atives of crown was house to father had arranged under the authority of the legislature. And yet, at the time of Elizabeth's death there seems to have been no intention upon the part of the nation to carry out that arrangement, despite the fact that descendants of two daughters of Mary, the first duchess of Suffolk, existed, who were ready to receive their mighty inheritance. If it be true that representLord Beauchamp was illegitimate by reason of defects in the the house private marriage of the earl of Hertford with his mother, of Suffolk; Catherine Grey, the child of Mary's eldest daughter, Frances Brandon, certainly no such objection could be raised against the descendants of Mary's youngest daughter, Eleanor,2 the countess of Cumberland. Why the English people with its why the strong sense of legality should have been willing, under such diverted circumstances, to quietly set aside both the law and the fact from that in order to divert the title to the crown from the house of that of Stuart; Suffolk to that of Stuart, can be explained only by two assumptions: first, that politically it had become highly convenient that the crowns of the two kingdoms should be united by the accession of James VI. of Scotland; second, that the will of Henry VIII., which deprived him of the succession, and whose execution was of doubtful validity, embodied a novel conception of legality with which the nation was not familiar. While the English people perfectly understood how parliament itself could change the course of descent, it was not prepared to accept the idea that that supreme power could be delegated even to the mightiest of sovereigns. Robert Cecil, who suc- Cecil ceeded his father as Elizabeth's chief councillor, had secretly himself to pledged pledged himself to James in obedience to the popular will, and within a few hours after the death of the great queen, the council itself proclaimed his succession in the midst of a general approval, which coolly ignored not only the Suffolk claim, ignored but a dozen more of a less plausible character. 1 After an inquiry instituted by Elizabeth into the validity of the marriage before a commission of civilians and privy councillors, Archbishop Parker, in the absence of positive proof apart from their own declarations, declared their cohabitation illegal. For the proceedings and evidence, see Harl. MSS. Hales, who wrote, probably at Bacon's suggestion, in favor of the validity of the marriage, was sent to the Tower. Haynes, p. 413; Strype, p. 2 Her only daughter married the 8 As to the execution of the will, see above, p. 108. 4 See Bruce, correspondence of James VI. with Sir R. Cecil and others. 5 It is said that as many as fourteen claimants existed. See Doleman (Per James in obedience to the popular will; council all other claims. James' theory of indefeas ible hered itary right; 2. The title which James thus acquired to the English throne could be grounded only upon the theory of popular election as manifested by universal consent, or upon the antithetical theory of indefeasible hereditary right. To the latter theory the new king had already given an extreme statement, far in advance of what had been asserted by Edward IV., who claimed only that there was a peculiar human virtue in a particular line of succession which the power of parliament itself could not overthrow. Some years before his accession to the English throne James had prepared for the instruction of his son a work known as the "Basilicon Doron," 2 in which he claimed that the right of kings was not only indefeasible, but divine and absolute over all orders of men within their realms, a theory afterwards expanded into the statement that the rule of succession in the order of primogeniture was a divine institution, which antedated not only the Christian but the Mosaic dispensation. While James was careful to set forth his claim of indefeasible hereditary right in a pompous proclamation,* he was equally careful to have that claim sustained upon the firmed by meeting of parliament in an act which declared that "the parliament; imperial crown of the realm of England did, by inherent birth the "Basilicon Doron;" James' title con effect of James' conflict with the Scotch kirk as organized by Knox and right and lawful and undoubted succession, descend and come to his most excellent majesty, as being lineally, justly, and lawfully next and sole heir of the blood royal of this realm."5 If the prolonged and bitter struggle waged by James and his predecessors against the turbulent Scotch nobility for the exaltation of the crown had created in his mind an extravagant idea of the royal prerogative as applied to the government of the state, his no less bitter conflict with the Scotch kirk as organized by Knox and Melville had convinced him that the royal authority should likewise dominate in the government of the church. The intense moral enthusiasm excited by Knox sons), Conference on the Succession. 1 See vol. i. p. 577, and note I. 2 Mentioned probably for the first time in the advices from Nicolson, ascribed by Thorpe to October, 1598. See State Papers, Scotl., vol. lxiii. p. 50. 8 Such was the system of Sir Robert Filmer, whose doctrines were solemnly adopted by the University of Oxford. See Macaulay, vol. i. pp. 35, 132. King's MSS., p. 123, fol. 18 b. I Jac. c. I. 5 bishops byterian completed; and his followers had found prompt and coherent expression in Scotland through an ecclesiastical system formed strictly upon the Calvinistic model, with kirk sessions, presbyteries, and provincial synods, subject to the supreme control of a general assembly composed of elected delegates. Thus alongside of the Scotch parliament, composed of prelates and nobles whose resolutions were influenced largely by the crown, there grew up a really representative national assembly, that soon learned how to extend its deliberations beyond mere religious to political questions. In 1580 this new Christian democracy, in 1580 which had arisen without legal sanction, abolished in its gen- abolished eral assembly the office of bishop, as having "no sure warrant, and pres authority, or good ground out of the word of God;" and in system the next year, by the adoption of a second Book of Discipline, it organized upon a purely Calvinistic basis those presbyterian institutions which, with slight modifications, have survived to the present day. In order to bridle this new national force that threatened to take from the nobles the lands of which they had despoiled the church, and to make the crown a