deserted Ireland, Lord Mountjoy was sent to take his
place. He completed the conquest systematically, building forts as
places of retreat for his soldiers whenever they were attacked by
overwhelming numbers, and from which he could send out flying
columns to devastate the country after the enemy had retreated. In
=1601= a Spanish fleet and a small Spanish army at last arrived to
the help of the Irish, and seized Kinsale. The English forces hemmed
them in, defeated the Irish army which came to their support, and
compelled the Spaniards to withdraw. The horrid work of conquering
Ireland by starvation was carried to the end. "No spectacle," wrote
Mountjoy's English secretary, "was more frequent in the ditches of
the towns, and especially in wasted countries, than to see
multitudes of these poor people dead, with their mouths all coloured
green by eating nettles, docks, and all things they could rend up
above ground." In one place a band of women enticed little children
to come among them, and murdered them for food. At last, in =1603=,
O'Neill submitted. Ireland had been conquered by England as it had
never been conquered before.
23. =Parliament and the Monopolies. 1601.=--The conquest of Ireland
was expensive and in =1601= Elizabeth summoned Parliament to ask for
supplies. The House of Commons voted the money cheerfully, but
raised an outcry against the monopolies. Elizabeth knew when to give
way, and she announced her intention of cancelling all monopolies
which could be shown to be burdensome. "I have more cause to thank
you all than you me," she said to the Commons when they waited on
her to express their gratitude; "for had I not received a knowledge
from you, I might have fallen into the lap of an error, only for
lack of true information. I have ever used to set the last
judgment-day before mine eyes, and so to rule as I shall be judged
to answer before a higher Judge--to whose judgment-seat I do appeal,
that never thought was cherished in my heart that tended not to my
people's good. Though you have had, and may have, many princes, more
mighty and wise, sitting in this seat, yet you never had, or ever
shall have, any that will be more careful and loving."
[Illustration: William Cecil, Lord Burghley, K.G., 1520-1598: from a
painting in the Bodleian Library, Oxford.]
24. =The Last Days of Elizabeth. 1601-1603.=--These were the last
words spoken by Elizabeth to her people. She had many faults, but
she cared for England, and, more than any one else, she had made
England united and prosperous. She had found it distracted, but by
her moderation she had staved off civil war, till the country had
rallied round the throne. No doubt those who worked most hard
towards this great end were men like Burghley and Walsingham in the
State, and men like Drake and Raleigh at sea; but it was Elizabeth
who, being what she was, had given to each his opportunity. If
either Edward VI. or Mary had been in her place, such men would have
found no sphere in which their work could have been done, and,
instead of telling of 'the spacious times of great Elizabeth,' the
historian would have had to narrate the progress of civil strife and
of the mutual conflict of ever-narrowing creeds. The last days of
the great queen were gloomy, as far as she was personally concerned.
Burghley, the wisest of her ministers, died in =1598=. In his last
days he had urged the queen to bring to an end the war with Spain,
which no longer served any useful purpose; and when Essex pleaded
for its continuance, the aged statesman opened the Bible at the
text, "Bloody and deceitful men shall not live out half their days."
In =1603= Elizabeth herself died at the age of sixty-nine. According
to law, the heir to the crown was William Seymour, who, being the
son of the Earl of Hertford and Lady Catherine Grey, inherited the
claims of the Suffolk line (see pp. 411, 435). There were, however,
doubts about his legitimacy, as, though his parents had been married
in due form, the ceremony had taken place in private, and it was
believed by many that it had never taken place at all. Elizabeth had
always refused to allow her heir to be designated; but as death
approached she indicated her preference for James, as having claim
to the inheritance by descent from her own eldest aunt, Margaret
(see p. 411). "My seat," she said, "hath been the seat of kings, and
I will have no rascal to succeed me." "And who," she added, "should
that be but our cousin of Scotland?"
_Books recommended for further study of Part V._
BREWER, J. S. The Reign of Henry VIII. from his Accession to the
Death of Wolsey.
DIXON, CANON R. W. History of the Church of England from the
Abolition of the Roman Jurisdiction.
FROUDE, J. A. History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the
Death of Elizabeth. Vols, v.-xii.
MOTLEY, J. L. The Rise of the Dutch Republic.
------- The History of the United Netherlands.
MULLINGER, J. B. History of the University of Cambridge. Vol. ii.
STRYPE, J. Annals of the Reformation.
------- Life and Acts of Aylmer.
------- " " Grindal.
------- " " Whitgift.
NICOLAS, SIR W. H. Life of Sir C. Hatton.
------- " W. Davison.
SPEDDING, J. Letters and Life of Francis Bacon. Vol. i.-iii. p. 58.
EDWARDS, E. The Life of Sir W. Raleigh.
FISHER, H. A. L. The Political History of England. Vol. v. From the
Accession of Henry VII. to the Death of Henry VIII. (1485-1547).
POLLARD, A. F. The Political History of England. Vol. vi. From the
Accession of Edward VI. to the Death of Elizabeth (1547-1603).
PART VI
THE PURITAN REVOLUTION. 1603-1660
CHAPTER XXXI
JAMES I. 1603-1625
LEADING DATES
Accession of James I. 1603
The Hampton Court Conference 1604
Gunpowder Plot 1605
Foundation of Virginia 1607
The Great Contract 1610
Beginning of the Thirty Years' War 1618
Foundation of New England 1620
Condemnation of the Monopolies and fall of Bacon 1621
Prince Charles's visit to Madrid 1623
Breach with Spain 1624
Death of James I. 1625
1. =The Peace with Spain. 1603-1604.=--At the end of Elizabeth's
reign there had been much talk of various claimants to the throne,
but when she died no one thought seriously of any one but James. The
new king at once put an end to the war with Spain, though no actual
treaty of peace was signed till =1604=. James gave his confidence to
Sir Robert Cecil, Lord Burghley's second son, whom he continued in
the office of Secretary of State, which had been conferred on him by
Elizabeth. The leader of the war-party was Raleigh, who was first
dismissed from his offices and afterwards accused of treason, on the
charge of having invited the Spaniards to invade England. It is most
unlikely that the charge was true, but as Raleigh was angry at his
dismissal, he may have spoken rashly. He was condemned to death, but
James commuted the sentence to imprisonment.
2. =The Hampton Court Conference. 1604.=--The most important
question which James had to decide on his accession was that of
religious toleration. Many of the Puritan clergy signed a petition
to him known as the Millenary Petition, because it was intended to
be signed by a thousand ministers. A conference was held on January
14, =1604=, in the king's presence at Hampton Court, in which some
of the bishops took part, as well as a deputation of Puritan
ministers who were permitted to argue in favour of the demands put
forward in the petition. The Puritan Clergy had by this time
abandoned Cartwright's Presbyterian ideas (see p. 446) and merely
asked that those who thought it wrong to wear surplices and to use
certain other ceremonies might be excused from doing so, without
breaking away from the national church. James listened quietly to
them, till one of them used the word Presbytery. He at once flew
into a passion. "A Scottish Presbytery," he said, "agreeth as well
with a monarchy as God with the devil. Then Jack and Tom and Will
and Dick shall meet, and at their pleasures censure me and my
council.... Until you find that I grow lazy--let that alone." James
ordered them to conform or to leave the ministry. He adopted the
motto, "No bishop, no king!" Like Elizabeth, he used the bishops to
keep the clergy from gaining power independent of the Crown. The
bishops were delighted, and one of them said that 'his Majesty spoke
by the inspiration of God.'
[Illustration: Royal Arms borne by James I. and succeeding Stuart
sovereigns.]
3. =James and the House of Commons.=--In =1604= Parliament met. The
members of the House of Commons had no more wish than James to
overthrow the bishops, but they thought that able and pious
ministers should be allowed to preach even if they would not wear
surplices, and they were dissatisfied with the king's decision at
Hampton Court. On the other hand, James was anxious to obtain their
consent to a union with Scotland, which the Commons disliked, partly
because the king had brought many Scotsmen with him, and had
supplied them with English lands and money. Financial difficulties
also arose, and the session ended in a quarrel between the king and
the House of Commons. Before the year was over he had deprived of
their livings many of the clergy who refused to conform.
4. =Gunpowder Plot. 1604-1605.=--Not only the Puritans, but the
Catholics as well, had appealed to James for toleration. In the
first year of his reign he remitted the recusancy fines (see p.
454). As might be expected, the number of recusants increased,
probably because many who had attended church to avoid paying fines
stayed away as soon as the fines ceased to be required. James took
alarm, and in February =1604= banished the priests from London. On
this, a Catholic named Robert Catesby proposed to a few of his
friends a plot to blow up king, Lords, and Commons with gunpowder at
the opening of Parliament. The king had two sons, Henry and Charles,
and a little daughter, Elizabeth. Catesby, expecting that the two
princes would be destroyed with their father, intended to make
Elizabeth queen, and to take care that she was brought up as a Roman
Catholic. Guy Fawkes, a cool soldier, was sent for from Flanders to
manage the scheme. The plotters took a house next to the House of
Lords, and began to dig through the wall to enable them to carry the
powder into the basement. The wall, however, was nine feet thick,
and they, being little used to mason's work, made but little way. In
the spring of =1605= James increased the exasperation of the
plotters by re-imposing the recusancy fines on the Catholic laity.
Soon afterwards their task was made more easy by the discovery that
a coal-cellar reaching under the floor of the House of Lords was to
be let. One of their number hired the cellar, and introduced into it
barrels of powder, covering them with coals and billets of wood.
Parliament was to be opened for its second session on November 5,
and in the preceding evening Fawkes went to the cellar with a
lantern, ready to fire the train in the morning. One of the
plotters, however, had betrayed the secret. Fawkes was seized, and
his companions were pursued. All the conspirators who were taken
alive were executed, and the persecution of the Catholics grew
hotter than before.
5. =The Post-nati. 1606-1608.=--When another session opened in
=1606= James repeated his efforts to induce the Commons to do
something for the union with Scotland. He wanted them to establish
free trade between the countries, and to naturalise his Scottish
subjects in England. Finding that he could obtain neither of his
wishes from Parliament, he obtained from the judges a decision that
all his Scottish subjects born after his accession in England--the
_Post-nati_, as they were called--were legally naturalised, and were
thus capable of holding land in England. He had to give up all hope
of obtaining freedom of trade.
6. =Irish Difficulties. 1603-1610.=--James was the first English
sovereign who was the master of the whole of Ireland. He tried to win
the affection of the tribes by giving them the protection of English
law against the exactions of their chiefs. Naturally, the chiefs
resented the change, while the tribesmen distrusted the interference
of Englishmen from whom they had suffered so much. In =1607= the
chiefs of the Ulster tribes of O'Neill and O'Donnell--known in England
as the Earls of Tyrone and Tyrconnell--seeing resistance hopeless,
fled to Spain. James ignored the Irish doctrine that the land belonged
to the tribe, and confiscated six counties as if they had been the
property of the chiefs, according to the feudal principles of English
law. He then poured in English and Scottish colonists, leaving to the
natives only the leavings to live on.
7. =Bate's Case and the New Impositions. 1606-1608.=--The state of
James's finances was almost hopeless. Elizabeth, stingy as she was,
had scarcely succeeded in making both ends meet, and James, who had
the expense of providing for a family, from which Elizabeth had been
free, would hardly have been able to meet his expenditure even if he
had been economical. He was, however, far from economical, and had
given away lands and money to his Scottish favourites. There was,
therefore, a large deficit, and James wanted all the money he could
get. In =1606= a merchant named Bate challenged his right to levy an
imposition on currants, which had already been levied by Elizabeth.
