CHAPTER VII

ON THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION FROM THE ACCESSION OF CHARLES I. TO THE DISSOLUTION OF HIS THIRD PARLIAMENT

1625-1629

Charles the First had much in his character very suitable to the times in which he lived, and to the spirit of the people he was to rule; a stern and serious deportment, a disinclination to all licentiousness, and a sense of religion that seemed more real than in his father.[629] These qualities we might suppose to have raised some expectation of him, and to have procured at his accession some of that popularity, which is rarely withheld from untried princes. Yet it does not appear that he enjoyed even this first transient sunshine of his subjects' affection. Solely intent on retrenching the excesses of prerogative, and well aware that no sovereign would voluntarily recede from the possession of power, they seem to have dreaded to admit into their bosoms any sentiments of personal loyalty, which might enervate their resolution. And Charles took speedy means to convince them that they had not erred in withholding their confidence.

Elizabeth in her systematic parsimony, James in his averseness to war, had been alike influenced by a consciousness that want of money alone could render a parliament formidable to their power. None of the irregular modes of supply were ever productive enough to compensate for the clamour they occasioned; after impositions and benevolences were exhausted, it had always been found necessary, in the most arbitrary times of the Tudors, to fall back on the representatives of the people. But Charles succeeded to a war, at least to the preparation of a war, rashly undertaken through his own weak compliance, the arrogance of his favourite, and the generous or fanatical zeal of the last parliament. He would have perceived it to be manifestly impossible, if he had been capable of understanding his own position, to continue this war without the constant assistance of the House of Commons, or to obtain that assistance without very costly sacrifices of his royal power. It was not the least of this monarch's imprudences, or rather of his blind compliances with Buckingham, to have not only commenced hostilities against Spain which he might easily have avoided,[630] and persisted in them for four years, but entered on a fresh war with France, though he had abundant experience to demonstrate the impossibility of defraying its charges.

_Parliament of 1625._--The first parliament of this reign has been severely censured on account of the penurious supply it doled out for the exigencies of a war, in which its predecessors had involved the king. I will not say that this reproach is wholly unfounded. A more liberal proceeding, if it did not obtain a reciprocal concession from the king, would have put him more in the wrong. But, according to the common practice and character of all such assemblies, it was preposterous to expect subsidies equal to the occasion, until a foundation of confidence should be laid between the Crown and parliament. The Commons had begun probably to repent of their hastiness in the preceding year, and to discover that Buckingham and his pupil, or master (which shall we say?), had conspired to deceive them.[631] They were not to forget that none of the chief grievances of the last reign were yet redressed, and that supplies must be voted slowly and conditionally if they would hope for reformation. Hence they made their grant of tonnage and poundage to last but for a year instead of the king's life, as had for two centuries been the practice; on which account the upper house rejected the bill.[632] Nor would they have refused a further supply, beyond the two subsidies (about £140,000) which they had granted, had some tender of redress been made by the Crown; and were actually in debate upon the matter, when interrupted by a sudden dissolution.[633]

Nothing could be more evident, by the experience of the late reign as well as by observing the state of public spirit, than that hasty and premature dissolutions or prorogations of parliament served but to aggravate the Crown's embarrassments. Every successive House of Commons inherited the feelings of its predecessor, without which it would have ill represented the prevalent humour of the nation. The same men, for the most part, came again to parliament more irritated and desperate of reconciliation with the sovereign than before. Even the politic measure, as it was fancied to be, of excluding some of the most active members from seats in the new assembly, by nominating them sheriffs for the year, failed altogether of the expected success; as it naturally must in an age when all ranks partook in a common enthusiasm.[634] Hence the prosecution against Buckingham, to avert which Charles had dissolved his first parliament, was commenced with redoubled vigour in the second. It was too late, after the precedents of Bacon and Middlesex, to dispute the right of the Commons to impeach a minister of state. The king, however, anticipating their resolutions, after some sharp speeches only had been uttered against his favourite, sent a message that he would not allow any of his servants to be questioned among them, much less such as were of eminent place and near unto him. He saw, he said, that some of them aimed at the Duke of Buckingham, whom, in the last parliament of his father, all had combined to honour and respect, nor did he know what had happened since to alter their affections; but he assured them that the duke had done nothing without his own special direction and appointment. This haughty message so provoked the Commons that, having no express testimony against Buckingham, they came to a vote that common fame is a good ground of proceeding either by inquiry, or presenting the complaint to the king or Lords; nor did a speech from the lord keeper, severely rating their presumption, and requiring on the king's behalf that they should punish two of their members who had given him offence by insolent discourses in the house, lest he should be compelled to use his royal authority against them; nor one from the king himself, bidding them remember that parliaments were altogether in his power for their calling, sitting, and dissolution; therefore, as he found the fruits of them good or evil, they were to continue to be or not to be, tend to pacify or to intimidate the assembly. They addressed the king in very decorous language, but asserting "the ancient, constant, and undoubted right and usage of parliaments to question and complain of all persons, of what degree soever, found grievous to the commonwealth, in abusing the power and trust committed to them by their sovereign."[635] The duke was accordingly impeached at the bar of the house of peers on eight articles, many of them probably well-founded; yet as the Commons heard no evidence in support of them, it was rather unreasonable in them to request that he might be committed to the Tower.

In the conduct of this impeachment, two of the managers, Sir John Eliot and Sir Dudley Digges, one the most illustrious confessor in the cause of liberty, whom that time produced, the other, a man of much ability and a useful supporter of the popular party, though not exempt from some oblique views towards promotion, gave such offence by words spoken, or alleged to be spoken, in derogation of his majesty's honour, that they were committed to the Tower. The Commons, of course, resented this new outrage. They resolved to do no more business till they were righted in their privileges. They denied the words imputed to Digges; and, thirty-six peers asserting that he had not spoken them, the king admitted that he was mistaken, and released both their members.[636] He had already broken in upon the privileges of the House of Lords, by committing the Earl of Arundel to the Tower during the session; not upon any political charge, but, as was commonly surmised, on account of a marriage which his son had made with a lady of royal blood. Such private offences were sufficient in those arbitrary reigns to expose the subject to indefinite imprisonment, if not to an actual sentence in the star-chamber. The Lords took up this detention of one of their body, and after formal examination of precedents by a committee, came to a resolution, "that no lord of parliament, the parliament sitting, or within the usual times of privilege of parliament, is to be imprisoned or restrained without sentence or order of the house, unless it be for treason or felony, or for refusing to give surety for the peace." This assertion of privilege was manifestly warranted by the co-extensive liberties of the Commons. After various messages between the king and Lords, Arundel was ultimately set at liberty.[637]

