were informed by the judges that the king's right was conclusively established by the decision in Bates's case. The natural irritation of the Commons was increased on hearing that the king, with extraordinary meanness, had caused 1,500 copies of the Petition of Right to be circulated throughout the country with his first and repudiated answer annexed, while all copies containing the true answer had been suppressed. They refused to grant further supplies until the unconstitutional impostition of tonnage and poundage had been given up. When Sir John Eliot proposed a resolution on the subject, the Speaker alleged the king's command not to put any such question to the vote, and immediately left the chair. The whole House was now in an uproar. Hollis and Valentine forcibly held the Speaker in his seat, while the House tumultuously passed three The three hastily prepared resolutions, declaring (1) that the intro- resolutions. ducers of Popery, or Arminianism, or other opinions disagreeing from the true orthodox Church; (2) that all who should counsel or advise the taking and levying of tonnage and poundage not being granted by Parliament, or should be actors or instruments therein; and (3) that all merchants or others who should voluntarily pay the same, should be reputed capital enemies to the kingdom and commonwealth. The House at its rising adjourned to the 10th of March. Parliament dissolved, On that day the king dissolved Parliament in person, 10 March. with an angry reference to the 'disobedient carriage of the Lower House,' and a threat that the vipers amongst them should meet with their reward."1 1 Parl. and Const. Hist. viii. 333. CHAPTER XIV. Determination of Charles I. to a Parliament intimated in a proclamation. FROM THE PETITION OF RIGHT TO THE RESTORATION. (A.D. 1629-1660.) ON the dissolution of his third Parliament, Charles I. govern without appears to have come to a settled determination to overthrow the old parliamentary constitution of England by governing for the future without the intervention of the national council. In an arrogant Proclamation, referring to certain false rumours that he was about again to call a Parliament, he announced that 'the late abuse having driven him unwillingly out of that course, he should account it presumption for any to prescribe any time to him for Parliaments, the calling, continuing, and dissolving of which was always in his own power. He should be more inclinable to meet a Parliament again, when his people should see more clearly into his intents and actions, and when such as had bred this interruption should have received their condign punishment." Even before the actual dissolution, the king had hastened to take vengeance on the opposition 'vipers.' Sir John Eliot, Selden, Hollis, Long, Valentine, Strode, and other eminent members of the Commons were summoned before the Council and committed to prison. Against Eliot, Hollis, and Valentine an information was filed in the King's Bench. On suing out their writ of habeas Imprisonment of Sir John Eliot, Selden, and other members of the Commons. 1 Rymer, XIX. 62. corpus they were by the king's order removed to the Tower, so as to elude the judgment of the court. On being required to plead to the information, they demurred to the jurisdiction of the court on the ground that as their alleged offences had been committed in Parliament, they were not punishable in any other place. This demurrer, which raised the great question of Parliamentary privilege, was overruled; and as the defendants persisted in their refusal to plead, judgment was given that they should be imprisoned during the king's pleasure, and not released until each had given surety for good behaviour and had made submission. In addition, Eliot, as the ringleader, was fined £2,000, Hollis, £1,000, and Valentine, £500.' Other distinguished Some of the leaders of the opposition had been brought over to the popular party king's side by the gift of office. Sir Dudley Digges was made Master of the Rolls; Noy, Attorney-General; and Littleton, Solicitor-General; Wentworth, created first a baron, then a viscount, and subsequently Earl of Strafford, was made President of the Council of the North, and Lord Deputy of Ireland. accept office. ment. Surrounded by these new councillors, and guided Eleven years of chiefly by the advice of Wentworth and Laud, Charles despotic governnow entered upon a career of despotism which he maintained for eleven years. This period, during which the king governed without the Parliament, was, constitutionally speaking, as much a revolutionary period as that during which, later on, Parliament governed without the king. It should always be borne in mind that it was the aggression of Charles which provoked the counter aggression of the Parliament. To raise a revenue, Charles had recourse to various Expedients to exactions, many of which were clearly illegal, and nearly raise a revenue. all odious and vexatious. 