During the second half of the sixteenth century and the first half of
the seventeenth, the political and religious energies of Europe were
very largely devoted to the settlement of questions that had been
raised by that great upheaval known as the Protestant Reformation.
On the Continent a reaction had almost everywhere set in. Not only
were the new religious doctrines very generally stifled, but even
those political discontents which seemed to follow as an inseparable
consequence of the religious movement, were put down with a rigorous
hand. The general tendency was toward the establishment of a firmer
absolution both in Church and in State.
But in England this tendency was arrested. It was the good fortune of
the nation to have a monarch upon the throne who vigorously resisted
every foreign attempt to interfere with English affairs. It was
doubtless the political situation rather than earnestness of religious
conviction that led Elizabeth to make the Church of England independent
of the Church of Rome. But in securing political independence she also
secured the success of the Reformation. Doubtless she was neither
able nor inclined to resist the prevailing tendency toward political
absolutism; but it had been indispensable to her success that she
should enlist in the cause of religious and political independence
all the powers of the nation. However, as soon as independence was
established by the destruction of the Spanish Armada, it became evident
that there was another question to be settled of not less significance.
That question was whether the English Constitution was to be developed
in the direction of its traditional methods, or whether the government
and people should adopt the reactionary methods that were coming to be
so generally accepted on the Continent. It took a century of strife
to answer the question. The struggle did not become earnest during the
reign of Elizabeth, but it cost Charles I. his head, and the Stuart
dynasty its right to the throne. For three generations the kings were
willing to stake every thing in favor of the Continental policy, while
Parliament was equally anxious to maintain the traditional methods. It
was unavoidable that a conflict should ensue; and the Great Revolution
of the seventeenth century was the result.
James I., during the whole of his reign, showed a disposition to
override whatever principles of the Constitution stood in the way of
his personal power. Charles I. was a man of stronger character than his
father, and he brought to the service of the same purpose a greater
energy and a more determined will. As soon as he ascended the throne
in 1625, it began to look as though a contest would be inevitable
between royal will on the one hand and popular freedom on the other.
The King, determined to rule in his own way, not only questioned the
right of Parliament to inquire into grievances, but even insisted upon
what he regarded as his own right to levy money for the support of
the Government without the consent of Parliament. This determination
Parliament was disposed to question, and in the end to resist.
Under the maxim of the English Government, that “the King can do no
wrong,” there is but one way of securing redress, in case of an undue
exercise of royal power. As the Constitution presumes that the King
never acts except under advice, his ministers, as his constitutional
advisers, may be held responsible for all his acts. The impeachment of
ministers, therefore, is the constitutional method of redress. It was
the method resorted to in 1626. Articles of Impeachment were brought by
the House of Commons against the King’s Prime Minister and favorite,
the Duke of Buckingham.
One of the most prominent members of Parliament, and the foremost
orator of the day was Sir John Eliot. This patriot, born in 1590,
and consequently now thirty-six years of age, was appointed by the
Commons one of the managers of the impeachment. With such skill and
vigor did he conduct the prosecution against Buckingham, that the king
determined to put a stop to the impeachment by ordering Eliot’s arrest
and imprisonment. Eliot was thrown into the Tower; but the Commons
regarded the arrest as so flagrant a violation of the rights of members
that they immediately resolved “not to do any more business till they
were righted in their privileges.” The King, in view of this unexpected
evidence of spirit on the part of the Commons, deemed it prudent
to relent. Eliot was discharged; and the Commons, on his triumphal
reappearance in the House, declared by vote “that their managers had
not exceeded the commission entrusted to them.”
Thus the first triumph in the contest was gained by the Commons. But
the King was not unwilling to resort to even more desperate measures.
He determined to raise money independently of Parliament, and, if
Parliament should continue to pry into the affairs of his minister, to
dispense with Parliament almost or quite altogether. This desperate
determination he undertook to carry out chiefly by the raising of
forced loans and the issuing of monopolies. But here again the King
met with a more strenuous opposition than he had anticipated. Eliot
and Hampden, with some seventy-six other members of the English gentry
refused to make the contribution demanded. As such defiance threatened
to break down the whole system, the King was forced either to resort to
extreme measures or to abandon his method. He resolved upon the former
course, but he was forced to the latter. He threw Eliot and Hampden
into prison; but the outcry of the people was so great and so general
that the necessary money could not be raised, and so he was obliged to
call his third Parliament. Eliot and Hampden, though in prison, were
elected members; and the King, not deeming it prudent to retain them,
ordered their release a few days before the opening of the session.