This infringement of the rights of the peerage was accompanied by another not less injurious, the refusal of a writ of summons to the Earl of Bristol. The Lords were justly tenacious of this unquestionable privilege of their order, without which its constitutional dignity and independence could never be maintained. Whatever irregularities or uncertainty of legal principle might be found in earlier times as to persons summoned only by writ without patents of creation, concerning whose hereditary peerage there is much reason to doubt; it was beyond all controversy that an Earl of Bristol holding his dignity by patent was entitled of right to attend parliament. The house necessarily insisted upon Bristol's receiving his summons, which was sent him with an injunction not to comply with it by taking his place. But the spirited earl knew that the king's constitutional will expressed in the writ ought to outweigh his private command, and laid the secretary's letter before the House of Lords. The king prevented any further interference in his behalf by causing articles of charge to be exhibited against him by the attorney-general, whereon he was committed to the Tower. These assaults on the pride and consequence of an aristocratic assembly, from whom alone the king could expect effectual support, display his unfitness not only for the government of England, but of any other nation. Nor was his conduct towards Bristol less oppressive than impolitic. If we look at the harsh and indecent employment of his own authority and even testimony, to influence a criminal process against a man of approved and untainted worth,[638] and his sanction of charges which, if Bristol's defence be as true as it is now generally admitted to be, he must have known to be unfounded; we shall hardly concur with those candid persons who believe that Charles would have been an excellent prince in a more absolute monarchy. Nothing in truth can be more preposterous than to maintain, like Clarendon and Hume, the integrity and innocence of Lord Bristol, together with the sincerity and humanity of Charles I. Such inconsistencies betray a determination in the historian to speak of men according to his preconceived affection or prejudice, without so much as attempting to reconcile these sentiments to the facts which he can neither deny nor excuse.[639]

Though the Lords petitioned against a dissolution, the king was determined to protect his favourite, and rescue himself from the importunities of so refractory a House of Commons.[640] Perhaps he had already taken the resolution of governing without the concurrence of parliaments, though he was induced to break it the ensuing year. For the Commons having delayed to pass a bill for the five subsidies they had voted in this session till they should obtain some satisfaction for their complaints, he was left without any regular supply. This was not wholly unacceptable to some of his counsellors, and probably to himself; as affording a pretext for those unauthorised demands which the advocates of arbitrary prerogative deemed more consonant to the monarch's honour. He had issued letters of privy seal, after the former parliament, to those in every county, whose names had been returned by the lord lieutenant as most capable, mentioning the sum they were required to lend, with a promise of repayment in eighteen months.[641] This specification of a particular sum was reckoned an unusual encroachment, and a manifest breach of the statute against arbitrary benevolences; especially as the name of those who refused compliance were to be returned to the council. But the government now ventured on a still more outrageous stretch of power. They first attempted to persuade the people that, as subsidies had been voted in the House of Commons, they should not refuse to pay them, though no bill had been passed for that purpose. But a tumultuous cry was raised in Westminster Hall from those who had been convened, that they would pay no subsidy but by authority of parliament.[642] This course, therefore, was abandoned for one hardly less unconstitutional. A general loan was demanded from every subject, according to the rate at which he was assessed in the last subsidy. The commissioners appointed for the collection of this loan received private instructions to require not less than a certain proportion of each man's property in lands or goods, to treat separately with every one, to examine on oath such as should refuse, to certify the names of refractory persons to the privy council, and to admit of no excuse for abatement of the sum required.[643]

_Arbitrary taxation._--This arbitrary taxation (for the name of loan could not disguise the extreme improbability that the money would be repaid), so general and systematic as well as so weighty, could not be endured without establishing a precedent that must have shortly put an end to the existence of parliaments. For, if those assemblies were to meet only for the sake of pouring out stupid flatteries at the foot of the throne, of humbly tendering such supplies as the ministry should suggest, or even of hinting at a few subordinate grievances which touched not the king's prerogative and absolute control in matters of state--functions which the Tudors and Stuarts were well pleased that they should exercise--if every remonstrance was to be checked by a dissolution, and chastised by imprisonment of its promoters, every denial of subsidy to furnish a justification for extorted loans, our free-born high-minded gentry would not long have brooked to give their attendance in such an ignominious assembly, and an English parliament would have become as idle a mockery of national representation as the cortes of Castile. But this kingdom was not in a temper to put up with tyranny. The king's advisers were as little disposed to recede from their attempt. They prepared to enforce it by the arm of power.[644] The common people who refused to contribute were impressed to serve in the navy. The gentry were bound by recognisance to appear at the council-table, where many of them were committed to prison.[645] Among these were five knights, Darnel, Carbet, Earl, Heveningham, and Hampden, who sued the court of king's bench for their writ of habeas corpus. The writ was granted; but the warden of the Fleet made return that they were detained by a warrant from the privy council, informing him of no particular cause of imprisonment, but that they were committed by the special command of his majesty. This gave rise to a most important question, whether such a return was sufficient in law to justify the court in remitting the parties to custody. The fundamental immunity of English subjects from arbitrary detention had never before been so fully canvassed; and it is to the discussion which arose out of the case of these five gentlemen that we owe its continual assertion by parliament, and its ultimate establishment in full practical efficacy by the statute of Charles II. It was argued with great ability by Noy, Selden, and other eminent lawyers, on behalf of the claimants, and by the attorney-general Heath for the Crown.

The counsel for the prisoners grounded their demand of liberty on the original basis of Magna Charta; the twenty-ninth section of which, as is well known, provides that "no free man shall be taken or imprisoned unless by lawful judgment of his peers, or the law of the land." This principle having been frequently transgressed by the king's privy council in earlier times, statutes had been repeatedly enacted, independently of the general confirmations of the charter, to redress this material grievance. Thus in the 25th of Edward III. it is provided that "no one shall be taken by petition or suggestion to the king or his counsel, unless it be (_i.e._ but only) by indictment or presentment, or by writ original at the common law." And this is again enacted three years afterwards, with little variation, and once again in the course of the same reign. It was never understood, whatever the loose language of these old statutes might suggest, that no man could be kept in custody upon a criminal charge before indictment, which would have afforded too great security to offenders. But it was the regular practice that every warrant of commitment, and every return by a gaoler to the writ of habeas corpus, must express the nature of the charge, so that it might appear whether it were no legal offence; in which case the party must be instantly set at liberty; or one for which bail ought to be taken, or one for which he must be remanded to prison. It appears also to have been admitted without controversy, though not perhaps according to the strict letter of law, that the privy council might commit to prison on a criminal charge, since it seemed preposterous to deny that power to those intrusted with the care of the commonwealth, which every petty magistrate enjoyed. But it was contended that they were as much bound as every petty magistrate to assign such a cause for their commitments as might enable the court of king's bench to determine whether it should release or remand the prisoners brought before them by habeas corpus.

