peachment dissolved protestation repose the safety of the kingdom upon those that have not to save him parts answerable to their places." 1 In order to save Buckingfrom im- ham from impeachment, and to suspend the conflict thus parliament unhappily inaugurated between the king and the commons, August 12; Charles' first parliament was dissolved on August 12, upon the ostensible ground that the plague had introduced itself into Oxford. Upon the eve of the dissolution, however, the house was careful to adopt a protestation, in which its memadopted by bers declared "before God and the world with one heart and the house; voice, that we will ever continue most loyal and obedient subjects to our most gracious sovereign King Charles, and that we will be ready in convenient time, and in a parliamentary way, freely and dutifully to do our utmost endeavor to discover and reform the abuses and grievances of the realm and state, and in the like sort to afford all necessary supply to His Majesty upon his present and all other just occasions and designs." Thus turned adrift with an indefinite promise of supply in the future, Charles and Buckingham were driven to illegal methods of taxation in order to carry on the war. Under such circumstances the customs revenue that parliament had failed to grant was levied by royal warrant under an order in council, which declared that it "was now a principal part of the revenue of the crown, and was of necessity to be continued for the support thereof;" and to provide present means for sending out the fleet the council also authorized the issue of privy seals to raise what was in effect a forced loan. The failure, however, of the ill-starred expedition against Cadiz, and the increase in the debt which resulted therefrom, forced the king to summon a new parliament, from which he was carePhelips and ful to exclude the opposition leaders, Phelips, Seymour, Coke, Alford, Palmes, and Wentworth, by making them sheriffs of their counties. customs revenue levied by royal warrant; and privy seals issued; others made sheriffs. 3. The clever expedient by which Charles thus removed 1 Gardiner clearly demonstrates that the great speech of Eliot, inserted by Foster, although prepared no doubt for the debate begun on the 10th of August, was never really spoken. See Preface to Fawsley Debates. 2 The real cause was that "the course which the commons were taking led surely, if indirectly, to the re sponsibility of ministers to parliament; and the responsibility of ministers to parliament meant just as surely the transference of sovereignty from the crown to the parliament."- Gardiner, Hist. Eng., vol. v. p. 430. 3 Fadera, vol. xviii. p. 737; vol. xx. p. 118; Dowell, Hist. of Taxation, vol. i. p. 192. parliament ministerial ingham; from the national arena the popular orators who had sorely Second harassed him in his first parliament opened the way in the met second, which began on the 6th of February, 1626, for a more February 6, 1626; terrible antagonist, who now assumed the direction of the new struggle for liberty in which he fell as the first martyr. Sir Sir John Eliot; John Eliot, a Devonshire gentleman of high culture and of a lofty and ardent nature, taking up the subject of ministerial his idea of responsibility at the point at which Phelips had left it, essayed responsi the mighty task of substituting for the Tudor theory that min- bility; isters are responsible to the crown alone, the more ancient doctrine that they are responsible to the nation in parliament, a doctrine finally reëstablished in England through the results of two revolutions. To the mind of Eliot, the cause of all the evils from which the country was then suffering was the maladministration of "that great lord the duke of Buckingham;" his attack and the whole strength of his nature was concentrated into upon Buckthe effort to bring him to justice through the application of the means which had been so successfully applied to the punishment of Bacon and Middlesex. But no sooner was Eliot's attack begun than Charles saw in the assault upon the minister whom he trusted a menace to the crown itself; and he therefore said to the house, "I must let you know that I Charles' will not allow any of my servants to be questioned among you, the house; much less such as are of eminent place and near to me; ❞ 1 and at a later day, after a bitter speech from Eliot 2 against Buckingham had moved him to anger, Charles summoned the commons to his presence and told them to "remember that parliaments are altogether in my power for their calling, sitting, and dissolution; therefore, as I find the fruits of them good or evil, they are to be continued or not to be."3 But in spite of all such menaces the house moved steadily on, and, after voting that they could proceed in such a case upon common fame alone, Buckingham was formally impeached in May at the bar Buckingof the lords, where, after a prologue from Sir Dudley Digges, impeached Eliot summed up the charges of incompetency and corrup- in May; tion preferred against him in a speech whose short, incisive Eliot's sentences, terrible directness, and brilliant invective opened up speech; 1 Parl. or Const. Hist., vol. vi. pp. 8 March 29, Parl. Hist., vol. ii. p. 430, 431. 4 Commons' Journals, vol. i. pp. 844 2 Foster's Sir J. Eliot, vol. i. p. 515, March 27. 56. 848. response to ham great a minister can plead obedience to the commands of his sovereign; a new era in the history of English eloquence by its departure from the cold and stately reasoning of the past. In the course denied that of his argument Eliot sharply combatted the idea that a minister could claim immunity from punishment by pleading obedience to the commands of his sovereign. In speaking of the loan made of English ships to serve against the protestant city of Rochelle, he said "that if his majesty himself were pleased to have consented, or to have commanded, which I cannot believe, yet this could no way satisfy for the duke, or make any extenuation of the charge." 