mere instrument for the establishment of the religious system which it embodied, James, in 1584, obtained from the Scotch parlia- in 1584 ment an act that restored the entire government of the church undone by to the bishops, while it denounced both the legislative and hostile judicial authority which the general assembly had assumed. Although the ministers of the kirk yielded for the moment to the blow thus inflicted, a struggle for the reëstablishment of the presbyterian system soon began, whose pressure finally compelled James to consent in 1592 to an act which repealed in 1592 the legislation of 1584, formally abolished episcopacy, and fixed organizathe Calvinistic organization of the church upon a legal basis.2 tion reesJames was permitted to retain only the right of being present on a legal in the general assembly, and of fixing the time and place of its annual meeting. Four years later, when he attempted to Melville question the right of the assembly to meet without his war- James' rant, Melville, who had come to him as one of a deputation relation to from that body, took him by the sleeve, and, after calling him system; 1 See Green, Hist. of the Eng. People, vol. iii. p. 49; Gardiner, Hist. Eng., vol. i. p. 47. Some years before, the bishops had been reduced to the state of "Tulchans," or dummies, whose only function was to hand over the greater the work legislation; Calvinistic tablished basis; defined the new James espoused the cause of the bishops; "God's silly vassal," told him there were two kings and two kingdoms in Scotland. "There is Christ Jesus the King, and his kingdom the church, whose subject James VI. is, and of whose kingdom not a king, nor a lord, nor a head, but a member. And they whom Christ has called and commanded to watch over his church, and govern his spiritual kingdom, have sufficient power of him and authority so to do, both together and severally; the which no Christian king nor prince should control and discharge, but fortify and assist." In order to put an end to this condition of things, which threatened to subvert the power of the monarch as it had subverted that of the bishops, James resolved to make their cause his own. To restore the episcopate became with him a matter of settled policy; "No bishop, no king" became an axiom in his political philosophy. And at the same time, in order to prevent the collisions which constantly occurred between two national assemblies legislating independently of each other, often upon the same subject-matter, it was deemed wise to devise some scheme through which representatives of the church could be admitted to a share in the deliberations of the parliament. As a concession to that demand, the estates, at the close of 1597, passed an act authorizing such persons to sit in their midst as the their right king might appoint to the office of bishop or abbot, or to any other prelacy.2 The settlement thus attempted proved, however, equally unsatisfactory to both parties: to the kirk, because it had demanded the admission not of royal nominees, but of representatives of the clergy chosen by themselves; to the king, because the new bishops whom he finally appointed under the act in the fall of 1600 were not acknowledged by the church as having any spiritual status or jurisdiction. Thus the failure did James fail to put in practice the ideas embodied in his "Basilicon Doron," in which he had only a short time before settlement announced the hope of reëstablishing his authority over the Scotch kirk by the restoration of the bishops as the agents through whom his absolute and divine right could be asserted over every class within the realm. Such was the mental temper and such the political experience of the man who, on the in 1597 the estates conceded to sit with them; in the midst of of this attempted James wrote the Doron." 1 J. Melville's Diary, pp. 368–371. 15, 1600, State Papers, Scotl., vol. lxvi. p. 96; Gardiner, vol. i. p. 77, and note I. 24th of March, 1603, assumed the task of governing a people with whose political institutions and habits of thought he never became thoroughly familiar. iar system passed to unim conciliar Tudor 3. In order to estimate clearly the extent to which James The conciland Charles were able to put in force their personal ideas of of the government, the fact must be kept steadily in view that the Tudors highly centralized system of "government by councils," which the Stuarts the Tudors had organized and employed for more than a cen- paired: tury, passed into their hands with all of its organs unimpaired. In the account heretofore given of the growth of that system the statement was made that, owing to the decline which had taken place in the constitution of the national assembly at the end of the civil war, Henry VII. and his successors were able to transfer the centre of gravity of the state from the king in parliament to the king in council. Out of that new condition of things grew the necessity for a subdivision of the labors of the council among a number of committees, to each of which was assigned a definite class of official duties. In that way the council gradually became a body of trained administrators, scope of whose duty it was to direct and supervise the entire state jurisdiction machinery, from the parliament itself down to the local self- in the governing bodies, and to mark out for punishment, in special time; cases, all persons, whether in or out of parliament, who undertook to defy or obstruct royal mandates. An enumeration has already been made of the agencies employed by the council as agencies it existed in the days of Elizabeth in order to make its influ- through ence all-pervading, chief among which were the inquisitorial powers of high commission and the dreaded star chamber.1 The mo- were tive power, the guiding force of this great central machine, was the king himself, under whose eye everything was supposed to the king's pass, and who was all in all. If such an abnormal centraliza- influence; personal tion of power was necessary in the days of Henry VII. in order to bring peace and law out of the anarchy which the civil war had left behind it, if it was necessary in the days of his son to bear England safely through the crisis of the Reformation, if during those days it gave birth to much administrative organization invaluable to later times, certain it is that the peaceful and prosperous conditions which existed at the accession of the house of Stuart made it imperative that the 1 See above, pp. 176–183. which the the council exercised; |