The advocates for this principal alleged several precedents, from the reign of Henry VII. to that of James, where persons committed by the council generally, or even by the special command of the king, had been admitted to bail on their habeas corpus. "But I conceive," said one of these, "that our case will not stand upon precedent, but upon the fundamental laws and statutes of this realm; and though the precedents look one way or the other, they are to be brought back unto the laws by which the kingdom is governed." He was aware that a pretext might be found to elude most of his precedents. The warrant had commonly declared the party to be charged on _suspicion_ of treason or of felony; in which case he would of course be bailed by the court. Yet in some of these instances the words "by the king's special command," were inserted in the commitment; so that they served to repel the pretension of an arbitrary right to supersede the law by his personal authority. Ample proof was brought from the old law books that the king's command could not excuse an illegal act. "If the king command me," said one of the judges under Henry VI., "to arrest a man, and I arrest him, he shall have an action of false imprisonment against me, though it were done in the king's presence." "The king," said Chief Justice Markham to Edward IV., "cannot arrest a man upon suspicion of felony or treason, as any of his subjects may; because if he should wrong a man by such arrest, he can have no remedy against him." No verbal order of the king, nor any under his sign manual or privy signet, was a command, it was contended by Selden, which the law would recognise as sufficient to arrest or detain any of his subjects; a writ duly issued under the seal of a court being the only language in which he could signify his will. They urged further that, even if the first commitment by the king's command were lawful, yet when a party had continued in prison for a reasonable time, he should be brought to answer, and not be indefinitely detained; liberty being a thing so favoured by the law that it will not suffer any man to remain in confinement for any longer time than of necessity it must.

To these pleadings for liberty, Heath, the attorney-general, replied in a speech of considerable ability, full of those high principles of prerogative which, trampling as it were on all statute and precedent, seemed to tell the judges that they were placed there to obey rather than to determine. "This commitment," he says, "is not in a legal and ordinary way, but by the special command of our lord the king, which implies not only the fact done, but so extraordinarily done, that it is notoriously his majesty's immediate act and will that it should be so." He alludes afterwards, though somewhat obscurely, to the king's absolute power, as contra-distinguished from that according to law; a favourite distinction, as I have already observed, with the supporters of despotism. "Shall we make inquiries," he says, "whether his commands are lawful?--who shall call in question the justice of the king's actions, who is not to give account for them?" He argues from the legal maxim that the king can do no wrong, that a cause must be presumed to exist for the commitment, though it be not set forth. He adverts with more success to the number of papists and other state prisoners, detained for years in custody for mere political jealousy. "Some there were," he says, "in the Tower who were put in it when very young; should they bring a habeas corpus, would the court deliver them?" Passing next to the precedents of the other side, and condescending to admit their validity, however contrary to the tenor of his former argument, he evades their application by such distinctions as I have already mentioned.

The judges behaved during this great cause with apparent moderation and sense of its importance to the subject's freedom. Their decision, however, was in favour of the Crown; and the prisoners were remanded to custody. In pronouncing this judgment, the chief justice, Sir Nicholas Hyde, avoiding the more extravagant tenets of absolute monarchy, took the narrower line of denying the application of those precedents, which had been alleged to show the practice of the court in bailing persons committed by the king's special command. He endeavoured also to prove that, where no cause had been expressed in the warrant, except such command as in the present instance, the judges had always remanded the parties; but with so little success that I cannot perceive more than one case mentioned by him, and that above a hundred years old, which supports this doctrine. The best authority on which he had to rely, was the resolution of the judges in the 34th of Elizabeth, published in Anderson's _Reports_.[646] For, though this is not grammatically worded, it seems impossible to doubt that it acknowledges the special command of the king or the authority of the privy council as a body, to be such sufficient warrant for a commitment as to require no further cause to be expressed, and to prevent the judges from discharging the party from custody, either absolutely or upon bail. Yet it was evidently the consequence of this decision, that every statute from the time of Magna Charta, designed to protect the personal liberties of Englishmen, became a dead letter; since the insertion of four words in a warrant (per speciale mandatum regis), which might become matter of form, would control their remedial efficacy. And this wound was the more deadly, in that the notorious cause of these gentlemen's imprisonment was their withstanding an illegal exaction of money. Everything that distinguished our constitutional laws, all that rendered the name of England valuable, was at stake on this issue. If the judgment in the case of ship-money was more flagrantly iniquitous, it was not so extensively destructive as the present.[647]

_A parliament called in 1628._--Neither of these measures, however, of illegal severity towards the uncompliant, backed as they were by a timid court of justice, nor the exhortations of a more prostitute and shameless band of churchmen, could divert the nation from its cardinal point of faith in its own prescriptive franchises. To call another parliament appeared the only practicable means of raising money for a war, in which the king persisted with great impolicy or rather blind trust in his favourite. He consented to this with extreme unwillingness.[648] Previously to its assembling, he released a considerable number of gentlemen and others who had been committed for their refusal of the loan. These were, in many cases, elected to the new parliament; coming thither with just indignation at their country's wrongs, and pardonable resentment at their own. No year, indeed, within the memory of any one living, had witnessed such violations of public liberty as 1627. Charles seemed born to carry into daily practice those theories of absolute power, which had been promulgated from his father's lips. Even now, while the writs were out for a new parliament, commissioners were appointed to raise money "by impositions or otherwise, as they should find most convenient in a case of such inevitable necessity, wherein form and circumstance must be dispensed with rather than the substance be lost and hazarded;"[649] and the levying of ship-money was already debated in the council. Anticipating, as indeed was natural, that this House of Commons would correspond as ill to the king's wishes as their predecessors, his advisers were preparing schemes more congenial, if they could be rendered effective, to the spirit in which he was to govern. A contract was entered into for transporting some troops and a considerable quantity of arms from Flanders into England, under circumstances at least highly suspicious, and which, combined with all the rest that appears of the court policy at that time, leaves no great doubt on the mind that they were designed to keep under the people, while the business of contribution was going forward.[650] Shall it be imputed as a reproach to the Cokes, the Seldens, the Glanvils, the Pyms, the Eliots, the Philipses, of this famous parliament, that they endeavoured to devise more effectual restraints than the law had hitherto imposed on a prince who had snapped like bands of tow the ancient statutes of the land, to remove from his presence counsellors, to have been misled by whom was his best apology, and to subject him to an entire dependence on his people for the expenditure of government, as the surest pledge of his obedience to the laws?

_Petition of Right._--The principal matters of complaint taken up by the Commons in this session were, the exaction of money under the name of loans; the commitment of those who refused compliance, and the late decision of the king's bench, remanding them upon a habeas corpus; the billeting of soldiers on private persons, which had occurred in the last year, whether for convenience or for purposes of intimidation and annoyance; and the commissions to try military offenders by martial law--a procedure necessary within certain limits to the discipline of an army, but unwarranted by the constitution of this country which was little used to any regular forces, and stretched by the arbitrary spirit of the king's administration beyond all bounds.[651] These four grievances or abuses form the foundation of the Petition of Right, presented by the Commons in the shape of a declaratory statute. Charles had recourse to many subterfuges in hopes to elude the passing of this law; rather perhaps through wounded pride, as we may judge from his subsequent conduct, than such apprehension that it would create a serious impediment to his despotic schemes. He tried to persuade them to acquiesce in his royal promise not to arrest any one without just cause, or in a simple confirmation of the Great Charter, and other statutes in favour of liberty. The peers, too pliant in this instance to his wishes, and half receding from the patriot banner they had lately joined, lent him their aid by proposing amendments (insidious in those who suggested them, though not in the body of the house), which the Commons firmly rejected.[652] Even when the bill was tendered to him for that assent, which it had been necessary for the last two centuries that the king should grant or refuse in a word, he returned a long and equivocal answer, from which it could only be collected that he did not intend to remit any portion of what he had claimed as his prerogative. But on an address from both houses for a more explicit answer, he thought fit to consent to the bill in the usual form. The Commons, of whose harshness towards Charles his advocates have said so much, immediately passed a bill for granting five subsidies, about £350,000; a sum not too great for the wealth of the kingdom or for his exigencies, but considerable according to the precedents of former times, to which men naturally look.[653]