The special object for which Parliament had been called by the King
was the granting of money; but the members were in no mood to let the
opportunity pass without securing from the monarch an acknowledgment
of their rights in definite form. Accordingly, they appointed Sir
Edward Coke, the most distinguished lawyer of the time, to draw
up a petition to the King that should embody a declaration of the
constitutional privileges on which they reposed their rights. The
result was the famous “Petition of Right,” an instrument which, in
the history of English liberty, has been only second in importance to
the Great Charter itself. The petition asked the King’s assent to a
number of propositions, the most important of which were that no loan
or tax should be levied without the consent of Parliament; that no
man should be imprisoned except by legal process; and that soldiers
should not be quartered upon the people without the people’s consent.
These propositions introduced nothing new into the Constitution. They
professed simply to ask the King’s approval of principles and methods
that had been acknowledged and acted upon for hundreds of years. The
great significance of the Petition of Right was that it designed to
secure the assent of the monarch to a reign of law instead of a reign
of arbitrary will. The object of Parliament was to put into definite
form a clear expression of the King’s purpose. They desired to know
whether his intention was to rule according to the precedents of the
English Constitution that had been taking definite form for centuries,
or whether, on the contrary, he was determined to build up a system of
absolutism similar to that which was very generally coming to prevail
on the Continent. The petition passed the two Houses and went to the
King for his approval. He gave an evasive answer.[1][A] Parliament was
taken by surprise and seemed likely to be baffled. It was a crisis of
supreme danger. Sir John Eliot was the first to see that if they were
now to thwart the King’s purpose it must be done by availing themselves
immediately of the responsibility of Buckingham. He determined that the
proper course was a remonstrance to the King; and it was in moving this
remonstrance that his great speech was made.
[A] Numerals inserted in the course of the work refer the reader
to corresponding Illustrative Notes at the end of each volume.
On hearing the King’s answer, Parliament, in great perplexity and
despondency, immediately adjourned till the next day. When, on the
morning of June 3, 1628, the Commons came together, “the King’s
answer,” says Rushworth, “was read, and seemed too scant, in regard to
so much expense, time, and labor as had been expended in contriving the
petition. Whereupon Sir John Eliot stood up and made a long speech, and
a lively representation of all grievances, both general and particular,
as if they had never before been mentioned.”[2]
Throughout the speech there is a compactness and an impetuosity truly
remarkable. No one at all familiar with the history and condition
of the time, will fail to see that it was a masterly presentation of
the issues at stake. It is pervaded with a tone of loyalty—even of
affection—toward the King. The argument was founded on the theory
that even under the best of kings, with an irresponsible form of
administration, there can be no security against selfish and ambitious
ministers, and that under any government whatever there can be no
adequate guarantees against such abuses except in the provisions of
law. The orator introduces no grievance personal to himself, though he
had already twice suffered imprisonment for words spoken in debate. His
entire object seems to have been to expose abuses that had oppressed
the people during the ten years under Buckingham’s rule, and to show
how, by means of his duplicity and incompetency, the honor of the
country had been sacrificed, its allies betrayed, and those necessities
of the King created which gave rise to the abuses complained of in the
Petition of Right.
Aside from the striking oratorical merits of the speech and the
light it throws on the all-important struggles of the time, there
are two circumstances that tend to give it peculiar interest. It is
the earliest parliamentary speech of real importance that has been
preserved to us. The age in which it was delivered is enough to account
for the antique air of the orator’s style—a style, however, which
will be especially relished by all those who have learned to enjoy
the quaint literary flavor of our early masters of English prose. The
other circumstance of especial interest is the fact that soon after the
delivery of the speech, and in consequent of it, Eliot was thrown into
prison, where, after an ignominious confinement and a brutal treatment
of two and a half years, he died a martyr’s death. His earnest plea not
only cost him his life, but it cost him a long period of ignominy that
was far worse than death. But he kept the faith, and calmly underwent
his slow martyrdom. The last word that he sent out from his prison was
an expression of belief that upon the maintenance or the abandonment of
the privileges of Parliament would depend the future glory or misery
of England. By the ability of his advocacy, by the constancy of his
purpose, and by the manner of his death, he fully deserved that the
author of the “Constitutional History of England” should call him, as
he does, “the most illustrious confessor in the cause of liberty whom
that time produced.”