2 The prompt response of Charles to this stirring appeal, into which was concentrated the pent-up wrath of an angered nation, was a declaration that the deeds with which Buckingham was charged were his own, a declaration quickly followed by an assertion of the royal right to imprison members, even during the session, through the arrest of Eliot and Digges, who were seized and hurried off to the Digges imprisoned; Tower for offensive words spoken in the course of the imhouse peachment. The counterblast of the house to this sudden assault was a refusal to proceed with business until their members should be released, an expedient which, after a short conuntil they test, ended in the discharge first of Digges and then of Eliot.* Beyond that point Charles refused to go; in his allegiance to his minister he was immovable; a fact pointedly emphasized by Buckingham's election on June 1, at the solicitation of his royal master, to the chancellorship of Cambridge University. Eliot and refused to proceed with business were released. Charles' conflict with the lords; In the midst of the conflict in which Charles was thus involved with the commons, he was rash enough to antagonize the house of lords by assailing its privileges, in order to punish two peers who were enemies of Buckingham. Because the question earl of Arundel had permitted his son, Lord Maltravers, to involved in marry clandestinely and without the royal assent Elizabeth Stuart, the sister of the young duke of Lennox, whose hand Charles as the head of her house had intended to bestow in another direction, he was excluded from the council and committed to the Tower during the sitting of parliament. This of privilege case of Arundel; 1 Foster's Sir J. Eliot, vol. i. pp. 324-330. 2 For the earlier history of that doctrine, see vol. i. pp. 442, 443, 503. 8 Both houses finally declared that they had heard no such words. Lords' Journals, pp. 592, 627; Commons' Journals, May 12, 13, 15-17, 19, 20. 4 The former, May 16, the latter, the 19th. 5 Council Register, March 4. earl of writ of breach of privilege the lords resented, and after a prolonged contest Charles was forced to release the earl, upon the ground stated in a remonstrance drawn up on April 19," that no lord of parliament, the parliament sitting, or within the usual times of privilege of parliament, is to be imprisoned or restrained without sanction or order of the house, unless it be for treason or felony, or for refusing to give surety for the peace. Against a more dangerous enemy of the favorite, the earl of case of the Bristol, who was ambassador to Spain at the time of the visit Bristol; of Charles and Buckingham to Madrid, and who had thus become possessed of dangerous secrets, the king directed a blow at once novel and revolutionary. Bristol, who had been for two years deprived of his liberty, and who had on two occasions failed to receive a writ of summons, complained of that denied his breach of privilege to the peers,2 who declared through a com- summons; mittee appointed to investigate the subject that there was no instance of record in which a peer capable of sitting in parliament had been refused his summons. Under the pressure of that report Charles consented to send Bristol his writ, but writ finally along with it went a letter from the lord keeper, Coventry, in- letter forforming him that he could only avail himself of it on pain of bidding the royal displeasure. Ingeniously assuming that a writ under the great seal took precedence of a lord keeper's letter, the earl obeyed the mandate of the former and came to London,1 in order to lay the correspondence with Coventry before the peers, for which offence he was promptly impeached by the attorney-general, acting under the king's direction, with high Bristol, treason at the bar of the lords. To that attack Bristol replied charged by impeaching Buckingham," and on the 1st of May the upper treason, house ordered that the two accusations should be heard impeached Buckingtogether, saving in that way Bristol's right to testify against ham. sent with its use; who was with Charles passage of commons replied by a remon strance; Buckingham. Thus it was that the favorite became the subject of two impeachments: the one presented by an individual peer, the other by the commons acting as the grand inquest of the realm. While the lower house was thus engaged in pressing the demanded doctrine of ministerial responsibility, on the one hand, and the supply bill; peers in defending their privileges, on the other, the urgent question of supply which they had been called upon to solve was held in abeyance. Worn out by the delay, the king demanded on the 9th of June that the subsidy bill should be passed before the end of the following week, at the same time indicating that if it were not, he would be compelled "to use other resolutions." 2 The commons replied that the question of supply must be preceded by a remonstrance in which, after denying that tonnage and poundage could be lawfully imposed without their consent, they demanded the dismissal of Buckingham, upon the ground "that until this great person be removed from intermeddling with the great affairs of state, we are out of hope of any good success; and do fear that any money we shall or can give will, through his misemployment, be turned rather to the hurt and prejudice of this your kingdom than otherwise." Having failed to induce the peers to pronounce judgment against the favorite, the commons attempt to thus attempted to use the money power as a means of forministerial cing Charles to concede ministerial responsibility in a form which involved a direct admission of their supremacy over the The king's response was embodied in a resolve for an immediate dissolution. In reply to a petition from the peers for a postponement he answered, "No, not a minute; parliament and so on the 15th of June his second parliament ended dissolved its existence. And as a manifestation of his contempt for the remonstrance with which the house had closed its labors, ordered to a proclamation was issued ordering all copies of it to be destroyed; and not long after, Sir John Eliot, who was mainly responsible for what had occurred, was declared by the council to be unworthy to hold any longer the office of vice-admiral of Devon. force responsi bility by use of money power; June 15; remonstrance be de stroyed. crown. 5 1 Elsing's Notes, 1624-26, p. 154. 4 Lords' Journals, vol. iii. p. 682; Parl. or Const. Hist., vol. vii. p. 290. 5 Fœdera, vol. xviii. p. 719. 6 October 26. |