The sincerity of Charles in thus according his assent to the Petition of Right may be estimated by the following very remarkable conference which he held on the subject with his judges. Before the bill was passed, he sent for the two chief justices, Hyde and Richardson, to Whitehall; and propounded certain questions, directing that the other judges should be assembled in order to answer them. The first question was, "Whether in no case whatsoever the king may not commit a subject without showing cause?" To which the judges gave an answer the same day under their hands, which was the next day presented to his majesty by the two chief justices in these words: "We are of opinion that, by the general rule of law, the cause of commitment by his majesty ought to be shown; yet some cases may require such secrecy, that the king may commit a subject without showing the cause for a convenient time." The king then delivered them a second question, and required them to keep it very secret, as the former: "Whether, in case a habeas corpus be brought, and a warrant from the king without any general or special cause returned, the judges ought to deliver him before they understand the cause from the king?" Their answer was as follows: "Upon a habeas corpus brought for one committed by the king, if the cause be not specially or generally returned, so as the court may take knowledge thereof, the party ought by the general rule of law to be delivered. But, if the case be such that the same requireth secrecy, and may not presently be disclosed, the court of discretion may forbear to deliver the prisoner for a convenient time, to the end the court may be advertised of the truth thereof." On receiving this answer, the king proposed a third question: "Whether, if the king grant the Commons' petition, he doth not thereby exclude himself from committing or restraining a subject for any time or cause whatsoever, without showing a cause?" The judges returned for answer to this important query: "Every law, after it is made, hath its exposition, and so this petition and answer must have an exposition as the case in the nature thereof shall require to stand with justice; which is to be left to the courts of justice to determine, which cannot particularly be discovered until such case shall happen. And although the petition be granted, there is no fear of conclusion as is intimated in the question."[654]

The king, a very few days afterwards gave his _first_ answer to the Petition of Right. For even this indirect promise of compliance, which the judges gave him, did not relieve him from apprehensions that he might lose the prerogative of arbitrary commitment. And though, after being beaten from this evasion, he was compelled to accede in general terms to the petition, he had the insincerity to circulate one thousand five hundred copies of it through the country, after the prorogation, with his first answer annexed; an attempt to deceive without the possibility of success.[655] But instances of such ill faith, accumulated as they are through the life of Charles, render the assertion of his sincerity a proof either of historical ignorance, or of a want of moral delicacy.

The Petition of Right, as this statute is still called, from its not being drawn in the common form of an act of parliament, after reciting the various laws which have established certain essential privileges of the subject, and enumerating the violations of them which had recently occurred, in the four points of illegal exactions, arbitrary commitments, quartering of soldiers or sailors, and infliction of punishment by martial law, prays the king, "That no man hereafter be compelled to make or yield any gift, loan, benevolence, tax, or such like charge without common consent by act of parliament; and that none be called to answer or take such oath, or to give attendance, or be confined or otherwise molested or disquieted concerning the same, or for refusal thereof; and that no freeman in any such manner as is before mentioned be imprisoned or detained; and that your majesty would be pleased to remove the said soldiers and marines, and that your people may not be so burthened in time to come; and that the aforesaid commissions for proceeding by martial law may be revoked and annulled; and that hereafter no commissions of the like nature may issue forth to any person or persons whatever, to be executed as aforesaid, lest by colour of them any of your majesty's subjects be destroyed or put to death contrary to the laws and franchises of the land."[656]

_Tonnage and poundage disputed._--It might not unreasonably be questioned whether the language of this statute were sufficiently general to comprehend duties charged on merchandise at the outports, as well as internal taxes and exactions, especially as the former had received a sort of sanction, though justly deemed contrary to law, by the judgment of the court of exchequer in Bates's case. The Commons, however, were steadily determined not to desist till they should have rescued their fellow-subjects from a burthen as unwarrantably imposed as those specifically enumerated in their Petition of Right. Tonnage and poundage, the customary grant of every reign, had been taken by the present king without consent of parliament; the Lords having rejected, as before-mentioned, a bill that limited it to a single year. The house now prepared a bill to grant it, but purposely delayed its passing; in order to remonstrate with the king against his unconstitutional anticipation of their consent. They declared "that there ought not any imposition to be laid upon the goods of merchants, exported or imported, without common consent by act of parliament; that tonnage and poundage, like other subsidies, sprung from the free grant of the people; that when impositions had been laid on the subjects' goods and merchandises without authority of law, which had very seldom occurred, they had, on complaint in parliament, been forthwith relieved; except in the late king's reign, who, through evil counsel, had raised the rates and charges to the height at which they then were." They conclude, after repeating their declaration that the receiving of tonnage and poundage and other impositions not granted by parliament is a breach of the fundamental liberties of this kingdom, and contrary to the late petition of right, with most humbly beseeching his majesty to forbear any further receiving of the same, and not to take it in ill part from those of his loving subjects who should refuse to make payment of any such charges without warrant of law.[657]

The king anticipated the delivery of this remonstrance by proroguing the parliament. Tonnage and poundage, he told them, was what he had never meant to give away, nor could possibly do without. By this abrupt prorogation, while so great a matter was unsettled, he trod back his late footsteps, and dissipated what little hopes might have arisen from his tardy assent to the Petition of Right. During the interval before the ensuing session, those merchants, among whom Chambers, Rolls, and Vassal are particularly to be remembered with honour, who gallantly refused to comply with the demands of the custom house, had their goods distrained, and on suing writs of replevin, were told by the judges that the king's right, having been established in the case of Bates, could no longer be disputed.[658] Thus the Commons re-assembled, by no means less inflamed against the king's administration than at the commencement of the preceding session. Their proceedings were conducted with more than usual warmth.[659] Buckingham's death, which had occurred since the prorogation, did not allay their resentment against the advisers of the Crown. But the king, who had very much lowered his tone in speaking of tonnage and poundage, and would have been content to receive it as their grant, perceiving that they were bent on a full statutory recognition of the illegality of impositions without their consent, and that they had opened a fresh battery on another side, by mingling in certain religious disputes in order to attack some of his favourite prelates, took the step, to which he was always inclined, of dissolving this third parliament.