The Court of Exchequer, however, decided that the king had the right
of levying impositions--that is to say, duties raised by the sole
authority of the king--without a grant from Parliament--holding that
the _Confirmatio Cartarum_ (see p. 221), to which Bate's counsel
appealed, only restricted that right in a very few cases. Whether
the argument of the judges was right or wrong, they were the
constitutional exponents of the law, and when Cecil (who had been
James's chief minister from the beginning of the reign, and was
created Earl of Salisbury in =1605=) was made Lord Treasurer as well
as Secretary in =1608=, he at once levied new impositions to the
amount of about 70,000_l._ a year, on the plea that more money was
needed in consequence of the troubles in Ireland.
[Illustration: North-west view of Hatfield House, Herts; built for
Robert Cecil, first Earl of Salisbury, between 1605 and 1611.]
8. =The Great Contract. 1610-1611.=--Even the new impositions did
not fill up the deficit, and Parliament was summoned in =1610= to
meet the difficulty. It entered into a bargain--the Great Contract,
as it was called--by which, on receiving 200,000_l._ a year, James
was to abandon certain antiquated feudal dues, such as those of
wardship and marriage (see p. 116). An agreement was also come to
on the impositions. James voluntarily remitted the most burdensome
to the amount of 20,000_l._ a year, and the House of Commons agreed
to grant him the remainder on his passing an Act declaring illegal
all further levy of impositions without a Parliamentary grant.
Unfortunately, before the details of the Great Contract were finally
settled, fresh disputes arose, and early in =1611=, James dissolved
his first Parliament in anger without settling anything either about
the feudal dues or about the impositions.
9. =Bacon and Somerset. 1612-1613.=--In =1612= Salisbury died, and
Bacon, always ready with good advice, recommended James to abandon
Salisbury's policy of bargaining with the Commons. Bacon was a warm
supporter of monarchy, because he was anxious for reforms, and he
believed that reforms were more likely to come from the king and his
Council than from a House of Commons--which was mainly composed of
country gentlemen, with little knowledge of affairs of State. Bacon,
however, knew what were the conditions under which alone a
monarchical system could be maintained, and reminded James that king
and Parliament were members of one body, with common interests, and
that he could only expect the Commons to grant supplies if he
stepped forward as their leader by setting forth a policy which
would commend itself to them. James had no idea of leading, and,
instead of taking Bacon's advice, resolved to do as long as he could
without a Parliament. A few years before he had taken a fancy to a
handsome young Scot named Robert Carr, thinking that Carr would be
not only a boon companion, but also an instrument to carry out his
orders, and relieve him from the trouble of dispensing patronage. He
enriched Carr in various ways, especially by giving him the estate
of Sherborne, which he took from Raleigh on the ground of a flaw in
the title--though he made Raleigh some compensation for his loss. In
=1613= he married Carr to Lady Essex, who had been divorced from her
husband under very disgraceful circumstances, and created him Earl
of Somerset. Somerset was brought by this marriage into connection
with the family of the Howards--his wife's father, the Earl of
Suffolk, being a Howard. As the Howards were for the most part Roman
Catholics at heart, if not openly, Somerset's influence was
henceforth used in opposition to the Protestant aims which had found
favour in the House of Commons.
10. =The Addled Parliament. 1614.=--In spite of Somerset and the
Howards, James's want of money drove him, in =1614=, to call
another Parliament. Instead of following Bacon's advice that he
should win popularity by useful legislative projects, he tried first
to secure its submission by encouraging persons who were known as
the Undertakers because they undertook that candidates who supported
the king's interests should be returned. When this failed, he again
tried, as he had tried under Salisbury's influence in =1610=, to
enter into a bargain with the Commons. The Commons, however, replied
by asking him to abandon the impositions and to restore the
nonconforming clergy ejected in =1604= (see p. 482). On this James
dissolved Parliament. As it granted no supplies, and passed no act,
it became known as the Addled Parliament.
[Illustration: An unknown gentleman: from a painting belonging to
T. A. Hope, Esq.]
11. =The Spanish Alliance. 1614-1617.=--James was always anxious to
be the peacemaker of Europe, being wise enough to see that the
religious wars which had long been devastating the Continent might
be brought to an end if only the contending parties would be more
tolerant. It was partly in the hope of gaining influence to enable
him to carry out his pacificatory policy that he aimed, early in his
reign, at marrying his children into influential families on the
Continent. In =1613= he gave his daughter Elizabeth to Frederick V.,
Elector Palatine, who was the leader of the German Calvinists, and
he had long before projected a marriage between his eldest son,
Prince Henry, and a Spanish Infanta. Prince Henry, however, died in
=1612=, and, though James's only surviving son, Charles, was still
young, there had been a talk of marrying him to a French princess.
The breaking-up of the Parliament of =1614= left James in great want
of money; and, as he had reason to believe that Spain would give a
much larger portion than would be given with a French princess, he
became keenly eager to marry his son to the Infanta Maria, the
daughter of Philip III. of Spain. Negotiations with this object were
not formally opened till =1617=, and in =1618= James learnt that the
marriage could not take place unless he engaged to give religious
liberty to the English Roman Catholics. He then offered to write a
letter to the king of Spain, promising to relieve the Roman
Catholics as long as they gave no offence, but Philip insisted on a
more binding and permanent engagement, and, on James's refusal to do
more than he had offered to do, Gondomar, the very able Spanish
ambassador who had hitherto kept James in good humour, was withdrawn
from England, and the negotiation was, for the time, allowed to
drop.
12. =The rise of Buckingham. 1615-1618.=--In =1615= Somerset and his
wife were accused of poisoning Sir Thomas Overbury. There can be no
doubt that the Countess was guilty, but it is less certain what
Somerset's own part in the matter was. In =1616= they were both
found guilty, and, though James spared their lives, he never saw
either of them again. He had already found a new favourite in George
Villiers, a handsome youth who could dance and ride gracefully, and
could entertain the king with lively conversation. The opponents of
the Spanish alliance had supported Villiers against Somerset, but
they soon found that Villiers was ready to throw himself on the side
of Spain as soon as he found that it would please the king. James
gave him large estates, and rapidly advanced him in the peerage,
till, in =1618=, he created him Marquis of Buckingham. He also made
him Lord Admiral in the hope that he would improve the navy, and
allowed all the patronage of England to pass through his hands.
Statesmen and lawyers had to bow down to Buckingham if they wished
to rise. No wonder the young man felt as if the nation was at his
feet, and gave himself airs which disgusted all who wished to
preserve independence of character.
13. =The Voyage and Execution of Raleigh. 1617-1618.=--In =1617=
Raleigh, having been liberated through Buckingham's influence,
sailed for the Orinoco in search of a gold-mine, of which he had
heard in an earlier voyage in Elizabeth's reign (see p. 464). He
engaged, before he sailed, not to touch the land of the king of
Spain, and James let him know that, if he broke his promise, he
would lose his head. It was, indeed, difficult to say where the
lands of the king of Spain began or ended, but James left the burden
of proving this on Raleigh; whilst Raleigh, imagining that if only
he could find gold he would not be held to his promise, sent his men
up the river, without distinct orders to avoid fighting. They
attacked and burnt a Spanish village, but never reached the mine.
Heart-broken at their failure, Raleigh proposed to lie in wait for
the Spanish treasure-ships, and, on the refusal of his captains to
follow him in piracy, returned to England with nothing in his hands.
James sent him to the scaffold for a fault which he should never
have been given the chance of committing. Raleigh was the last of
the Elizabethan heroes--a many-sided man: soldier, sailor,
statesman, historian, and poet. He was as firmly convinced as Drake
had been that there was no peace in American waters, and that to rob
and plunder Spaniards in time of peace was in itself a virtue.
James's unwise attempt to form a close alliance with Spain made
Raleigh a popular hero.
14. =Colonisation of Virginia and New England.
1607-1620.=--Gradually Englishmen learned to prefer peaceable
commerce and colonisation to piratical enterprises. In =1585=
Raleigh had sent out colonists to a region in North America to which
he gave the name of Virginia, in honour of Elizabeth, but the
colonists either returned to England or were destroyed by the
Indians. In =1607= a fresh attempt was made, and, after passing
through terrible hardships, the Colony of Virginia grew into a
tobacco-planting, well-to-do community. In =1608= a congregation of
Separatists emigrated from England to Holland, and, after a while,
settled at Leyden, where, anxious to escape from the temptations of
the world, many of them resolved to emigrate to America, where they
might lead an ideally religious life. In =1620= the emigrants, a
hundred in all, 'lifting up their eyes to heaven, their dearest
country,' crossed the Atlantic in the 'Mayflower,' and found a new
home which they named Plymouth. These first emigrants, the Pilgrim
Fathers, as their descendants fondly called them, lost half their
number by cold and disease in the first winter, but the remainder
held on to form a nucleus for the Puritan New England of the future.
15. =The Beginning of the Thirty Years' War. 1618-1620.=--As yet,
however, these small beginnings of a colonial empire attracted
little attention in England. Men's thoughts ran far more on a great
war--the Thirty Years' War--which, in =1618=, began to desolate
Germany. In that year a revolution took place in Bohemia, where the
Protestant nobility rose against their king, Matthias, a Catholic,
who was at the same time Emperor, and, in =1619=, after the death of
Matthias, they deposed his successor, Ferdinand, and chose
Frederick, the Elector Palatine, James's Calvinist son-in-law, as
king in his place. Almost at the same time Ferdinand became by
election the Emperor Ferdinand II. James was urged to interfere on
behalf of Frederick, but he could not make up his mind that the
cause of his son-in-law was righteous, and he therefore left him to
his fate. Frederick's cause was, however, popular in England, and in
=1620=, when there were rumours that a Spanish force was about to
occupy the Palatinate in order to compel Frederick to abandon
Bohemia, James--drawing a distinction between helping his son-in-law
to keep his own and supporting him in taking the land of
another--went so far as to allow English volunteers, under Sir
Horace Vere, to garrison the fortresses of the Palatinate. In the
summer of that year, a Spanish army, under Spinola, actually
occupied the Western Palatinate, and James, angry at the news,
summoned Parliament in order to obtain a vote of supplies for war.
Before Parliament could meet, Frederick had been crushingly defeated
on the White Hill, near Prague, and driven out of Bohemia.
[Illustration: King James I.: from a painting by P. van Somer, dated
1621, in the National Portrait Gallery.]
16. =The Meeting of James's Third Parliament. 1621.=--Parliament,
when it met in =1621=, was the more distrustful of James, as
Gondomar had returned to England in =1620= and had revived the
Spanish marriage treaty. When the Houses met, they were disappointed
to find that James did not propose to go to war at once. James
fancied that, because he himself wished to act justly and fairly,
every one of the other Princes would be regardless of his own
interests, and, although he had already sent several ambassadors to
settle matters without producing any results, he now proposed to
send more ambassadors, and only to fight if negotiation failed. On
learning this, the House of Commons only voted him a small supply,
not being willing to grant war-taxes unless it was sure that there
was to be a war. Probably James was right in not engaging England in
hostilities, as ambition had as much to do with Frederick's
proceedings as religion, and as, if James had helped his German
allies, he could have exercised no control over them; but he had too
little decision or real knowledge of the situation to inspire
confidence either at home or abroad; and the Commons, as soon as
they had granted a supply, began to criticise his government in
domestic matters.
