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speech;

met by a

execution

of laws against catholics;

two subsidies voted;

the king's the war with Spain and as to possible concessions in favor of the English catholics, the king addressed a courteous speech, in which, after declaring his desire to maintain the true reli gion intact, he asked for subsidies to carry on a conflict which, as it was "begun by your advice and entreaty, what a great dishonor it were both for you and me, if this action so begun should fail for that assistance you are able to give me." The answer made to this reasonable request, put forward at a time when the obligations of the crown amounted to near a million of pounds, was a petition drawn up by Pym and Sandys, in request for which the king was asked to execute immediately all existing laws against catholic recusants and missionaries, which was sent to the lords on the 30th of June.1 Turning then to the question of supply, the commons, after a speech from Phelips deprecating the king's failure to take them into his confidence as to the conduct of the war, voted two subsidies amounting only to about £140,000. With these preliminaries passed, the Calvinistic or Puritan party, which controlled the house, proceeded to make a test case against the reactionary or Arminian faction, who were now rejecting alike the doctrines of Montague; Rome and Geneva. In 1624 Richard Montague, an Essex rector, in replying to a pamphlet 2 written by a catholic priest, who had denounced the Calvinistic tenets as a part of the doctrine of the state church, repelled the assault by a line of argument 3 which clearly maintained that they could not, after due investigation, be fairly considered as such. When complaint was made of Montague's paper to James' last parliament, the house referred it to Archbishop Abbott, who contented himself with sending for the author, upon whom he bestowed a mild reprimand. Montague then appealed to the king himself, "Appello,,, who permitted him to prepare a second book, entitled "Appello Cæsarem," in which he set forth his original views with even greater intensity. Before the publication of that book, which was duly licensed, James died, and it was issued with a dedication to his successor. These two books of Montague's

Puritans prosecute Richard

his

Cæsarem;"

1 In addition to the journals, we have for this parliament, Eliot's Negotium Posterorum, edited by Dr. Grosart, the Fawsley MS., edited for the Camden Society by Mr. Gardiner, and the volume of Eliot Notes.

2 Entitled The Gag for the New Gospel, 1622.

3 In a paper entitled A New Gag for an Old Goose.

contempt of

were now submitted to a committee of the house, which, while condemning their contents, found it difficult to find a legal basis upon which their author could be punished. Finally, upon the ground that the "Appello Cæsarem" was a contempt held to be a of the house, because published while the original question the house; was there pending, Montague was committed to the custody of the sergeant-at-arms,1 who released him upon a bond for his further appearance. Turning then from the question of religion to that of finance, the house saw fit to ignore the custom that had given tonnage and poundage to the king for life since the time of Henry VI., by limiting the grant of the cus- grant of the toms to Charles to the term of one year,2 with the purpose, no limited to doubt, of reopening the vexed question of impositions, which one year. had been so fiercely contested in the preceding reign. After a further demand for supply had been rejected, the houses, on account of the plague, were adjourned on the 11th of July, to meet again, after a short recess, at Oxford.

customs

distrusts

The twelve days' session, which began in that city on the Parliament at Oxford; 1st of August, was consumed by a series of angry debates, in the course of which the Puritans reproached the king for his failure to put in force the penal laws against the catholics, while the court faction assailed the popular party in the house for their bad faith in refusing to grant supplies sufficient for the maintenance of a war that had been undertaken at their express invitation. The real difficulty that prevented a settlement of the financial question was the distrust which the house house felt of the leadership of Buckingham, a feeling which Buckingwas intensified by Charles' failure to present for discussion his ham; plans for the conduct of the war. In the course of a memorable debate Phelips made the whole question at issue one of confidence, and Sir Francis Seymour went so far as to name Buckingham, the chief minister, as the man to be held responsible. "Let us lay the fault where it is," he said. "The duke of Buckingham is trusted, and it must needs be in him or his agents;" and to that Phelips added, "It is not fit to

6

1 "The bond was to be given to the sergeant, because it was affirmed by Sir Ed. Coke that the house could not take a recognizance.' — Fawsley Debates, p. 53. Subsequent practice has decided against Coke. Hatsell's Pre

cedents, vol. iv. p. 276.” — Gardiner, vol.
v. p. 363, note I.

2 The bill was dropped in the lords.
For the prior practice as to life-grants,
see above, pp. 15, 16.

repose the safety of the kingdom upon those that have not In order to save Bucking

to save him parts answerable to their places." 1

from im

peachment

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

dissolved

protestation

the ostensible ground that the plague had introduced itself into Oxford.2 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 Au-
gust, was never really spoken.
See
Preface to Fawsley Debates.

2 The real cause was that
"the
course which the commons were tak-
ing 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.

8 Fadera, vol. xviii. p. 737 ; vol. xx. p. 118; Dowell, Hist. of Taxation, vol. i. p. 192.

met

6, 1626;

Eliot;

ministerial

upon Buck

from the national arena the popular orators who had sorely Second harassed him in his first parliament opened the way in the parliament second, which began on the 6th of February, 1626, for a more February terrible antagonist, who now assumed the direction of the new struggle for liberty in which he fell as the first martyr. Sir Sir John 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 ingham; the 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 corruption 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.

2 Foster's Sir J. Eliot, vol. i. p. 515, March 27.

56.

848.

4 Commons' Journals, vol. i. pp. 844

response to

ham

in May;

great

a minister

can plead obedience

to the

of his

Sovereign;

a new era in the history of English eloquence by its departure from the cold and stately reasoning of the past.1 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 commands 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 be lieve, 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 Tower for offensive words spoken in the course of the impeachment. 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

Digges imprisoned; house

refused to proceed

with

business

were

released.

Charles' conflict with the lords;

3

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 of privilege 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.5 This

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.

3 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.

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