_Religious differences._--The religious disputes to which I have just alluded are chiefly to be considered, for the present purpose, in their relation to those jealousies and resentments springing out of the ecclesiastical administration, which during the reigns of the two first Stuarts furnished unceasing food to political discontent. James having early shown his inflexible determination to restrain the puritans, the bishops proceeded with still more rigour than under Elizabeth. No longer thwarted, as in her time, by an unwilling council, they succeeded in exacting a general conformity to the ordinances of the church. It had been solemnly decided by the judges in the queen's reign, and in 1604, that, although the statute establishing the high commission court did not authorise it to deprive ministers of their benefices, yet this law being only in affirmation of the queen's inherent supremacy, she might, by virtue of that, regulate all ecclesiastical matters at her pleasure, and erect courts with such powers as she should think fit. Upon this somewhat dangerous principle, Archbishop Bancroft deprived a considerable number of puritan clergymen;[660] while many more, finding that the interference of the Commons in their behalf was not regarded, and that all schemes of evasion were come to an end, were content to submit to the obnoxious discipline. But their affections being very little conciliated by this coercion, there remained a large party within the bosom of the established church, prone to watch for and magnify the errors of their spiritual rulers. These men preserved the name of puritans. Austere in their lives, while many of the others were careless or irregular, learned as a body comparatively with the opposite party, implacably averse to everything that could be construed into an approximation to popery, they acquired a degree of respect from grave men, which would have been much more general, had they not sometimes given offence by a moroseness and even malignity of disposition, as well as by a certain tendency to equivocation and deceitfulness; faults, however, which so frequently belong to the weaker party under a rigorous government that they scarcely afford a marked reproach against the puritans. They naturally fell in with the patriotic party in the House of Commons, and kept up throughout the kingdom a distrust of the Crown, which has never been so general in England as when connected with some religious apprehensions.

_Growth of high church tenets._--The system pursued by Bancroft and his imitators, Bishops Neile and Laud, with the approbation of the king, far opposed to the healing counsels of Burleigh and Bacon, was just such as low-born and little-minded men, raised to power by fortune's caprice, are ever found to pursue. They studiously aggravated every difference, and irritated every wound. As the characteristic prejudice of the puritans was so bigoted an abhorrence of the Romish faith, that they hardly deemed its followers to deserve the name of Christians, the prevailing high church party took care to shock that prejudice by somewhat of a retrograde movement, and various seeming, or indeed real, accommodations of their tenets to those of the abjured religion. They began by preaching the divine right, as it is called, or absolute indispensability, of episcopacy;[661] a doctrine of which the first traces, as I apprehend, are found about the end of Elizabeth's reign. They insisted on the necessity of episcopal succession regularly derived from the apostles. They drew an inference from this tenet, that ordinations by presbyters were in all cases null. And as this affected all the reformed churches in Europe except their own, the Lutherans not having preserved the succession of their bishops, while the Calvinists had altogether abolished that order, they began to speak of them not as brethren of the same faith, united in the same cause, and distinguished only by differences little more material than those of political commonwealths (which had been the language of the church of England ever since the Reformation), but as aliens to whom they were not at all related, and schismatics with whom they held no communion; nay, as wanting the very essence of a Christian society. This again brought them nearer, by irresistible consequence, to the disciples of Rome, with becoming charity, but against the received creed of the puritans and perhaps against their own articles, they all acknowledged to be a part of the catholic church, while they were withholding that appellation, expressly or by inference, from Heidelberg and Geneva.

_Differences as to the observance of Sunday._--The founders of the English reformation, after abolishing most of the festivals kept before that time, had made little or no change as to the mode of observance of those they retained. Sundays and holidays stood much on the same footing as days on which no work except for good cause was to be performed, the service of the church was to be attended, and any lawful amusement might be indulged in.[662] A just distinction, however, soon grew up; an industrious people could spare time for very few holidays; and the more scrupulous party, while they slighted the church festivals as of human appointment, prescribed a stricter observance of the Lord's day. But it was not till about 1595 that they began to place it very nearly on the footing of the Jewish sabbath, interdicting not only the slightest action of worldly business, but even every sort of pastime and recreation; a system which, once promulgated, soon gained ground as suiting their atrabilious humour, and affording a new theme of censure on the vices of the great.[663] Those who opposed them on the high church side, not only derided the extravagance of the Sabbatarians, as the others were called, but pretended that the commandment having been confined to the Hebrews, the modern observance of the first day of the week as a season of rest and devotion was an ecclesiastical institution, and in no degree more venerable than that of the other festivals or the season of Lent, which the puritans stubbornly despised.[664] Such a controversy might well have been left to the usual weapons. But James I., or some of the bishops to whom he listened, bethought themselves that this might serve as a test of puritan ministers. He published accordingly a declaration to be read in churches, permitting all lawful recreations on Sunday after divine service, such as dancing, archery, May-games, and morrice-dances, and other usual sports; but with a prohibition of bear-hunting and other unlawful games. No recusant, or any one who had not attended the church service, was entitled to this privilege; which might consequently be regarded as a bounty on devotion. The severe puritan saw it in no such point of view. To his cynical temper, May-games and morrice-dances were hardly tolerable on six days of the week; they were now recommended for the seventh. And this impious licence was to be promulgated in the church itself. It is indeed difficult to explain so unnecessary an insult on the precise clergy, but by supposing an intention to harass those who should refuse compliance.[665] But this intention, from whatever cause, perhaps through the influence of Archbishop Abbot, was not carried into effect; nor was the declaration itself enforced till the following reign.

The House of Commons displayed their attachment to the puritan maxims, or their dislike of the prelatical clergy, by bringing in bills to enforce a greater strictness in this respect. A circumstance that occurred in the session of 1621 will serve to prove their fanatical violence. A bill having been brought in "for the better observance of the Sabbath, usually called Sunday," one Mr. Shepherd, sneering at the puritans, remarked that, as Saturday was dies Sabbati, this might be entitled a bill for the observance of Saturday, commonly called Sunday. This witticism brought on his head the wrath of that dangerous assembly. He was reprimanded on his knees, expelled the house, and when he saw what befell poor Floyd, might deem himself cheaply saved from their fangs with no worse chastisement.[666] Yet when the upper house sent down their bill with "the Lord's day" substituted for "the Sabbath," observing, "that people do now much incline to words of Judaism," the Commons took no exception.[667] The use of the word Sabbath instead of Sunday became in that age a distinctive mark of the puritan party.