17. =The Royal Prerogative. 1616-1621.=--Elizabeth had been high-handed
enough, but she had talked little of the rights which she claimed, and
had set herself to gain the affection of her subjects. James, on the
other hand, liked to talk of his rights, whilst he took no trouble to
make himself popular. It was his business, he held, to see that the
judges did not break the law under pretence of administering it. "This,"
he said in =1616=, "is a thing regal and proper to a king, to keep every
court within its true bounds." More startling was the language which
followed. "As for the absolute prerogative of the Crown," he declared,
"that is no subject for the tongue of a lawyer, nor is it lawful to be
disputed. It is atheism and blasphemy to dispute what God can do: good
Christians content themselves with His will revealed in His word; so it
is presumption and high contempt in a subject to dispute what a king can
do, or say that a king cannot do this or that; but rest in that which is
the king's will revealed in his law." What James meant was that there
must be in every state a power above the law to provide for
emergencies as they arise, and to keep the authorities--judicial and
administrative--from jostling with one another. At present this power
belongs to Parliament. When Elizabeth handed on the government to James,
it belonged to the Crown. What James did not understand was that, in the
long run, no one--either king or Parliament--will be allowed to exercise
powers which are unwisely used. Such an idea probably never entered into
James's mind, because he was convinced that he was himself not only the
best but the wisest of men, whereas he was in reality--as Henry IV. of
France had said of him--'the wisest fool in Christendom.'
[Illustration: Civil costume about 1620: from a contemporary
broadside.]
[Illustration: The Banqueting Hall of the Palace of Whitehall (from
the north-east): built from the designs of Inigo Jones. 1619-1621.]
18. =Financial Reform. 1619.=--James not only thought too highly
of his own powers of government, but was also too careless to check
the misdeeds of his favourites. For some time his want of money led
him to have recourse to strange expedients. In =1611= he founded the
order of baronets, making each of those created pay him 1,080_l._ a
year for three years to enable him to support soldiers for the
defence of Ulster. After the first few years, however, the money,
though regularly required of new baronets, was invariably repaid to
them. More disgraceful was the sale of peerages, of which there were
examples in =1618=. In =1619=, however, through the exertions of
Lionel Cranfield, a city merchant recommended to James by
Buckingham, financial order was comparatively restored, and in quiet
times the expenditure no longer much exceeded the revenue.
19. =Favouritism and Corruption.=--Though James did not obtain much
money in irregular ways, he did not keep a watchful eye on his
favourites and ministers. The salaries of Ministers were low, and
were in part themselves made up by the presents of suitors.
Candidates for office, who looked forward to being enriched by the
gifts of others, knew that they must pay dearly for the goodwill of
the favourites through whom they gained promotion. In =1620= Chief
Justice Montague was appointed Lord Treasurer. "Take care, my lord,"
said Bacon to him, when he started for Newmarket to receive from the
king the staff which was the symbol of his office, "wood is dearer
at Newmarket than in any other place in England." Montague, in fact,
had to pay 20,000_l._ for his place. Others, who were bachelors or
widowers, received promotion on condition of marrying one of the
many penniless young ladies of Buckingham's kindred.
20. =The Monopolies Condemned. 1621.=--The Commons, therefore, in
looking for abuses, had no lack of subjects on which to complain.
They lighted upon monopolies. James, soon after his accession, had
abolished most of those left by Elizabeth, but the number had been
increased partly through a wish to encourage home manufactures, and
partly from a desire to regulate commerce. One set of persons, for
example, had the sole right of making glass, because they bound
themselves to heat their furnaces with coal instead of wood, and
thus spared the trees needed for shipbuilding. Others had the sole
right of making gold and silver thread, because they engaged to
import all the precious metals they wanted, it being thought, in
those days, that the precious metals alone constituted wealth, and
that England would therefore be impoverished if English gold and
silver were wasted on personal adornment. There is no doubt that
courtiers received payments from persons interested in these grants,
but the amount of such payments was grossly exaggerated, and the
Commons imagined that these and similar grievances owed their
existence merely to the desire to fill the pockets of Buckingham and
his favourites. There was, therefore, a loud outcry in Parliament.
One of the main promoters of these schemes, Sir Giles Mompesson,
fled the kingdom. Others were punished, and the monopolies recalled
by the king, though as yet no act was passed declaring them to be
illegal.
[Illustration: Francis Bacon, Viscount St. Alban, Lord Chancellor:
from the National Portrait Gallery.]
21. =The Fall of Bacon. 1621.=--After this the Commons turned upon
Bacon. He was now Lord Chancellor, and had lived to find that his
good advice was never followed. He had, nevertheless, been an active
and upright judge. The Commons, however, distrusted him as having
supported grants of monopolies, and, when charges of bribery were
brought against him, sent them up to the Lords for enquiry. At first
Bacon thought a political trick was being played against him. He
soon discovered that he had thoughtlessly taken gifts even before
judgment had been given, though if they had been taken after
judgment, he would--according to the custom of the time--have been
considered innocent. His own opinion of the case was probably the
true one. His sentence, he said, was 'just, and for reformation's
sake fit.' Yet he was 'the justest Chancellor' that had been since
his father's time, his father, Sir Nicholas Bacon, having creditably
occupied under Elizabeth the post which he himself filled under
James. He was stripped of office, fined, and imprisoned. His
imprisonment, however, was extremely brief, and his fine was
ultimately remitted. Though his trial was not exactly like that of
the old impeachments, it was practically the revival of the system
of impeachments which had been disused since the days of Henry VI.
It was a sign that the power of Parliament was increasing and that
of the king growing less.
22. =Digby's Mission, and the Dissolution of Parliament. 1621.=--The
king announced to Parliament that he was about to send an ambassador
to Vienna to induce the Emperor Ferdinand to be content with the
re-conquest of Bohemia, and to leave Frederick undisturbed in the
Palatinate. Parliament was therefore adjourned, in order to give
time for the result of this embassy to be known; and the Commons, at
their last sitting, declared--with wild enthusiasm--that, if the
embassy failed, they would support Frederick with their lives and
fortunes. When Lord Digby, who was the chosen ambassador, returned,
he had done no good. Ferdinand was too anxious to push his success
further, and Frederick was too anxious to make good his losses for
any negotiation to be successful. The Imperialists invaded the
Palatinate, and in the winter James called on Parliament--which had
by that time re-assembled after the adjournment--for money
sufficient to defend the Palatinate till he had made one more
diplomatic effort. The Commons, believing that the king's alliance
with Spain was the root of all evil, petitioned him to marry his son
to a Protestant lady, and plainly showed their wish to see him at
war with Spain. James replied that the Commons had no right to
discuss matters on which he had not consulted them. They drew up a
protestation asserting their right to discuss all matters of public
concernment. James tore it out of their journal-book, and dissolved
Parliament, though it had not yet granted him a penny.
23. =The Loss of the Palatinate. 1622.=--In =1614=, James, being in
want of money, had had recourse to a benevolence--the lawyers having
advised him that, though the Act of Richard III. (see p. 342) made
it illegal for him to compel its payment, there was no law against
his asking his subjects to pay it voluntarily. He took the same
course in =1622=, and got enough to support the garrisons in the
Palatinate for a few months, as many who did not like to give the
money feared to provoke the king's displeasure by a refusal. Before
the end of the year, however, the whole Palatinate, with the
exception of one fortress, had been lost.
[Illustration: Costume of a lawyer: from a broadside, dated 1623.]
24. =Charles's Journey to Madrid. 1623.=--It was now time to try if
the Spanish alliance was worth anything. Early in =1623=, Prince
Charles, accompanied by Buckingham, started for Madrid to woo the
Infanta in person. The young men imagined that the king of Spain
would be so pleased with this unusual compliment, that he would use
his influence--and, if necessary, his troops--to obtain the
restitution of the Palatinate to Charles's brother-in-law, the
Elector Frederick. The Infanta's brother, Philip IV., was now king
of Spain, and he had lately been informed by his sister that she was
resolved not to marry a heretic. Her confessor had urged her to
refuse. "What a comfortable bedfellow you will have!" he said to
her: "he who lies by your side, and will be the father of your
children, is certain to go to hell." Philip and his prime minister
Olivares feared lest, if they announced this refusal, it would lead
to a war with England. They first tried to convert the prince to
their religion, and when that failed, secretly invited the Pope to
refuse to grant a dispensation for the marriage. The Pope, however,
fearing that, if he caused a breach, James and Charles would punish
him by increasing the persecution of the English Catholics, informed
Philip that he should have the dispensation for his sister, on
condition not only that James and Charles should swear to grant
religious liberty to the Catholics in England, but that he should
himself swear that James and Charles would keep their word.
[Illustration: The Upper House of Convocation: from a broadside,
dated 1623.]
[Illustration: The Lower House of Convocation: from a broadside,
dated 1623.]
25. =The Prince's Return. 1623.=--Philip referred the point whether
he could conscientiously take the oath to a committee of
theologians. In the meantime, Charles attempted to pay court to the
Infanta. Spanish etiquette was, however, strict, and he was not
allowed to speak to her, except in public and on rare occasions.
Once he jumped over a wall into a garden in which she was. The poor
girl shrieked and fled. At last Charles was informed that the
theologians had come to a decision. He might marry if he pleased,
but, the moment that the ceremony was over, he was to leave for
England. If, at the end of six months, he had not only promised
religious liberty to the Catholics, but had actually put them in the
enjoyment of it, then, and only then, his wife should be sent after
him. Charles was indignant--the more so because he learnt that there
was little chance that the king of Spain would interfere to restore
the Protestant Frederick by force--and returned to England eager for
war with Spain. Never before or after was he so popular as when he
landed at Portsmouth--not so much because he had come back, as
because he had not brought the Infanta with him.
26. =The Last Parliament of James I. 1624.=--James's foreign policy
had now hopelessly broken down. He had expected that simply because
it seemed to him to be just, Philip would quarrel with the Emperor
for the sake of restoring the Palatinate to a Protestant. When he
found that this could not be, he had nothing more to propose. His
son and his favourite, who had been created Duke of Buckingham
whilst he was in Spain, urged him to go to war, and early in =1624=
James summoned a new Parliament, which was entirely out of his
control. For the time Buckingham, who urged on the war, was the most
popular man in England. A large grant of supply was given, but the
Commons distrusting James, ordered the money to be paid to
treasurers appointed by themselves, and to be spent only upon four
objects--the repairing of forts in England, the increase of the army
in Ireland, the fitting-out of a fleet, and the support of the Dutch
Republic, which was still at war with Spain, and of other allies of
the king. The king, on his part, engaged to invite friendly states
to join him in war for the recovery of the Palatinate, and to summon
Parliament in the autumn to announce the result. The Commons were
the less anxious to trust James with money as they were in favour of
a maritime war against Spain, whilst they believed him to be in
favour of a military war in Germany. They had reason to think that
Cranfield, who was now Earl of Middlesex and Lord Treasurer, had
used his influence with the king to keep him from a breach with
Spain; and, with Charles and Buckingham hounding them on, they now
impeached Middlesex on charges of malversation, and drove him from
office. It was generally believed that the Lord Treasurer owed his
fall to his dislike of a war which would be ruinous to the finances
which it was his business to guard. The old king could not resist,
but he told his son that, in supporting an impeachment, he was
preparing a rod for himself. Before the end of the session the king
agreed to an act abolishing monopolies, except in the case of new
inventions.