'Obsolete laws,' says Claren 1 Eliot died in prison some years afterwards, universally regarded as a martyr in the cause of liberty. See supra, p. 298, and Forster's Life of Sir John Eliot. Tonnage and poundage. Monopolies. Compulsory knighthood. don, were revived and rigorously executed,' and ' unjust projects of all kinds, many ridiculous, many scandalous, all very grievous, were set on foot.' Tonnage and poundage and other duties were rigorously enforced by the royal authority alone. Monopolies, abolished by Act of Parliament in the last reign, were re-established and applied to almost every article of ordinary consumption. The ancient prerogative of compelling tenants in chivalry to receive the order of knighthood or pay a fine was revived, and extended to all men of full age seised of lands or rents (by whatever tenure) of the annual value of £40 or more. 'By this expedient,' says Clarendon, which, though it had a foundation in right, yet in the circumstances of proceeding was very grievous, the king received a vast sum of money from persons of quality, or of any reasonable condition, throughout the Inquisition into kingdom." Commissioners were appointed to search out titles to estates. Forest laws revived. Royal procla mations. and compound for defects in titles to estates; and an attempt was even made to revive the ancient and odious Forest Laws. Under cover of the rule of law that no length of prescription could be pleaded in bar of the king's title, the boundaries of the royal forests were so extended that the forest of Rockingham alone was increased from six to sixty miles in circuit at the expense of the neighbouring landowners, who, at the same time, were mulcted in enormous fines for alleged encroachments, some of which were from three to four hundred years' standing. This burthen,' says Clarendon, 'lighted most upon people of quality and honour, who thought themselves above ordinary oppression, and were like to remember it with more sharpness.'s In lieu of Acts of Parliament, royal proclamations, 1 Hist. Rebellion, i. 67; supra, p. 148. 2 On this ground Lord Salisbury was fined £20,000; Lord Westmere land, £19,000; Sir Christopher Hatton, £12,000; Sir Lewis Watson, £4,000; and many other persons in smaller amounts.-Strafford's Letter ii. 117. Cobbett's Parl. Hist. ii. 642. 3 Clar. Hist. i. 16. much more numerous and oppressive than those which had excited so much opposition under James I., were issued from time to time and declared to have the force of laws. The common law judges, with a few honourable Servility of the exceptions, upheld by their decisions the illegal acts of judges. the king; whilst the irregular tribunals, the courts of Star Chamber and High Commission, by extending their authority and exercising a vigilant and severe coercive jurisdiction whenever the slightest opposition was manifested against the civil tyranny of the king or the ecclesiastical tyranny of Laud, maintained for some years what may not unfairly be designated as a reign of terror.1 Of the barbarous and tyrannical punishments inflicted by the court of Star Chamber it will be sufficient to refer to a few only of the more celebrated instances. (1.) John Williams, Bishop of Lincoln, who, as a favourer of the Puritans, had excited the enmity of Laud, had received certain letters from one Osbaldiston, the master of Westminster School, wherein some contemptuous nickname was applied to the Archbishop. For concealing (not publishing) this libellous letter, Williams was condemned to pay £5000 to the king, and £3000 to Laud, and to be imprisoned during pleasure. A few days afterwards he was suspended from his office by the High Commission Court. Osbaldiston was adjudged to pay a still heavier fine, to be deprived of his For the better support of these extraordinary ways,' says Lord Clarendon, and to protect the agents and instruments who must be employed in them, and to discountenance and suppress all bold inquiries and opposers, the Council-table and Star Chamber enlarged their jurisdictions to a vast extent, "holding (as Thucydides said of the Athenians) for honourable that which pleased, and for just that which profited;" and being the same persons in several rooms, grew both courts of law to determine right, and courts of revenue to bring money into the Treasury; the Council-table by proclamations enjoining to the people what was not enjoined by the law, and prohibiting that which was not prohibited; and the Star-Chamber censuring the breach and disobedience to those proclamations by very great fines and imprisonment; so that any disrespect to any acts of State, or to the persons of statesmen, was in no time more penal, and those foundations of right, by which men valued their security, to the apprehension and understanding of wise men, never more in danger to be destroyed.'--Hist. i, 68. M M Punishments inflicted by the Star Chamber. Case of Bishop Williams and |