_Arminian controversy._--A far more permanent controversy sprang up about the end of the same reign, which afforded a new pretext for intolerance and a fresh source of mutual hatred. Every one of my readers is acquainted more or less with the theological tenets of original sin, free will, and predestination, variously taught in the schools, and debated by polemical writers for so many centuries; and few can be ignorant that the articles of our own church, as they relate to these doctrines, have been very differently interpreted, and that a controversy about their meaning has long been carried on with a pertinacity which could not have continued on so limited a topic, had the combatants been merely influenced by the love of truth. Those who have no bias to warp their judgment will not perhaps have much hesitation in drawing their line between, though not at an equal distance between, the conflicting parties. It appears, on the other hand, that the articles are worded on some of these doctrines with considerable ambiguity; whether we attribute this to the intrinsic obscurity of the subject, to the additional difficulties with which it had been entangled by theological systems, to discrepancy of opinion in the compilers, or to their solicitude to prevent disunion by adopting formularies which men of different sentiments might subscribe. It is also manifest that their framers came, as it were, with averted eyes to the Augustinian doctrine of predestination, and wisely reprehended those who turned their attention to a system so pregnant with objections, and so dangerous, when needlessly dwelt upon, to all practical piety and virtue. But, on the other hand, this very reluctance to inculcate the tenet is so expressed as to manifest their undoubting belief in it; nor is it possible either to assign a motive for inserting the seventeenth article, or to give any reasonable interpretation to it, upon the theory which at present passes for orthodox in the English church. And upon other subjects intimately related to the former, such as the penalty of original sin and the depravation of human nature, the articles, after making every allowance for want of precision, seem totally irreconcilable with the scheme usually denominated Arminian.

The force of those conclusions, which we must, in my judgment, deduce from the language of these articles, will be materially increased by that appeal of contemporary and other early authorities, to which recourse has been had in order to invalidate them. Whatever doubts may be raised as to the Calvinism of Cranmer and Ridley, there can surely be no room for any as to the chiefs of the Anglican church under Elizabeth. We find explicit proofs that Jewel, Nowell, Sandys, Cox, professed to concur with the reformers of Zurich and Geneva in every point of doctrine.[668] The works of Calvin and Bullinger became textbooks in the English universities.[669] Those who did not hold the predestinarian theory were branded with reproach by the names of free-willers and Pelagians.[670] And when the opposite tenets came to be advanced, as they were at Cambridge about 1590, a clamour was raised as if some unusual heresy had been broached. Whitgift, with the concurrence of some other prelates, in order to withstand its progress, published what were called the Lambeth articles, containing the broadest and most repulsive declaration of all the Calvinistic tenets. But, Lord Burleigh having shown some disapprobation, these articles never obtained any legal sanction.[671]

These more rigorous tenets, in fact, especially when so crudely enounced, were beginning to give way. They had been already abandoned by the Lutheran church. They had long been opposed in that of Rome by the Franciscan order, and latterly by the jesuits. Above all, the study of the Greek fathers, with whom the first reformers had been little conversant, taught the divines of a more learned age, that men of as high a name as Augustin, and whom they were prone to over-value, had entertained very different sentiments.[672] Still the novel opinions passed for heterodox, and were promulgated with much vacillation and indistinctness. When they were published in unequivocal propositions by Arminius and his school, James declared himself with vehemence against this heresy.[673] He not only sent English divines to sit in the synod of Dort, where the Calvinistic system was fully established, but instigated the proceedings against the remonstrants with more of theological pedantry than charity or decorum.[674] Yet this inconsistent monarch within a very few years was so wrought on by one or two favourite ecclesiastics, who inclined towards the doctrines condemned in that assembly, that openly to maintain the Augustinian system became almost a sure means of exclusion from preferment in our church. This was carried to its height under Charles. Laud, his sole counsellor in ecclesiastical matters, advised a declaration enjoining silence on the controverted points; a measure by no means unwise, if it had been fairly acted upon. It is alleged, however, that the preachers on one side only were silenced, the printers of books on one side censured in the star-chamber, while full scope was indulged to the opposite sect.[675]

The House of Commons, especially in their last session, took up the increase of Arminianism as a public grievance. It was coupled in their remonstrances with popery, as a new danger to religion, hardly less terrible than the former. This bigoted clamour arose in part from the nature of their own Calvinistic tenets, which, being still prevalent in the kingdom, would, independently of all political motives, predominate in any popular assembly. But they had a sort of excuse for it in the close, though accidental and temporary, connection that subsisted between the partisans of these new speculative tenets and those of arbitrary power; the churchmen who receded most from Calvinism being generally the zealots of prerogative. They conceived also that these theories, conformable in the main to those most countenanced in the church of Rome, might pave the way for that restoration of her faith which from so many other quarters appeared to threaten them. Nor was this last apprehension so destitute of all plausibility as the advocates of the two first Stuarts have always pretended it to be.

_State of catholics under James._--James, well instructed in the theology of the reformers, and inured himself to controversial dialectics, was far removed in point of opinion from any bias towards the Romish creed. But he had, while in Scotland, given rise to some suspicions at the court of Elizabeth, by a little clandestine coquetry with the pope, which he fancied to be a politic means of disarming enmity.[676] Some knowledge of this, probably, as well as his avowed dislike of sanguinary persecution, and a foolish reliance on the trifling circumstance that one if not both of his parents had professed their religion, led the English catholics to expect a great deal of indulgence, if not support, at his hands. This hope might receive some encouragement from his speech on opening the parliament of 1604, wherein he intimated his design to revise and explain the penal laws, "which the judges might perhaps," he said, "in times past have too rigorously interpreted." But the temper of those he addressed was very different. The catholics were disappointed by an act inflicting new penalties on recusants, and especially debarring them from educating their children according to their consciences.[677] The administration took a sudden turn towards severity; the prisons were filled, the penalties exacted, several suffered death,[678] and the general helplessness of their condition impelled a few persons (most of whom had belonged to what was called the Spanish party in the last reign) to the gunpowder conspiracy, unjustly imputed to the majority of catholics, though perhaps extending beyond those who appeared in it.[679] We cannot wonder that a parliament so narrowly rescued from personal destruction endeavoured to draw the cord still tighter round these dangerous enemies. The statute passed on this occasion is by no means more harsh than might be expected. It required not only attendance on worship, but participation in the communion, as a test of conformity, and gave an option to the king of taking a penalty of £20 a month from recusants, or two-thirds of their lands. It prescribed also an oath of allegiance, the refusal of which incurred the penalties of a præmunire. This imported that, notwithstanding any sentence of deprivation or excommunication by the pope, the taker would bear true allegiance to the king, and defend him against any conspiracies which should be made by reason of such sentence or otherwise, and do his best endeavour to disclose them; that he from his heart abhorred, detested, and abjured as impious and heretical, the damnable doctrine and position that princes, excommunicated or deprived by the pope, may be deposed or murdered by their subjects, or any other whatsoever; and that he did not believe that the pope or any other could absolve him from this oath.[680]

Except by cavilling at one or two words, it seemed impossible for the Roman catholics to decline so reasonable a test of loyalty, without justifying the worst suspicions of protestant jealousy. Most of the secular priests in England, asking only a connivance in the exercise of their ministry, and aware how much the good work of reclaiming their apostate countrymen was retarded by the political obloquy they incurred, would have willingly acquiesced in the oath. But the court of Rome, not yet receding an inch from her proudest claims, absolutely forbade all catholics to abjure her deposing power by this test, and employed Bellarmine to prove its unlawfulness. The king stooped to a literary controversy with this redoubted champion, and was prouder of no exploit of his life than his answer to the cardinal's book; by which he incurred the contempt of foreign courts and of all judicious men.[681] Though neither the murderous conspiracy of 1605, nor this refusal to abjure the principles on which it was founded, could dispose James to persecution, or even render the papist so obnoxious in his eyes as the puritan; yet he was long averse to anything like a general remission of the penal laws. In sixteen instances after this time, the sanguinary enactments of his predecessor were enforced, but only perhaps against priests who refused the oath;[682] the catholics enjoyed on the whole somewhat more indulgence than before, in respect to the private exercise of their religion; at least enough to offend narrow-spirited zealots, and furnish pretext for the murmurs of a discontented parliament, but under condition of paying compositions for recusancy; a regular annual source of revenue which, though apparently trifling in amount, the king was not likely to abandon, even if his notions of prerogative, and the generally received prejudices of that age, had not determined him against an express toleration.[683]

