Charles' offer to yield the right of the crown to levy customs; privilege was to last still remained an open question.1 Only by the use of a legal fiction 2 could it be claimed that Rolle's case came within the rule, as the seizure of his goods had taken place on the 30th of October, four months after the close of one session and two months before the actual beginning of another. And yet in spite of such difficulties, Lyttelton demanded that "the parties be sent for that violated the liberties." In order to compose the controversy, which Phelips threatened to reopen by moving for a committee upon the whole question of the levy of tonnage and poundage, Charles on January 24 summoned the houses to Whitehall, where he assured them that he did not intend to levy the customs by his "hereditary prerogative." "It ever was," he said, "and still is my meaning by the gift of my people to enjoy it ; and my intention in my speech at the end of the last session was not to challenge tonnage and poundage of right, but for expedience de bene esse, showing you the necessity, not the right, by which I was to take it until you had granted it into me; assuring myself, according to your general profession, that you wanted time and not good will to give it me." Instead of meeting the king in the conciliatory spirit thus exthe house's pressed, the house still failed to make the usual life-grant of the customs by postponing the tonnage and poundage bill in order to use it as a weapon in the serious religious controversy yet to come. At a later day the question of privilege was resumed when the custom-house officers were called to the bar to answer for their acts in seizing a member's goods. At that point the king intervened for their protection, informing the house that what had been done "was done by his own direction and commandment of his privy council, . . . and therefore could not in this sever the acts of the officers from his own act, neither could his officers suffer from it without high dishonor to His Majesty."4 In the face of the mighty problem thus presented by the king's refusal to permit his officers to be held responsible for his acts, the house, on the 23d of cold response; Charles refused to questioned for his acts; 1 See Hatsell, vol. i. pp. 67, 99. hindered in the fulfilment of duties," etc.- Gardiner, vol. vii. p. 33. 8 See the extract printed in Lingard, vol. vii. p. 346. 4 Rushworth, vol. i. p. 659. of resolu religious in February, adjourned for reflection; and the next day1 the sub-committee completed the resolutions which were to be submitted to the house on the subject of recent religious innovations. The real grievance of which the resolutions complained substance was the departure that had taken place from the Calvinistic tions theology, dominant in the national church almost from the concerning beginning of the Reformation, in favor of what was now de- novations; nounced as popery and Arminianism, which commanded that communion tables should give way to altars upon which candlesticks were set, that congregations should stand up at the singing of the Gloria Patri, that women coming to be churched should be veiled, that the "setting up of pictures and lights and images in churches, praying towards the east, crossing," and other objectionable gestures should be encouraged, and, last and worst of all, that the Calvinistic clergy should be set aside, when ecclesiastical preferment was in question, in favor of those who, like Neile and Laud, had become apostles of what the Puritan party regarded as a dangerous heresy. In order to arrest discussion and prevent the adoption of these resolu- king tions, the king on the 25th of February sent a command to the house the house to adjourn until the 2d of March, to the end that to adjourn; "a better and more right understanding might be begotten between him and them." 3 To the first order the house submitted, but when on the 2d of March the speaker, Sir John Finch, declared that it was the king's pleasure that they should adjourn until the 10th, Eliot resolved to resist the power of Eliot the crown to force an adjournment, a power which the lords had always admitted, but which the house had refused to recog- exercise nize by adjourning themselves to prevent the appearance of power; submission. When the speaker attempted to put the formal question, shouts of No! no! came from every side; and when Eliot rose to address the house, Finch did his best to check him, saying that he had from the king's own lips an absolute command to leave the chair if any one attempted to speak. In order to prevent the execution of that command, Holles and the speaker Valentine seized the speaker by the arms and thrust him back forcibly in into his seat, and when by the aid of May and Edmondes the chair ; 1 This is the date accepted by Gardiner (Hist. Eng., vol. vii. p. 65), who has followed Harl. MSS., 4296, fol. 65 b. 2 Parl. Hist., vol. iii. p. 483. commanded resolved to resist the of that held Eliot's resolutions upon taxation and religion offered by Holles; after the questions were put, the house adjourned itself; Eliot and eight others committed to the Tower. Finch succeeded in breaking away, he was again seized and made to submit to physical force. During the moment of quiet that then ensued, Eliot made an effort to submit to the house some resolutions upon the subjects of taxation and religion, which, after having been burned by their author, who despaired of obtaining a formal vote upon them, were reproduced from memory by Holles in the following form :1— "Whosoever shall bring in innovation in religion, or by favour seek to extend or introduce Popery or Arminianism, or other opinions disagreeing from the true and orthodox church, shall be reputed a capital enemy to this kingdom and the commonwealth. "Whosoever shall counsel or advise the taking and levying of the subsidies of tonnage and poundage, not being granted by parliament, or shall be an actor or an instrument therein, shall be likewise reputed an innovator in the government, and a capital enemy of this kingdom and commonwealth. "If any merchant or other person whatsoever shall voluntarily yield or pay the said subsidies of tonnage and poundage, not being granted by parliament, he shall likewise be reputed a betrayer of the liberty of England, and an enemy to the same." 2 Knowing that it would be useless to apply again to the speaker to put the question, Holles put it himself, and after the defiant resolutions had been thus adopted, the commons of their own motion adjourned themselves until the 10th. Thus it was that the career of the house and of its Immediately after the adjourn great leader came to an end. 1 For the events of that day, see journals of both houses; Rushworth, vol. i. pp. 655-672; Whitelock, pp. 12, 13; Nicholas' Notes; State Papers, Dom., cxxxviii. 