27. =The French Alliance.=--Even before Parliament was prorogued, a
negotiation was opened for a marriage between Charles and Henrietta
Maria, the sister of Louis XIII., king of France. Both James and
Charles had promised Parliament that, if the future queen were a
Roman Catholic, no religious liberty should be granted to the
English Catholics by the marriage treaty. Both James and Charles
gave way when they found that Louis insisted on this concession, and
promised religious liberty to the Catholics. Consequently, they did
not venture to summon Parliament till the marriage was over and it
was too late to complain. Yet Buckingham, who was more firmly rooted
in Charles's favour than he had ever been in that of his father, had
promised money in all directions. Before the end of the year he had
engaged to find large sums for the Dutch Republic to fight Spain,
30,000_l._ a month for Christian IV., king of Denmark, to make war
in Germany against the Emperor, 20,000_l._ a month for Count
Mansfeld, a German adventurer, to advance to the Palatinate, and
anything that might be needed for a fleet to attack the Spanish
ports. James, in short, was for a war by land, the Commons for a war
by sea, and Buckingham for both.
28. =Mansfeld's Expedition, and the Death of James I.
1624-1625.=--Before the end of =1624=, twelve thousand Englishmen
were gathered at Dover to go with Mansfeld to the Palatinate. The
king of France, who had promised to help them, refused to allow them
to land in his dominions. It was accordingly resolved that they
should pass through Holland. James, however, had nothing to give
them, and they were consequently sent across the sea without money
and without provisions. On their arrival in Holland they were put on
board open boats to make their way up the Rhine. Frost set in, and
the boats were unable to stir. In a few weeks three-fourths of the
men were dead or dying. It was Buckingham's first experience of
making war without money and without Parliamentary support. Before
anything further could be done, James was attacked by a fever, and,
on March 27, =1625=, he died. Though his reign did not witness a
revolution, it witnessed that loosening of the bonds of sympathy
between the ruler and the ruled which is often the precursor of
revolution.
CHAPTER XXXII
THE GROWTH OF THE PERSONAL GOVERNMENT OF CHARLES I.
1625-1634
LEADING DATES
The Reign of Charles I., 1625-1649
Charles's first Parliament and the expedition to Cadiz 1625
Charles's second Parliament and the impeachment of
Buckingham. 1626
The expedition to Ré 1627
Charles's third Parliament and the Petition of Right 1628
Dissolution of Charles's third Parliament 1629
Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury 1633
Prynne's sentence executed 1634
1. =Charles I. and Buckingham. 1625.=--The new king, Charles I., was
more dignified than his father, and was conscientiously desirous of
governing well. He was, unfortunately, extremely unwise, being both
obstinate in persisting in any line of conduct which he had himself
chosen, and ready to give way to the advice of others in matters of
detail. Buckingham, who sympathised with him in his plans, and who
was never at a loss when called on to express an opinion on any
subject whatever, had now made himself completely master of the
young king, and was, in reality, the governor of England far more
than Charles himself. On May 1 Charles was married by proxy to
Henrietta Maria, and Buckingham fetched home the bride.
2. =Charles's First Parliament. 1625.=--Charles was eager to meet
his first Parliament, because he thought that it would grant him
enormous sums of money to carry on the war with Spain, on which he
had set his heart. He forgot that its members would be disgusted at
the mismanagement of Mansfeld's expedition, and at the favour shown
by himself to the Catholics in consequence of his marriage. When
Parliament met on June 18, the House of Commons voted a small sum of
140,000_l._, and asked him to put in execution the recusancy laws.
Charles adjourned Parliament to Oxford, as the plague was raging in
London, in order that he might urge it to vote him a larger sum. It
met at Oxford on August 1, but the Commons refused to vote more
money, unless counsellors in whom they could confide--in other
words, counsellors other than Buckingham--had the spending of it.
Charles seeing that, if the Commons could force him to accept
ministers against his wish, they would soon control himself,
dissolved the Parliament. On everything else he was ready to give
way--making no objection to the renewal of the persecution of the
Catholics, whom a few months ago he had solemnly promised in his
marriage treaty to protect. Though the question now raised was
whether England was to be ruled by the king or by the House of
Commons, it would be a mistake to think that the Commons were
consciously aiming at sovereignty. They saw that there was
mismanagement, and all that they wanted was to stop it.
3. =The Expedition to Cadiz. 1625.=--Charles thought that, if he
could gain a great victory, there would be no further talk about
mismanagement. Scraping together what money he could, he sent a
great fleet and army, under the command of Sir Edward Cecil, to take
Cadiz, the harbour of which was the port at which the Spanish
treasure ships arrived from America once a year, laden with silver
and gold from the mines of America. The greater part of Cecil's
fleet was made up of merchant-vessels pressed by force into the
king's service. Neither soldiers nor sailors had any heart in the
matter. The masters of the merchant-vessels did all they could to
keep themselves out of danger. The soldiers after landing outside
the town got drunk in a body, and would have been slaughtered if any
Spaniards had been near. Cecil failed to take Cadiz, and after he
left it, the Spanish treasure-ships from America, which he hoped to
capture, got safely into Cadiz harbour, whilst he was looking for
them in another part of the sea. The great expedition sent by
Buckingham to Cadiz was as complete a failure as that which he had
sent out the year before under Mansfeld. Whilst Cecil was employed
in Spain Buckingham himself went to the Hague to form a continental
alliance for the recovery of the Palatinate, hoping especially to
secure the services of Christian IV., king of Denmark. Finding
Christian quite ready to fight, Buckingham tried to pawn the king's
jewels at Amsterdam in order to supply him with 30,000_l._ a month,
which he had promised to him. No one would lend money on the jewels,
and Buckingham came back, hoping that a second Parliament would be
more compliant than the first.
[Illustration: King Charles I.: from a painting by Van Dyck.]
4. =Charles's Second Parliament. 1626.=--The new Parliament met on
February 6, =1626=. Charles, in order to secure himself against what
he believed to be the attacks of interested and ambitious men, had
hit on the clever expedient of making sheriffs of the leaders of the
Opposition, so as to secure their detention in their own counties.
The Opposition, however, found a leader in Sir John Eliot, who,
though he had formerly been a friend of Buckingham, was now shocked
at the misconduct of the favourite and regarded him as a selfish and
unprincipled adventurer. Eliot was not only a natural orator, but
one of the most pure-minded of patriots, though the vehemence of his
temperament often carried him to impute more evil to men of whom he
thought badly than they were really guilty of. At present, he was
roused to indignation against Buckingham, not only on account of the
recent failures, but because, in the preceding summer, he had lent
some English ships to the French, who wanted to use them for
suppressing the Huguenots of Rochelle, then in rebellion against
their king, Louis XIII. Before long the Commons, under Eliot's
guidance, impeached Buckingham of all kinds of crime, making against
him charges of some of which he was quite innocent, whilst others
were much exaggerated. The fact that the only way to get rid of an
unpopular minister was to accuse him of crime, made those who would
otherwise have been content with his dismissal ready to believe in
his guilt. Charles's vexation reached its height when he heard that
Eliot had branded Buckingham as Sejanus. "If he is Sejanus," he
said, "I must be Tiberius." Rather than abandon his minister, he
dissolved Parliament, before it had voted him a sixpence.
[Illustration: Queen Henrietta Maria, wife of Charles I.: from a
painting by Van Dyck.]
5. =The Forced Loan. 1626.=--If the war was to go on, money must in
some way or other be had. Charles asked his subjects to bestow on
him a free gift for the purpose. Scarcely any one gave him anything.
Then came news that the king of Denmark, to whom the promised
30,000_l._ a month had not been paid (see p. 501, 503), had been
signally defeated at Lutter, so that the recovery of the Palatinate
was further off than ever. Some clever person suggested to Charles
that, though the Statute of Benevolences (see p. 342) prohibited him
from making his subjects give him money, no law forbade him to make
them lend, even though there was no chance that he would ever be
able to repay what he borrowed. He at once gave orders for the
collection of a forced loan. Before this was gathered in, troubles
arose with France. Louis XIII. was preparing to besiege Rochelle,
and Charles believed himself to be in honour bound to defend it
because Louis had at one time promised him that he would admit his
Huguenot subjects to terms. Besides, he had offended Louis by
sending out of the country the queen's French attendants, thinking,
probably with truth, that they encouraged her to resent his breach
of promise about the English Catholics (see p. 501).
6. =The Expedition to Ré. 1627.=--In =1627= war broke out between
France and England. Payment of the forced loan was urged in order to
supply the means. Chief Justice Crewe, refusing to acknowledge its
legality, was dismissed. Poor men were forced to serve as soldiers;
rich men were sent to prison. By such means a considerable sum was
got together. A small force was sent to help the king of Denmark,
and a fleet of a hundred sail, carrying soldiers on board, was sent
to relieve Rochelle, under the command of Buckingham himself. On
July 12 Buckingham landed on the Isle of Ré, which would form a good
base of operations for the relief of Rochelle. He laid siege to the
fort of St. Martin's on the island, and had almost starved it into
surrender, when, on September 27, a relieving force of French boats
dashed through the English blockading fleet, and re-victualled the
place. Buckingham, whose own numbers had dwindled away, called for
reinforcements from England. Charles did what he could, but
Englishmen would lend no money to succour the hated Buckingham; and,
before reinforcements could arrive, a French army landed on the Isle
of Ré, and drove Buckingham back to his ships. Out of 6,800
soldiers, less than 3,000--worn by hunger and sickness--returned to
England.
[Illustration: Tents and military equipment in the early part of the
reign of Charles I.: from the monument of Sir Charles Montague (died
in 1625) in the church of Barking, Essex.]
7. =The Five Knights' Case. 1627.=--Buckingham was more unpopular
than ever. "Since England was England," we find in a letter of the
time, "it received not so dishonourable a blow." Attention was,
however, chiefly turned to domestic grievances. Soldiers had been
billeted on householders without their consent, and martial law had
been exercised over civilians as well as soldiers. Moreover, the
forced loan had been exacted, and some of those who refused to pay
had been imprisoned by the mere order of the king and the Privy
Council. Against this last injury, five knights, who had been
imprisoned, appealed to the Court of King's Bench. A writ of _habeas
corpus_ was issued--that is to say, an order was given to the gaoler
to produce the prisoners before the Court, together with a return
showing the cause of committal. All that the gaoler could show was
that the prisoners had been committed by order of the king,
signified by the Privy Council. The lawyers employed by the five
knights argued that every prisoner had a right to be tried or
liberated on bail; that, unless cause was shown--that is to say,
unless a charge was brought against him--there was nothing on which
he could be tried; and that, therefore, these prisoners ought to be
bailed. The lawyers for the Crown argued that when the safety of the
state was concerned, the king had always been allowed to imprison
without showing cause, and that his discretion must be trusted not
to imprison any one excepting in cases of necessity. The judges did
not decide this point, but sent the five knights back to prison. In
a few days, all the prisoners were set free, and Charles summoned a
third Parliament, hoping that it would vote money for a fresh
expedition to relieve Rochelle.
8. =Wentworth and Eliot in the Third Parliament of Charles I.
1628.=--Charles's third Parliament met on March 17, =1628=. The
leadership was at once taken by Sir Thomas Wentworth, who, as well
as Eliot, had been imprisoned for refusing to pay the loan. Though
the two men now worked together, they were, in most points, opposed
to one another. Eliot had been a warm advocate of the war with
Spain, till he found it useless to carry on the war under
Buckingham's guidance. Wentworth disliked all wars, and especially a
war with Spain. Eliot believed in the wisdom of the House of
Commons, and thought that, if the king always took its advice, he
was sure to be in the right. Wentworth thought that the House of
Commons often blundered, and that the king was more likely to be in
the right if he took advice from wise counsellors. Wentworth,
however, believed that in this case Charles had unfortunately
preferred to take the advice of foolish counsellors, and though not
sharing the opinions of Eliot and his friends, threw himself into
the struggle in which the House of Commons was trying to stop
Buckingham in his rash course. From time to time Wentworth contrived
to show that he was no enemy of the king, or of a strong government
such as that which had existed in the reign of Elizabeth. He was,
however, an ardent and impetuous speaker, and threw himself into any
cause which he defended with more violence than he could, in calmer
moments, have justified to himself. He saw clearly that the late
aggressions on the liberty of the subject weakened, instead of
strengthening, the Crown; and he now proposed a bill which should
declare them illegal in the future. Charles refused to accept the
bill, and Wentworth, unwilling to take a prominent part in a
struggle with the king himself, retired into the background for the
remainder of the session.