In the course, however, of that impolitic negotiation, which exposed him to all eyes as the dupe and tool of the court of Madrid, James was led on to promise concessions for which his protestant subjects were ill prepared. That court had wrought on his feeble mind by affected coyness about the infanta's marriage, with two private aims; to secure his neutrality in the war of the Palatinate, and to obtain better terms for the English catholics. Fully successful in both ends, it would probably have at length permitted the union to take place, had not Buckingham's rash insolence broken off the treaty; but I am at a loss to perceive the sincere and even generous conduct which some have found in the Spanish council during this negotiation.[684] The king acted with such culpable weakness, as even in him excites our astonishment. Buckingham, in his first eagerness for the marriage on arriving in Spain, wrote to ask if the king would acknowledge the pope's spiritual supremacy, as the surest means of success. James professed to be much shocked at this, but offered to recognise his jurisdiction as patriarch of the west, to whom ecclesiastical appeals might ultimately be made; a concession as incompatible with the code of our protestant laws as the former. Yet with this knowledge of his favourite's disposition, he gave the prince and him a written promise to perform whatever they should agree upon with the court of Madrid.[685] On the treaty being almost concluded, the king, prince, and privy council swore to observe certain stipulated articles, by which the infanta was not only to have the exercise of her religion, but the education of her children till ten years of age. But the king was also sworn to private articles; that no penal laws should be put in force against the catholics, that there should be a perpetual toleration of their religion in private houses, that he and his son would use their authority to make parliament confirm and ratify these articles, and revoke all laws (as it is with strange latitude expressed) containing anything repugnant to the Roman catholic religion, and that they would not consent to any new laws against them. The Prince of Wales separately engaged to procure the suspension or abrogation of the penal laws within three years, and to lengthen the term for the mother's education of their children from ten years to twelve, if it should be in his own power. He promised also to listen to catholic divines, whenever the infanta should desire it.[686]

These secret assurances, when they were whispered in England, might not unreasonably excite suspicion of the prince's wavering in his religion, which he contrived to aggravate by an act as imprudent as it was reprehensible. During his stay at Madrid, while his inclinations were still bent on concluding the marriage, the sole apparent obstacle being the pope's delay in forwarding the dispensation, he wrote a letter to Gregory XV., in reply to one received from him, in language evidently intended to give an impression of his favourable dispositions towards the Romish faith. The whole tenor of his subsequent life must have satisfied every reasonable inquirer into our history, of Charles's real attachment to the Anglican church; nor could he have had any other aim than to facilitate his arrangements with the court of Rome by this deception. It would perhaps be uncandid to judge severely a want of ingenuousness, which youth, love, and bad counsels may extenuate; yet I cannot help remarking that the letter is written with the precautions of a veteran in dissimulation; and, while it is full of what might raise expectation, contains no special pledge that he could be called on to redeem. But it was rather presumptuous to hope that he could foil the subtlest masters of artifice with their own weapons.[687]

James, impatient for this ill-omened alliance, lost no time in fulfilling his private stipulations with Spain. He published a general pardon of all penalties already incurred for recusancy. It was designed to follow this up by a proclamation prohibiting the bishops, judges, and other magistrates to execute any penal statute against the catholics. But the lord keeper, Bishop Williams, hesitated at so unpopular a stretch of power.[688] And, the rupture with Spain ensuing almost immediately, the king, with a singular defiance of all honest men's opinion, though the secret articles of the late treaty had become generally known, declared in his first speech to parliament in 1624, that "he had only thought good sometimes to wink and connive at the execution of some penal laws, and not to go on so rigorously as at other times, but not to dispense with any or to forbid or alter any that concern religion; he never permitted or yielded, he never did think it with his heart, nor spoke it with his mouth."[689]

When James soon after this, not yet taught by experience to avoid a catholic alliance, demanded the hand of Henrietta Maria for his son, Richlieu thought himself bound by policy and honour as well as religion to obtain the same or greater advantages for the English catholics than had been promised in the former negotiation. Henrietta was to have the education of her children till they reached the age of twelve; thus were added two years, at a time of life when the mind becomes susceptible of lasting impressions, to the term at which, by the treaty of Spain, the mother's superintendence was to cease.[690] Yet there is the strongest reason to believe that this condition was merely inserted for the honour of the French Crown, with a secret understanding that it should never be executed.[691] In fact, the royal children were placed at a very early age under protestant governors of the king's appointment; nor does Henrietta appear to have ever insisted on her right. That James and Charles should have incurred the scandal of this engagement, since the articles, though called private, must be expected to transpire, without any real intentions of performing it, is an additional instance of that arrogant contempt of public opinion which distinguished the Stuart family. It was stipulated in the same private articles, that prisoners on the score of religion should be set at liberty, and that none should be molested in future.[692] These promises were irregularly fulfilled, according to the terms on which Charles stood with his brother-in-law. Sometimes general orders were issued to suspend all penal laws against papists; again, by a capricious change of policy, all officers and judges are directed to proceed in their execution; and this severity gave place in its turn to a renewed season of indulgence. If these alterations were not very satisfactory to the catholics, the whole scheme of lenity displeased and alarmed the protestants. Tolerance, in any extensive sense, of that proscribed worship was equally abhorrent to the prelatist and the puritan; though one would have winked at its peaceable and domestic exercise, which the other was zealous to eradicate. But, had they been capable of more liberal reasoning upon this subject, there was enough to justify their indignation at this attempt to sweep away the restrictive code established by so many statutes, and so long deemed essential to the security of their church, by an unconstitutional exertion of the prerogative, prompted by no more worthy motive than compliance with a foreign power, and tending to confirm suspicions of the king's wavering between the two religions, or his indifference to either. In the very first months of his reign, and while that parliament was sitting, which has been reproached for its parsimony, he sent a fleet to assist the French king in blocking up the port of Rochelle; and with utter disregard of the national honour, ordered the admiral, who reported that the sailors would not fight against protestants, to sail to Dieppe, and give up his ships into the possession of France.[693] His subsequent alliance with the Hugonot party in consequence merely of Buckingham's unwarrantable hostility to France, founded on the most extraordinary motives, could not redeem, in the eyes of the nation, this instance of lukewarmness, to say the least, in the general cause of the Reformation. Later ages have had means of estimating the attachment of Charles the First to protestantism, which his contemporaries in that early period of his reign did not enjoy; and this has led some to treat the apprehensions of parliament as either insincere or preposterously unjust. But can this be fairly pretended by any one who has acquainted himself with the course of proceedings on the Spanish marriage, the whole of which was revealed by the Earl of Bristol to the House of Lords? Was there nothing, again, to excite alarm in the frequent conversions of persons of high rank to popery, in the more dangerous partialities of many more, in the evident bias of certain distinguished churchmen to tenets rejected at the Reformation? The course pursued with respect to religious matters after the dissolution of parliament in 1629, to which I shall presently advert, did by no means show the misgivings of that assembly to have been ill-founded.