6, 7. The best restatement of it all is to be found in Gardiner, vol. vii. pp. 67-76. 2 Parl. Hist., vol. ii. p. 491. 8 Holles, Valentine, Selden, Strode, Hobart, Long, Coryton, and Heyman. 4 After referring to the "dissobedient carriage of the lower house," Charles declared that "the vipers among them should meet with their reward." - Parl. Hist., vol. viii. p. 3335 Cf. Carlyle's Letters and Speeches, p. 52. gations at Scrooby ; went to Leyden, and thence to the New 1620; 5. Before the close of the reign of Elizabeth, it was esti- Rise of the separatists; mated that there were in England some 20,000 persons, popularly known as Brownists, who, rejecting the original Puritan idea of reforming the national church from within, had resolved to break away from it altogether. Among the several independent congregations set up by these separatists will ever be remembered that organized at Gainsborough, Lincoln- the congreshire, which, under the pressure of persecution, emigrated Gainsborunder the pastoral care of John Smith 2 to Amsterdam in ough and 1606; and that planted at Scrooby, Nottinghamshire, which, after an unsuccessful attempt to sail from Boston in 1607, finally escaped to Amsterdam in the course of the following year. In 1609 the Scrooby church removed in a body from the latter Amsterdam to Leyden under the leadership of Robinson, and there remained until the summer of 1620, when a second move was made to the New World under a patent granted the year World in before by the London or South Virginia Company, which authorized them to make a settlement near the mouth of the Hudson River. After resting on the way at Southampton and Plymouth, the little band of emigrants sailed in the May- Mayflower flower from the port last named on September 6, and arrived Cape Cod off Cape Cod on the 9th of September. As they were then Novemoutside the limits of the South Virginia Company, its patent was useless, and the settlement made at Plymouth after their landing on the 11th of December would have been without any control whatever, had not the emigrants agreed beforehand on shipboard to a political compact under which John political Carver was elected the first governor. At a later day a license shipboard; was obtained from the Plymouth or North Virginia Company, charter whose domain had thus been invaded without its authority. March 4, On the 4th of March, 1629, two days after the memorable 1629, to adjournment of his third parliament, Charles I. granted a royal of the charter to "the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts setts Bay;" 1 "Such men would find but little sympathy even amongst Puritans.". Gardiner, vol. iv. pp. 144-171. 2 Hunter, Founders of Plymouth Colony, p. 32. 3 Except at Dover or Plymouth, persons who were neither soldiers nor merchants could not leave the realm without the royal license by reason of 4 Bradford, Hist. of Plymouth Plan- 5 Ibid., pp. 27, 41. The patent itself has not been preserved. 6 Bradford, Hist. of Plymouth Plantation, p. 90. 7 See vol. i. p. 18. arrived off ber 9; the famous compact on granted "Company Massachu colony became ent in Bay in New England," 1 under which gathered the settlements made at Salem, Boston, and Charlestown by the later Puritan emigrants, who, having been drawn from the professional and middle classes of Lincolnshire and the eastern counties, were men of a higher culture than the first comers. The only dependence under which the self-governing colony thus planted suffered at the outset grew out of the fact that it was subject to the control of a corporation in England composed of those by whom its organization had been brought about. But that tie was severed, and the Massachusetts colony became practically practically an independent commonwealth, when in August, independ- 1629, its government was transferred to America by a vote of August; the company itself,2 upon an offer made by Winthrop and eleven other gentlemen to emigrate upon the happening of that event.3 Thus was established upon the soil of the New World the colony of Massachusetts Bay, into which the Plymouth settlement was finally incorporated in 1691.4 With the departure of Winthrop the migration to New England began in earnest, and it is estimated that between the sailing of his expedition and the meeting of the Long Parliament, two hundred emigrant ships crossed the Atlantic, bearing to their new homes in the west twenty thousand Englishmen, whose first thought was to find in the wilderness freedom from the religious persecution which Laud was relentlessly enforcing against all who beginnings bore the name of Puritan. The history of the beginnings of political organization that thus arose has been summarized already, from which it appears that the active governing unit in New England was the township, formed as a general rule "before the county, the county before the state." The gov ernment of the township was vested in a primary assembly purely democratic, the principle of representation not coming into use until the primary plan became inapplicable to the larger units which arose out of the process of aggregation. And yet upon this purely democratic substructure the Massachusetts colony did not fail to impose a serious limitation. In 1631 the general court resolved "that no man shall be with departure of Winthrop migration began in earnest; of political organization; 1 See vol. i. p. 19. 2 See Gardiner, vol. vii. p. 156. 4 Vol. i. p. 19. 5 Green, Hist. of the Eng. People, vol. iii. p. 171. 6 Vol. i. pp. 28-31. |