9. =The Petition of Right. 1628.=--Instead of Wentworth's bill,
Eliot and the lawyers--Coke and Selden being prominent amongst
them--brought forward a Petition of Right, not merely providing for
the future, but also declaring that right had actually been violated
in the past. Charles was willing to promise everything else asked of
him, but he resisted the attempt to force him to promise never to
imprison without showing cause, and thus to strip himself of the
power of punishing offences directed against the safety of the
State. The Commons, who held that he had directed his powers
against men who were patriots, proved inexorable. Charles needed
money for another fleet which he was preparing for the relief of
Rochelle, which was straitly besieged by the French king. He tried
hard to get over the difficulty by an evasive answer, but at last,
on June 7, he gave way, and the Petition of Right became the law of
the land. After that, so far as the law went, there was to be no
more martial law or enforced billeting, no forced loans or taxes
imposed without a Parliamentary grant, or imprisonment without cause
shown.
[Illustration: George Villiers, first Duke of Buckingham, 1592-1628:
from the National Portrait Gallery.]
10. =Tonnage and Poundage. 1628.=--Before the end of the session a
fresh question was raised. For many reigns Parliament had voted to
each king for life, at the beginning of his reign, certain customs
duties known as Tonnage and Poundage. In addition to these James had
added the impositions (see p. 484) without a Parliamentary grant. In
the first Parliament of Charles, the Commons, probably wishing to
settle the question of impositions before permanently granting
Tonnage and Poundage, had passed a bill granting the latter for a
single year; but that Parliament had been dissolved before the bill
had passed the Lords. The second Parliament was dissolved before the
Commons had even discussed the subject, and the third Parliament now
sitting had found no time to attend to it till after the Petition of
Right had been granted. Now that the session was drawing to a close
the Commons again proposed to grant Tonnage and Poundage for a year
only. Charles, who had been levying the duties ever since his
accession, refused to accept a grant on these terms, and the Commons
then asserted that the clause of the Petition of Right forbidding
him to levy taxes without a vote of Parliament made his raising of
Tonnage and Poundage illegal. It was a nice legal point whether
customs were properly called taxes, and Charles answered that he did
not think that in demanding the petition they had meant to ask him
to yield his right to Tonnage and Poundage, and that he was sure he
had not meant to do so. The Commons then attacked Buckingham, and on
June 26 Charles prorogued Parliament.
11. =Buckingham's Murder. 1628.=--In return for the Petition of
Right Charles had received a grant of money large enough to enable
him to send out his fleet. In August Buckingham went to Portsmouth
to take the command. He was followed by John Felton, an officer to
whom he had refused employment, and who had not been paid for his
former services. Language used by the House of Commons in their
recent attack on Buckingham persuaded Felton that he would render
service to God and man by slaying the enemy of both. On August 23 he
stabbed the Duke as he came out from breakfast, crying, 'God have
mercy on thy soul!' Buckingham fell dead on the spot. The fleet went
out under the command of the Earl of Lindsey to relieve Rochelle,
but it failed utterly. There was no heart in the sailors or
resolution in the commanders. Rochelle surrendered to the King of
France, and Charles was left to bear the weight of the unpopularity
of his late favourite.
12. =The Question of Sovereignty. 1628.=--Charles was anxious to
come to terms with his Parliament on the question of Tonnage and
Poundage, and would probably have consented to accept the compromise
proposed in =1610= (see p. 486). Neither party, indeed, could
afford to surrender completely to the other. The customs duties were
already more than a third of the revenue, and, if Charles could levy
what he pleased, he might so increase his income as to have no
further need of parliaments; whereas, if the Commons refused to make
the grant, the king would soon be in a state of bankruptcy. The
financial question, in short, involved the further question whether
Charles or the Parliament was to have the sovereignty. Dangerous as
it would be for both parties to enter upon a quarrel which led up to
such issues, it was the more difficult to avoid it because the king
and the Commons were already at variance on another subject of
pre-eminent importance.
13. =Protestantism of the House of Commons. 1625-1628.=--That
subject was the subject of religion. The country gentlemen, who
almost entirely filled the benches of the House of Commons, were not
Puritan in the sense in which Cartwright had been Puritan in
Elizabeth's reign (see p. 446). They did not wish to abolish
episcopacy or the Prayer Book; but they were strongly Protestant,
and their Protestantism had been strengthened by a sense of danger
from the engagements in favour of the English Catholics into which
James and Charles had entered. Lately, too, the power of the
Catholic States on the Continent had been growing. In =1626= the
King of Denmark had been defeated at Lutter. In =1628= the French
Huguenots had been defeated at Rochelle. It was probably in
consequence of these events that there was in England a revival of
that attachment to Calvinistic doctrines which had accompanied the
Elizabethan struggle against Spain and the Pope.
14. =Religious Differences. 1625-1628.=--On the other hand, a small
but growing number amongst the clergy were breaking away from the
dogmas of Calvinism, and especially from its stern doctrine on the
subject of predestination. The House of Commons claimed to represent
the nation, and it upheld the unity of the national belief as
strongly as it had been upheld by Henry VIII. In =1625= the House
summoned to its bar Richard Montague, who had challenged the
received Calvinist opinions on the ground that they were not the
doctrines of the Church of England. In =1626= it impeached him.
Naturally, Montague and those who agreed with him warmly supported
the royal power, and in =1627= urged the duty of paying the forced
loan. Another clergyman, Roger Manwaring, preached sermons in which
Parliaments were treated with contempt, and the Commons retaliated
by impeaching the preacher. Charles would have acted in a spirit in
advance of his times, and certainly in advance of his opponents, if
he had merely upheld the right of the minority to liberty of
speech. Instead of contenting himself with this he made Montague
Bishop of Chichester and gave Manwaring a good living.
15. =The King's Declaration. 1628.=--With the intention of smoothing
matters down, Charles issued a declaration prefixed to the Articles,
which would, as he hoped, make for peace. No one was in future to
speak in public on the controverted points. Charles probably
believed himself to be acting fairly, whilst, in reality, his
compromise was most unfair. The Calvinists, who believed their views
about predestination to be of the utmost importance to the souls of
Christians, were hardly treated by the order to hold their tongues
on the subject. Their opponents did not care about the doctrine at
all, and would be only too glad if nothing more was heard of it.
Charles, however, was but following in Elizabeth's steps in imposing
silence and calling it peace. But the times were different. There
was no longer a Catholic claimant of the throne or a foreign enemy
at the gates to cause moderate men to support the government, even
in its errors.
16. =The Second Session of the Third Parliament of Charles I.
1629.=--The Houses met for a second session on January 20, =1629=.
The Commons attacked the clergy on a side on which they were
especially vulnerable. Some of those who had challenged the
Calvinistic doctrines had revived certain ceremonial forms which had
generally fallen into disuse. In Durham Cathedral especially, parts
of the service had been sung which had not been sung before, and the
Communion table, which had hitherto stood at the north door and had
been moved to the middle of the choir when needed, had been
permanently fixed at the east end of the chancel. The Commons were
indignant at what they styled Popish practices, and summoned the
offenders before them. Then they turned to Tonnage and Poundage.
Eliot, instead of confronting the difficulty directly, attempted to
make it a question of privilege. The goods of a member of the House,
named Rolle, had been seized for non-payment of Tonnage and
Poundage, and Eliot wished to summon the Custom House officers to
the bar, not for seizing the goods of an Englishman, but for a
breach of privilege in seizing the goods of a member of Parliament.
Pym, who occupied a prominent position amongst the popular party,
urged the House to take broader ground: "The liberties of this
House," he said, "are inferior to the liberties of this kingdom. To
determine the privileges of this House is but a mean matter, and the
main end is to establish possession of the subjects."[20] Eliot
carried the House with him, but Charles supported his officers, and
refused to allow them to appear at the bar of the House. Once more
the question of sovereignty was raised. The House was adjourned by
the king's order in the hope that a compromise might be discovered.
[Footnote 20: _i.e._ to establish the right of the subjects to
possess their property.]
17. =Breach between the King and the Commons. 1629.=--No compromise
could be found, and on March 2 a fresh order for adjournment was
given. When Finch, the Speaker, rose to announce it, two strong
young members, Holles and Valentine, pushed him back into his chair
whilst Eliot read three resolutions to the effect that whoever
brought in innovations in religion, or introduced opinions differing
from those of the true and orthodox church; whoever advised the levy
of Tonnage and Poundage without a grant by Parliament; and whoever
voluntarily paid those duties, was an enemy to the kingdom and a
betrayer of its liberties. A wild tumult arose. A rush was made to
free the Speaker, and another rush to hold him down. One member, at
least, laid his hand on his sword. The doors were locked, and,
amidst the hubbub, Holles repeated the resolutions, which were
accepted with shouts of 'Aye, aye.' Then the doors were opened, and
the members poured out. The king at once dissolved Parliament, and
for eleven years no Parliament met again in England.
18. =The Constitutional Dispute. 1629.=--The constitutional system
of the Tudor monarchy had practically broken down. The nation had,
in the sixteenth century, entered upon a struggle for national
independence. Henry VIII. and Elizabeth had headed it in that
struggle, and the House of Commons had but represented the nation in
accepting Henry VIII. and Elizabeth as supreme rulers. The House of
Commons now refused to admit that Charles was its supreme ruler,
because he could neither head the nation, nor understand either its
wants or its true needs. Yet the House had not as yet shown its
capacity for taking his place. It had criticised his methods of
government effectively, but had displayed its own intolerance and
disregard for individual liberty. Yet, till it could learn to
respect individual liberty, it would not be likely to gain the
sovereignty at which it aimed. A king becomes powerful when men want
a strong government to put down enemies abroad or petty tyrants at
home. A Parliament becomes powerful when men want to discuss
political questions, and political discussion cannot thrive when
voices disagreeable to the majority are silenced. The House of
Commons had thought more of opposing the king than of laying a wide
basis for its own power, and now it was, for a time at least,
silenced.
19. =The Victory of Personal Government. 1629-1632.=--Charles was
now to show whether he could do better than the Commons. He had
gained one great convert soon after the end of the first session of
the last Parliament. Wentworth, satisfied, it is to be supposed,
with the Petition of Right, and dissatisfied with the claim to
sovereignty put forward by the Commons, came over to his side and
was made first a baron and then a viscount, after which before the
end of =1628= he was made President of the Council of the North (see
p. 397). Wentworth was no Puritan, and the claim of the Commons, in
the second session, to meddle with religion no doubt strengthened
him in his conviction that he had chosen the right side. Before the
end of =1629= he became a Privy Councillor. The most influential
member of Charles's Council, however, was Weston, the Lord
Treasurer. Peace was made with France in =1629=, and with Spain in
=1630=. To bring the finances into order, the king insisted on
collecting the customs without a Parliamentary grant, and Chambers,
a merchant who refused to pay, was summoned before the Council, and
then fined 2,000_l._ and imprisoned for saying that merchants were
more wrung in England than they were in Turkey. The leading members
who had been concerned in the disturbance at the last meeting of
Parliament were imprisoned, and three of them, Eliot, Holles, and
Valentine, were charged before the King's Bench with riot and
sedition. They declined to plead, on the ground that the judges had
no jurisdiction over things done in Parliament. The judges held that
riot and sedition must be punished somewhere, and that as Parliament
was not always sitting it must be punished by themselves. As the
accused still refused to plead they were fined and imprisoned. Eliot
died of consumption in the Tower in =1632=. Charles had refused to
allow him to go into the country to recover his health, and after
his death he refused to allow his children to dispose of his body.
Eliot was the martyr, not of individual liberty, but of
Parliamentary supremacy. Charles hated him because he regarded him
as the factious accuser of Buckingham.
20. =Star Chamber Sentences. 1630-1633.=--The first years of
unparliamentary government were, on the whole, years of peace and
quiet. The Star Chamber, which under Henry VII. had put down the old
nobility, was now ready to put down the opponents of the king. Its
numbers had grown with its work, and all of the Privy Councillors
were now members of it, the only other members being two judges. It
was therefore a mere instrument in the king's hands. In =1630=
Alexander Leighton was flogged and mutilated by order of the Star
Chamber for having written a virulent libel against the bishops; in
which he blamed them for all existing mischiefs, including the
extravagance of the dress of the ladies, and ended by advising that
they should be smitten under the fifth rib. In =1633= the same court
fined Henry Sherfield for breaking a church window which he held to
be superstitious. The bulk of Englishmen were not touched by these
sentences, and there was more indignation when, in order to pay off
debts contracted in time of war, Charles ordered the enforcement of
fines upon all men holding by military tenure lands worth 40_l._ a
year who had neglected to be knighted. The Court of Exchequer held
that the fines were legal; but the whole system of military tenure
was obsolete, and those who suffered regarded themselves as wronged
through a mere technicality.
[Illustration: Sir Edward and Lady Filmer: from their brass at East
Sutton, Kent, showing armour and dress worn about 1630.]
21. =Laud's Intellectual Position. 1629-1633.=--For all matters
relating to the Church Charles's principal adviser was William Laud,
now Bishop of London. As far as doctrine was concerned Laud carried
on the teaching of Cranmer and Hooker. He held that the basis of
belief was the Bible, but that the Bible was to be interpreted by
the tradition of the early church, and that all doubtful points were
to be subjected, not to heated arguments in the pulpits, but to
sober discussion by learned men. His mind, in short, like those of
the earlier English reformers, combined the Protestant reliance on
the Scriptures with reverence for ancient tradition and with the
critical spirit of the Renascence. Laud's difficulty lay, as theirs
had lain, in the impossibility of gaining over any large number of
his fellow-countrymen. Intelligent criticism and intelligent study
were only for the few. Laud, as he himself plaintively declared, was
in danger of being crushed between the upper and lower mill-stones
of Puritanism and the Papacy.
22. =Laud as the Upholder of Uniformity.=--In all this there was
nothing peculiar to Laud. What was peculiar to him was his
perception that intellectual religion could not maintain itself by
intellect alone. Hooker's appeals to Church history and to the
supremacy of reason had rolled over the heads of men who knew
nothing about Church history, and who did not reason. Laud fell back
upon the influence of ceremonial. "I laboured nothing more," he
afterwards said, "than that the external public worship of God--too
much slighted in most parts of the kingdom--might be preserved, and
that with as much decency and uniformity as might be; being still of
opinion that unity cannot long continue in the Church when
uniformity is shut out of the Church door." He, like Eliot and the
Parliamentarians, was convinced that there could be but one Church
in the nation. As they sought to retain their hold on it by the
enforcement of uniformity of doctrine, Laud sought to retain his
hold on it by enforcing uniformity of worship. To do this he
attempted to put in force the existing law of the Church as opposed
to the existing practice. What he urged men to do he believed to be
wholly right. He himself clung with all his heart to the doctrine of
the divine right of episcopacy, of the efficacy of the Sacraments,
and to the sobering influence of appointed prayers and appointed
ceremonies. What he lacked was broad human sympathy and respect for
the endeavour of each earnest man to grow towards perfection in the
way which seems to him to be best. Men were to obey for their own
good, and to hold their tongues. The king was the supreme governor,
and with his authority, as exercised in the Courts of Star Chamber
and High Commission, Laud hoped to rescue England from Pope and
Puritan.
[Illustration: Archbishop Laud: from a copy in the National Portrait
Gallery by Henry Stone, from the Van Dyck at Lambeth.]
[Illustration: Silver-gilt tankard made at London in 1634-35, now
belonging to the Corporation of Bristol.]
23. =The Beginning of Laud's Archbishopric. 1633-1634.=--In =1633=
Laud became Archbishop of Canterbury. He at once made his hand felt
in every direction. By his advice, in consequence of an attempt of
the judges to put an end to Sunday amusements, Charles republished
the _Declaration of Sports_ which had been issued by his father,
authorising such amusements under certain restrictions. Where,
however, James had contented himself with giving orders, Charles
insisted on having the Declaration read in church by all the clergy,
and roused the resistance of those who regarded Sunday amusements as
a breach of the Sabbath. Laud was also anxious to see the Communion
table standing everywhere at the east end of the church. No doubt
his anxiety came in part from his reverence of the holy sacrament
for which it was set apart, but it also arose from his dislike to
the base purposes for which it was often made to serve. Men often
put their hats on it, or used it as a writing table. The canons, or
laws of the Church, indeed, directed that the position of the table
should, when not in use, be at the east end, though at the time of
Communion it was to be placed in that part of the church or chancel
from which the minister could best be heard. A case was brought
before the king and the Privy Council in =1633=, and it was then
decided that the bishop or other proper authority should settle what
was the position from which the minister could best be heard. Of
course the bishops settled that that place was the east end of the
chancel.
24. =Laud and Prynne. 1633-1634.=--Amongst the most virulent
opponents of Laud was William Prynne, a lawyer whose extensive study
of theology had not tended to smooth away the asperities of his
temper. He was, moreover, a voluminous writer, and had written books
against drinking healths and against the wearing of long hair by
men, in which these follies had been treated as equally blameworthy
with the grossest sins. Struck by the immorality of the existing
drama, he attacked it in a heavy work called _Histrio-mastix_, or
The scourge of stage players, in which he held the frequenting of
theatres to be the cause of every crime under the sun. He pointed
out that all the Roman emperors who had patronised the drama had
come to a bad end, and this was held by the courtiers to be a
reflection on Charles, who patronised the drama. He inserted in the
index a vile charge against all actresses, and this was held to be
an insult to the queen, who was at the time taking part in the
rehearsal of a theatrical representation. Accordingly in =1633=
Prynne was sentenced by the Star Chamber to lose his ears in the
pillory, to a heavy fine, and to imprisonment during the king's
pleasure. In =1634= the sentence was carried out. Prynne's case,
however, awakened no general sympathy, and the king does not appear
to have as yet become widely unpopular. The young lawyers came to
Whitehall to give a masque or dramatic representation in presence of
the king and queen, in order to show their detestation of Prynne's
conduct, whilst John Milton, the strictest and most pure-minded of
poets, wrote a masque, _Comus_, to show how little sympathy he had
with Prynne's sweeping denunciations. Yet, though Milton opposed
Prynne's exaggeration, his own poetry was a protest against Laud's
attempt to reach the mind through the senses. Milton held to the
higher part of the Puritan teaching, that the soul is to lead the
body, and not the body the soul. "So dear," he wrote in _Comus_,
to Heaven is saintly chastity,
That, when a soul is found sincerely so,
A thousand liveried angels lackey her,
Driving far off each thing of sin and guilt,
And, in clear dream and solemn vision,
Tell her of things that no gross ear can hear,
Till oft converse with heavenly habitants
Begin to cast a beam on the outward shape,
The unpolluted temple of the mind,
And turns it by degrees to the soul's essence,
Till all be made immortal.
CHAPTER XXXIII
THE OVERTHROW OF THE PERSONAL GOVERNMENT OF CHARLES I. 1634-1641
LEADING DATES
The Reign of Charles I., 1625-1649
The Metropolitical Visitation 1634
First Ship-money Writ (to the port-towns) 1634
Second Ship-money Writ (to all the counties) 1635
Prynne, Burton, and Bastwick in the pillory 1637
Riot in Edinburgh 1637
Scottish National Covenant 1638
Judgment in Hampden's Case 1637-1638
First Bishops' War 1639
Short Parliament 1640
Second Bishops' War 1640
Meeting of the Long Parliament 1640
Execution of Strafford, and Constitutional Reforms 1641
1. =The Metropolitical Visitation. 1634-1637.=--The antagonism which
Laud had begun to rouse in the first months of his archbishopric
became far more widely spread in the three years beginning in =1634=
and ending in =1637=, in consequence of a Metropolitical
Visitation--that is to say, a visitation which he conducted by the
Metropolitan or Archbishop--either in person or by deputy--to
enquire into the condition of the clergy and churches of the
Province of Canterbury; a similar visitation being held in the
Province of York by the authority of the Archbishop of York. Every
clergyman who refused to conform to the Prayer Book, who resisted
the removal of the Communion table to the east end of the chancel,
or who objected to bow when the sacred name of Jesus was pronounced,
was called in question, and if obstinate, was brought before the
High Commission and suspended from the exercise of his functions or
deprived of his living. Laud wanted to reach unity through
uniformity, and made the canons of the Church his standard of
uniformity. Even moderate men suspected that he sought to subject
England again to the Pope. The queen, too, entertained a Papal agent
at her Court, and a few successful conversions, brought about by
Con, who at one time resided with her in that capacity, frightened
the country into the belief that a plot existed to overthrow
Protestantism. Some of Laud's clerical supporters favoured this
idea, by talking about such topics as altars and the invocation of
the saints, which had hitherto been held to have no place in
Protestant teaching. The result was that moderate Protestants now
joined the Puritans in opposing Laud.
2. =Prynne, Bastwick, and Burton. 1637.=--Laud had little hope of
being able to abate the storm. One of his best qualities was that he
was no respecter of persons, and he had roused animosity in the
upper classes by punishing gentlemen guilty of immorality or of
breaches of church discipline as freely as he punished more lowly
offenders. In =1637= he characteristically attempted to defend
himself from the charge of being a Papist and an innovator in
religion by bringing three of his most virulent assailants--Prynne,
Bastwick, and Burton--before the Star Chamber. The trial afforded
him the opportunity of making a speech in his own defence, to which
nobody paid the least attention. As a matter of course the accused
were heavily punished, being sentenced to lose their ears in the
pillory, to pay a fine of 5,000_l._, and to imprisonment for life.
It was not now as it had been in =1634=, when Prynne stood alone in
the pillory, no man regarding him. The three victims had a triumphal
reception on their way to the pillory. Flowers and sweet herbs were
strewed in their path. The crowd applauded them whilst they
suffered. On their way to their several prisons in distant parts of
the country men flocked to greet them as martyrs.
[Illustration: The 'Sovereign of the Seas,' built for the Royal Navy
in 1637: from a contemporary engraving by John Payne.]
3. =Financial Pressure. 1635-1637.=--Revolutions are never
successful without the guidance of men devoted to ideas; but on the
other hand they are not caused only by grievances felt by religious
or high-minded people. To stir large masses of men to resistance,
their pockets must be touched as well as their souls. In =1635=
Weston, who had been created Earl of Portland, died, and a body of
Commissioners of the Treasury, who succeeded him, laid additional
impositions on commerce and established corporations for exercising
various manufactures under the protection of monopolies. This
proceeding was according to the letter of the law, as corporations
had been exempted from the act in restraint of monopolies which had
been passed in =1624= (see p. 501). So, too, was a claim put forward
by Charles in =1637= to levy fines from those who had encroached on
the old boundaries of the forests. It is true that, in the teeth of
the opposition roused, Charles exacted but a small part of the fines
imposed, but he incurred almost as much obloquy as if he had taken
the whole of the money.
4. =Ship-money. 1634-1637.=--More important was Charles's effort to
provide himself with a fleet. As the Dutch navy was powerful, and
the French navy was rapidly growing in strength, Charles, not
unnaturally, thought that England ought to be able to meet their
combined forces at sea. In =1634=, by the advice of Attorney-General
Noy, he issued writs to the port towns, to furnish him with ships.
He took care to ask for ships larger than any port--except
London--had got, and then offered to supply ships of his own, on
condition that the port towns should equip and man them. In
=1635=--Noy having died in the meantime--Charles asked for ships not
merely from the ports, but from the inland as well as from the
maritime counties. Again London alone provided ships; in all the
rest of England money had to be found to pay for the equipment and
manning of ships belonging to the king. In this way Charles got a
strong navy which he manned with sailors in the habit of managing
ships of war, and entirely at his own orders. The experience of the
Cadiz voyage had shown him that merchant-sailors, such as those who
had done good service against the Armada, were not to be trusted to
fight in enterprises in which they took no interest, and it is from
the ship-money fleet that the separation of the naval and mercantile
marine dates. Necessarily, however, Englishmen began to complain,
not that they had a navy, but that the money needed for the navy was
taken from them without a Parliamentary grant. Year after year
ship-money was levied, and the murmurs against it increased. In
February, =1637=, Charles consulted the judges, and ten out of the
twelve judges declared that the king had a right to do what was
necessary for the defence of the realm in time of danger, and that
the king was the sole judge of the existence of danger.
5. =Hampden's Case. 1637-1638.=--It was admitted that, in accordance
with the Petition of Right, Charles could not levy a tax without a
Parliamentary grant. Charles, however, held that ship-money was not
a tax, but money paid in commutation of the duty of all Englishmen
to defend their country. Common sense held that, whether ship-money
was a tax or not, it had been levied without consulting Parliament,
simply because the king shrank from consulting Parliament; or, in
other words, because he was afraid that Parliament would ask him to
put an end to Laud's system of managing the Church. Charles was
ready, as he said, to allow to Parliament liberty of counsel, but
not of control. The sense of irritation was now so great that the
nation wanted to control the Government, and knew that it would
never be able to do so if Charles could, by a subterfuge, take what
money he needed without summoning Parliament. Of this feeling John
Hampden, a Buckinghamshire squire, became the mouthpiece. He refused
to pay 20_s._ levied on his estate for ship-money. His case was
argued before the twelve judges sitting in the Exchequer Chamber. In
=1638= two pronounced distinctly in his favour, three supported him
on technical grounds, and seven pronounced for the king. Charles
continued to levy ship-money, but the arguments of Hampden's lawyers
were circulated in the country, and the judgment of the majority on
the Bench was ascribed to cowardice or obsequiousness. Their
decision ranged against the king all who cared about preserving
their property, as the Metropolitical visitation had ranged against
him all who cared for religion in a distinctly Protestant form. Yet,
even now, the Tudor monarchy had done its work too thoroughly, and
had filled the minds of men too completely with the belief that
armed resistance to a king was unjustifiable, to make Englishmen
ripe for rebellion. They preferred to wait till some opportunity
should arrive which would enable them to express their disgust in a
constitutional way.
6. =Scottish Episcopacy. 1572-1612.=--The social condition of
Scotland was very different from that of England. The nobles there
had never been crushed as they had been in England, and they had
tried to make the reformation conduce to their own profit. In =1572=
they obtained the appointment of what were known as Tulchan bishops,
who, performing no episcopal function, received the revenues of
their sees and then handed them over to certain nobles.[21] The
Presbyterian clergy, however, represented the popular element in the
nation--and that element, though it had hitherto been weak, was
growing strong through the discipline which it received in
consequence of the leading share assigned to the middle and lower
classes in the Church Courts (see p. 434). The disagreement between
these classes and the nobles gave to James the part of arbitrator,
and thus conferred on him a power which no Scottish king had had
before. After much vacillation, he consented, in =1592=, to an act
fully re-establishing the Presbyterian system. It was not long
before he repented. The Presbyterian clergy attacked his actions
from the pulpit, and one of them, Andrew Melville, plucking him by
the sleeve, called him 'God's silly vassal.' The nobles, too, were
angry because the clergy assailed their vices, and tried to subject
them to the discipline of the Church. Though their ancestors had, at
almost all times, been the adversaries of the kings, they now made
common cause with James. Gradually episcopacy was restored. Bishops
were re-appointed in =1599=. Step by step episcopal authority was
regained for them. In =1610= three of their number were consecrated
in England, and in =1612= the Scottish Parliament ratified all that
had been done.
[Footnote 21: A Tulchan was a stuffed calf's skin set by a cow to
induce her to give her milk freely.]
7. =The Scottish Bishops and Clergy. 1612-1637.=--In England bishops
had a party (lay and clerical) behind them. In Scotland they were
mere instruments of the king and the nobles to keep the clergy
quiet. In =1618=, James, supported by the bishops and the nobles,
forced upon a general assembly the acceptance of the Five Articles
of Perth, the most important of which was a direction that the
Communion should be received in a kneeling posture. Yet, in spite of
all that James had done, the local popular Church courts still
existed, and the worship of the Church remained still distinctly
Calvinistic and Puritan. Charles was more eager than his father to
alter the worship of the Scottish Church, and, in =1637=, at his
command, certain Scottish bishops--often referring for advice to
Laud--completed a new Prayer Book, not unlike that in use in
England, but differing from it, for the most part, in a sense
adverse to Puritanism. The clergy declared against it, and this time
the clergy had on their side the nobles, who not only feared lest
Charles should take from them the Church lands appropriated by their
fathers, but were also irritated at the promotion of some bishops to
high offices which they claimed for themselves.
8. =The Riot at Edinburgh and the Covenant. 1637-1638.=--On July 23,
=1637=, an attempt was made to read the new service in St. Giles's,
at Edinburgh. The women present burst into a riot, and one of them
threw her stool at the head of the officiating minister, fortunately
missing him. All Scotland took part with the rioters. The new Prayer
Book was hated, not only because it was said to be Popish, but also
because it was English. In November four committees, known as the
Tables, practically assumed the government of Scotland. In February,
=1638=, all good Scots were signing a National Covenant. Nothing
was said in it about episcopacy, but those who signed it bound
themselves to labour, by all means lawful, to recover the purity and
liberty of the Gospel, as it was established and professed before
the recent innovations.
9. =The Assembly of Glasgow, and the Abolition of Episcopacy.
1638.=--The greater part of =1638= was passed by Charles in an
endeavour to come to an understanding with the Scots. On September 2
he revoked the Prayer Book, and offered to limit the powers of the
bishops. On November 21 a general assembly met at Glasgow, in which
ninety-six lay members--for the most part noblemen--sat with 144
clergymen, and which may therefore be regarded as a sort of
Ecclesiastical Parliament in which the clergy predominated as the
nobles predominated in the single house which made up the real
Parliament. The Assembly claimed to judge the bishops, on which the
king's commissioner, the Marquis of Hamilton, dissolved the Assembly
rather than admit its claim. The Assembly, however, on the ground
that it possessed a Divine right to settle all affairs relating to
the Church independently of the King, sat on, as if nothing had
happened, deposed the bishops, and re-established the Presbyterian
system.
10. =The First Bishops' War. 1639.=--In refusing to obey the order
for dissolution, the Scottish General Assembly had practically made
itself independent of the king, and Charles was driven--unless he
cared to allow the establishment of a precedent, which might some
day be quoted against him in England--to make war upon the Scots.
Yet he dared not summon the English Parliament, lest it should
follow their example, and he had to set forth on what came to be
known as the First Bishops' War--because it was waged in the cause
of the bishops--with no more money than he could get from a
voluntary contribution, not much exceeding 50,000_l._ Soon after he
reached Berwick with his army, he found that the Scots had, on Dunse
Law,[22] an army almost equal to his own in numbers, commanded by
Alexander Leslie, an old soldier who had fought in the German wars,
and mainly composed of veterans, who had seen much service on the
Continent, whilst his own men were raw recruits. His money soon came
to an end, and it was then found impossible to keep the army
together. The war was one in which there was no fighting, and in
which only one man was killed, and he by an accident. On June 24
Charles signed the Treaty of Berwick. Both sides passed over in
silence the deeds of the Glasgow Assembly, but a promise was given
that all affairs civil and ecclesiastical should be settled in an
assembly and Parliament. Assembly and Parliament met at Edinburgh,
and declared in favour of the abolition of episcopacy; but Charles,
who could not, even now, make up his mind to submit, ordered the
adjournment of the Parliament, and prepared for a new attack on
Scotland.
[Footnote 22: 'Law,' in the Lowlands of Scotland, means a solitary
hill.]
[Illustration: Soldier armed with a pike: from a broadside, printed
_circa_ 1630.]
[Illustration: Soldier with musket and crutch: from a broadside
printed about 1630.]
11. =Wentworth in Ireland. 1633-1639.=--In preparing for a new war,
Charles had Wentworth by his side. Wentworth, who was by far the
ablest of his advisers, after ruling the north of England (see p.
514) in a high-handed fashion, had, in =1632=, been appointed Lord
Deputy of Ireland. In =1634= he summoned an Irish Parliament, taking
care that the English Protestant settlers and the Irish Catholics
should be so evenly balanced that he could do what he would with it.
He carried through it admirable laws and a vote of money which
enabled him to be independent of Parliament for some time to come.
As far as its material interests were concerned, Ireland had never
been so prosperous. Trade grew, and the flax industry of the North
sprang into existence under Wentworth's protection. Churches which
had lain in ruins since the desolating wars of Elizabeth's reign
were rebuilt, and able and active ministers were invited from
England. The Earl of Cork, who had illegally seized Church property
to his own use, was heavily fined, and Lord Mountnorris, a
self-seeking official, who refused to resign his office, was brought
before a court-martial and condemned to death; though Wentworth let
him know that his life was in no danger, and that all that was
wanted of him was the resignation of an office which he was unfitted
to fill. Wentworth required all the officers of the Crown to live up
to the motto of 'Thorough,' which he had adopted for himself, by
which he meant a 'thorough' devotion to the service of the king and
the State, without regard for private interests.
12. =The Proposed Plantation of Connaught.=--Wentworth gave great
offence to the English officials and settlers by the harsh and
overbearing way in which he kept them in order. His conduct to the
Celtic population was less violent than that of some other lord
deputies, but he had no more idea than his predecessors of leaving
the Irish permanently to their own customs and religion. He believed
that, both for their own good and for the safety of the English
Crown, they must be made as like Englishmen as possible, and that,
to effect this, it would be necessary to settle more Englishmen in
Ireland to overawe them. Accordingly, in =1635=, he visited
Connaught, where he raked up an old claim of the king's to the whole
land of the province, though Charles had promised not to put forward
any such claim at all. In every county of Connaught except Galway, a
jury was found to give a verdict in favour of the king's claim. The
jury in County Galway refused to do his bidding, and Wentworth had
the jurymen fined, and the land of the county seized by the order of
the Irish Court of Exchequer, which pronounced judgment without a
jury. He then invited English settlers to Connaught; but he found
that few English settlers would go to such a distance from their
homes. Perhaps many refused to come because they distrusted
Wentworth. Yet, for the moment, his government appeared successful.
In =1639= he visited England, and Charles, who needed an able
counsellor, made him Earl of Strafford, and from that time took him
for his chief adviser.
13. =The Short Parliament. 1640.=--Strafford's advice was that
Charles should summon an English Parliament, whilst he himself held
a Parliament in Dublin, which might show an example of loyalty. The
Irish Parliament did all that was expected of it, the Catholic
members being especially forward in voting supplies in the hope
that, if they helped Charles to conquer the Scots, he would allow
freedom of religion in Ireland. In England, Parliament met on April
13. Pym at once laid before the Commons a statement of the
grievances of the nation, after which the House resolved to ask for
redress of these grievances before granting supply. Charles offered
to abandon ship-money if the Commons would give him twelve subsidies
equal to about 960,000_l._ The Commons hesitated about granting so
much, and wished the king to yield on other points as well as upon
ship-money. In the end they prepared to advise Charles to abandon
the war with Scotland altogether, and, to avoid this, he dissolved
Parliament on May 5. As it had sat for scarcely more than three
weeks, it is known as the Short Parliament.
14. =The Second Bishops' War. 1640.=--In spite of the failure of the
Parliament, Charles gathered an army by pressing men from all parts
of England, and found money to pay them for a time by buying a large
quantity of pepper on credit and selling it at once for less than it
was worth. The soldiers, as they marched northwards, broke into the
churches, burnt the Communion rails, and removed the Communion
tables to the middle of the building. There was no wish amongst
Englishmen to see the Scots beaten. The Scots, knowing this, crossed
the Tweed, and, on August 28, routed a part of the English army at
Newburn on the Tyne. Even Strafford did not venture to advise a
prolongation of the war. Negotiations were opened at Ripon, and
Northumberland and Durham were left in the hands of the Scots as a
pledge for the payment of 850_l._ a day for the maintenance of their
army, till a permanent treaty could be arranged. Charles, whose
money was already exhausted, summoned a Great Council, consisting of
Peers alone, to meet at York. All that the Great Council could do
was to advise him to summon another Parliament, and that advice he
was obliged to take.
15. =The Meeting of the Long Parliament. 1640.=--On November 3,
=1640=, the new Parliament, which was to be known as the Long
Parliament, met. Pym once more took the lead, and proposed the
impeachment of Strafford, as the king's chief adviser in the attempt
to carry on war in defiance of Parliament. Strafford had also
collected an Irish army for an attack on Scotland, and it was
strongly believed that he had advised the king to use that army to
reduce England as well as Scotland under arbitrary government. The
mere suspicion that he had threatened to bring an Irish army into
England roused more than ordinary indignation, as, in those days,
Irishmen were both detested and despised in England. Strafford was
therefore impeached, and sent to the Tower. Laud was also imprisoned
in the Tower, whilst other officials escaped to the Continent to
avoid a similar fate. The Houses then proceeded to pass a Triennial
Bill, directing that Parliament should meet every three years, even
if the king did not summon it, and to this, with some hesitation,
Charles assented. He could not, in fact, refuse anything which
Parliament asked, because, if he had done so, Parliament would give
him no money to satisfy the Scots, and if the Scots were not
satisfied, they would recommence the war.
16. =The Impeachment of Strafford. 1641.=--On March 22, =1641=,
Strafford's trial was opened in Westminster Hall. All his
overbearing actions were set forth at length, but, after all had
been said, a doubt remained whether they constituted high treason,
that crime having been strictly defined by a statute of Edward III.
(see p. 250). Young Sir Henry Vane, son of one of the Secretaries of
State, found amongst his father's papers a note of a speech
delivered by Strafford in a Committee of the Privy Council just
after the breaking up of the Short Parliament, in which he had
spoken of the king as loose and absolved from all rules of
government. "You have an army in Ireland," Strafford was reported to
have said, "you may employ here to reduce this kingdom, for I am
confident as anything under heaven, Scotland shall not hold out five
months." The Commons were convinced that 'this kingdom' meant
England and not Scotland; but there were signs that the lords would
be likely to differ from them, and the Commons accordingly abandoned
the impeachment in which the lords sat as judges, and introduced a
Bill of Attainder (see p. 401, note), to which, after the Commons
had accepted it, the lords would have to give their consent if it
was to become law, as in the case of any ordinary Bill.
17. =Strafford's Attainder and Execution.=--Pym would have preferred
to go on with the impeachment, because he believed that Strafford
was really guilty of high treason. He held that treason was not an
offence against the king's private person, but against the king as a
constitutional ruler, and that Strafford had actually diminished the
king's authority by attempting to make him an absolute ruler, and
thereby to weaken Charles's hold upon the goodwill of the people.
This argument, however, did not break down the scruples of the
Peers, and if Charles had kept quiet, he would have had them at
least on his side. Neither he nor the queen could keep quiet.
Before the end of =1640= she had urged the Pope to send her money
and soldiers, and now she had a plan for bringing the defeated
English army from Yorkshire to Westminster to overpower Parliament.
Then came an attempt of Charles to get possession of the Tower, that
he might liberate Strafford by force. Pym, who had learnt the secret
of the queen's army-plot, disclosed it, and the peers, frightened at
their danger, passed the Bill of Attainder. A mob gathered round
Whitehall and howled for the execution of the sentence. Charles,
fearing lest the mob should take vengeance on his wife, weakly
signed a commission appointing commissioners to give the royal
assent to the Bill, though he had promised Strafford that not a hair
of his head should be touched. With the words, "Put not your trust
in princes" on his lips, the great royalist statesman prepared for
the scaffold. On May 12 he was beheaded, rather because men feared
his ability than because his offences were legally punishable with
death.
18. =Constitutional Reforms. 1641.=--Englishmen would not have
feared Strafford if they could have been sure that the king could be
trusted to govern according to law, without employing force to
settle matters in his own way. Yet, though the army-plot had made it
difficult to feel confidence in Charles, Parliament was at first
content to rely on constitutional reforms. On the day on which
Charles assented to the bill for Strafford's execution he assented
to another bill declaring that the existing Parliament should not be
dissolved without its own consent, a stipulation which made the
House of Commons legally irresponsible either to the king or to its
constituents, and which could only be justified by the danger of an
attack by an armed force at the bidding of the king. Acts were
passed abolishing the Courts of Star Chamber and the High
Commission, declaring ship-money to be illegal, limiting the king's
claims on forests, prohibiting fines for not taking up knighthood,
and preventing the king from levying Tonnage and Poundage or
impositions without a Parliamentary grant. Taking these acts as a
whole, they stripped the Crown of the extraordinary powers which it
had acquired in Tudor times, and made it impossible for Charles,
legally, to obtain money to carry on the government without the
goodwill of Parliament, or to punish offenders without the goodwill
of juries. All that was needed in the way of constitutional reform
was thus accomplished. As far as law could do it, the system of
personal government which Charles had in part inherited from his
predecessors and in part had built up for himself, was brought to
an end.
CHAPTER XXXIV
THE FORMATION OF PARLIAMENTARY PARTIES AND THE FIRST YEARS OF THE
CIVIL WAR. 1641-1644
LEADING DATES
Reign of Charles I., 1625-1649
The Debate on the Grand Remonstrance Nov. 23, 1641
The Attempt on the Five Members Jan. 4, 1642
The Battle of Edgehill Oct. 23, 1642
The Fairfaxes defeated at Adwalton Moor June 30, 1643
Waller's Defeat at Roundway Down July 13, 1643
The Raising of the Siege of Gloucester Sept. 5, 1643
The First Battle of Newbury Sept. 20, 1643
The Solemn League and Covenant taken by the
Houses Sept. 25, 1643
The Scottish Army crosses the Tweed Jan. 19, 1644
The Battle of Marston Moor July 2, 1644
Capitulation of Essex's Infantry at Lostwithiel Sept. 2, 1644
The Second Battle of Newbury Oct. 27, 1644
1. =The King's Visit to Scotland. 1641.=--If Charles could have
inspired his subjects with the belief that he had no intention of
overthrowing the new arrangements by force, there would have been
little more trouble. Unfortunately, this was not the case. In
August, indeed, the Houses succeeded in disbanding the English army
in Yorkshire, and in dismissing the Scottish army across the Tweed;
but, in the same month, Charles set out for Scotland, ostensibly to
give his assent in person to the Acts abolishing episcopacy in that
country, but in reality to persuade the Scots to lend him an army to
coerce the English Parliament. Pym and Hampden suspecting this,
though they could not prove it, felt it necessary to be on their
guard.
2. =Parties formed on Church Questions. 1641.=--There would,
however, have been little danger from Charles if political questions
alone had been at stake. Parliament had been unanimous in abolishing
his personal government, and no one was likely to help him to
restore it by force. In ecclesiastical questions, however,
differences arose early. All, indeed, wished to do away with the
practices introduced by Laud, but there was a party, which though
willing to introduce reforms into the Church, and to subject it to
Parliament, objected to the introduction of the Presbyterian
system, lest presbyters should prove as tyrannical as bishops. Of
this party, the leading members were Hyde, a politician who surveyed
State affairs with the eyes of a lawyer, and the amiable Lord
Falkland, a scholar and an enthusiast for religious toleration. On
the other hand, there was a party which believed that the abolition
of episcopacy was the only possible remedy for ecclesiastical
tyranny. If Charles had openly supported the first party, it might,
perhaps, have been in a majority; but as he did nothing of the sort,
an impression gained ground that if bishops were not entirely
abolished, they would sooner or later be restored by the king to
their full authority, in spite of any limitations which Parliament
might put upon them. Moreover, the lords, by throwing out a bill for
removing the bishops from their House, exasperated even those
members who were still hesitating. A majority in the Commons
supported a bill, known as the Root and Branch Bill, for the
abolition of episcopacy and for the transference of their
jurisdiction to committees of laymen in each diocese. Though this
bill was not passed, its existence was sure to intensify the dislike
of the king to those who had brought it in.
3. =Irish Parties. 1641.=--Before the king returned from Scotland,
news arrived from Ireland which increased the difficulty of
maintaining a good understanding with Charles. Besides the English
officials, there were two parties in Ireland discontented with
Strafford's rule. Of these one was that of the Catholic lords,
mostly of English extraction, who wanted toleration for their
religion and a large part in the management of the country. The
other was that of the native Celts, who were anxious to regain the
lands of which they had been robbed and to live again under their
old customs. Both parties were terrified at the danger of increased
persecution by the Puritan Parliament at Westminster, especially as
the government at Dublin was in the hands of two lords justices, of
whom the more active, Sir William Parsons, advocated repressive
measures against the Catholics, and the introduction of fresh
colonists from England to oust the Irish more completely from the
land. In the spring of =1641= the Catholic lords had emissaries at
Charles's court offering to send an army to his help in England, if
he would allow them to seize Dublin and to overthrow the Government
carried on there in his name.
4. =The Irish Insurrection. 1641.=--Nothing was settled when Charles
left England, and in October the native Irish, impatient of delay,
attempted to seize Dublin for themselves. The plot was, however,
detected, and they turned savagely on the English and Scottish
colony in Ulster. Murders, and atrocities worse than ordinary
murder, were committed in the North of Ireland. At Portadown the
victims were driven into a river and drowned. Women were stripped
naked and turned into the wintry air to die of cold and starvation,
and children were slaughtered as ruthlessly as full-grown men. The
lowest estimate of the destruction which reached England raised the
number of victims to 30,000, and, though this was doubtless an
immensely exaggerated reckoning, the actual number of victims must
have reached to some thousands. In England a bitter cry for
vengeance went up, and with that cry was mingled distrust of the
king. It was felt to be necessary to send an army into Ireland, and,
if the army was to go under the king's orders, there was nothing to
prevent him using it--after Ireland had been subdued--against the
English Parliament.