It was neither, however, the Arminian opinions of the higher clergy, nor even their supposed leaning towards those of Rome, that chiefly rendered them obnoxious to the Commons. They had studiously inculcated that resistance to the commands of rulers was in every conceivable instance a heinous sin; a tenet so evidently subversive of all civil liberty that it can be little worth while to argue about right and privilege, wherever it has obtained a real hold on the understanding and conscience of a nation. This had very early been adopted by the Anglican reformers, as a barrier against the disaffection of those who adhered to the ancient religion, and in order to exhibit their own loyalty in a more favourable light. The homily against wilful disobedience and rebellion was written on occasion of the rising of the northern earls in 1569, and is full of temporary and even personal allusions.[694] But the same doctrine is enforced in others of those compositions, which enjoy a kind of half authority in the English church. It is laid down in the canons of convocation in 1606. It is very frequent in the writings of English divines, those especially who were much about the court. And an unlucky preacher at Oxford, named Knight, about 1622, having thrown out some intimation that subjects oppressed by their prince on account of religion might defend themselves by arms; that university, on the king's highly resenting such heresy, not only censured the preacher (who had the audacity to observe that the king by then sending aid to the French Hugonots of Rochelle, as was rumoured to be designed, had sanctioned his position), but pronounced a solemn decree that it is in no case lawful for subjects to make use of force against their princes, nor to appear offensively or defensively in the field against them. All persons promoted to degrees were to subscribe this article, and to take an oath that they not only at present detested the opposite opinion, but would at no future time entertain it. A ludicrous display of the folly and despotic spirit of learned academies![695]

Those, however, who most strenuously denied the abstract right of resistance to unlawful commands, were by no means obliged to maintain the duty of yielding them an active obedience. In the case of religion, it was necessary to admit that God was rather to be obeyed than man. Nor had it been pretended, except by the most servile churchmen, that subjects had no positive rights, in behalf of which they might decline compliance with illegal requisitions. This, however, was openly asserted in the reign of Charles. Those who refused the general loan of 1626, had to encounter assaults from very different quarters, and were not only imprisoned, but preached at. Two sermons by Sibthorp and Mainwaring excited particular attention. These men, eager for preferment which they knew the readiest method to attain, taught that the king might take the subject's money at his pleasure, and that no one might refuse his demand, on penalty of damnation. "Parliaments," said Mainwaring, "were not ordained to contribute any right to the king, but for the more equal imposing and more easy exacting of that which unto kings doth appertain by natural and original law and justice, as their proper inheritance annexed to their imperial Crowns from their birth."[696] These extravagances of rather obscure men would have passed with less notice, if the government had not given them the most indecent encouragement. Abbot, Archbishop of Canterbury, a man of integrity, but upon that account as well as for his Calvinistic partialities, long since obnoxious to the courtiers, refused to license Sibthorp's sermon, alleging some unwarrantable passages which it contained. For no other cause than this, he was sequestered from the exercise of his archiepiscopal jurisdiction, and confined to a country-house in Kent.[697] The House of Commons, after many complaints of those ecclesiastics, finally proceeded against Mainwaring by impeachment at the bar of the Lords. He was condemned to pay a fine of £1000, to be suspended for three years from his ministry, and to be incapable of holding any ecclesiastical dignity. Yet the king almost immediately pardoned Mainwaring, who became in a few years a bishop, as Sibthorp was promoted to an inferior dignity.[698]

_General remarks._--There seems on the whole to be very little ground for censure in the proceedings of this illustrious parliament. I admit that, if we believe Charles the First to have been a gentle and beneficient monarch, incapable of harbouring any design against the liberties of his people, or those who stood forward in defence of their privileges, wise in the choice of his counsellors, and patient in listening to them, the Commons may seem to have carried their opposition to an unreasonable length. But, if he had shown himself possessed with such notions of his own prerogative, no matter how derived, as could bear no effective control from fixed law or from the nation's representatives; if he was hasty and violent in temper, yet stooping to low arts of equivocation and insincerity, whatever might be his estimable qualities in other respects, they could act, in the main, no otherwise than by endeavouring to keep him in the power of parliament, lest his power should make parliament but a name. Every popular assembly, truly zealous in a great cause, will display more heat and passion than cool-blooded men after the lapse of centuries may wholly approve.[699] But so far were they from encroaching, as our Tory writers pretend, on the just powers of a limited monarch, that they do not appear to have conceived, they at least never hinted at, the securities without which all they had obtained or attempted would become ineffectual. No one member of that house, in the utmost warmth of debate, is recorded to have suggested the abolition of the court of star-chamber, or any provision for the periodical meeting of parliament. Though such remedies for the greatest abuses were in reality consonant to the actual unrepealed law of the land; yet, as they implied, in the apprehension of the generality, a retrenchment of the king's prerogative, they had not yet become familiar to their hopes. In asserting the illegality of arbitrary detention, of compulsory loans, of tonnage and poundage levied without consent of parliament, they stood in defence of positive rights won by their fathers, the prescriptive inheritance of Englishmen. Twelve years more of repeated aggressions taught the long parliament what a few sagacious men might perhaps have already suspected, that they must recover more of their ancient constitution from oblivion, that they must sustain its partial weakness by new securities, that, in order to render the existence of monarchy compatible with that of freedom, they must not only strip it of all it had usurped, but of something that was its own.

FOOTNOTES:

[629] The general temperance and chastity of Charles, and the effect those virtues had in reforming the outward face of the court, are attested by many writers, and especially by Mrs. Hutchinson, whose good word he would not have undeservedly obtained. _Mem. of Col. Hutchinson_, p. 65. I am aware that he was not the perfect saint as well as martyr which his panegyrists represent him to have been; but it is an unworthy office, even for the purpose of throwing ridicule on exaggerated praise, to turn the microscope of history on private life.

[630] War had not been declared at Charles's accession, nor at the dissolution of the first parliament. In fact, he was much more set upon it than his subjects. Hume and all his school keep this out of sight.

[631] Hume has disputed this, but with little success, even on his own showing. He observes, on an assertion of Wilson, that Buckingham lost his popularity after Bristol arrived, because he proved that the former, while in Spain, had professed himself a papist--that it is false, and _was never said by Bristol_. It is singular that Hume should know so positively what Bristol did not say in 1624, when it is notorious that he said in parliament what nearly comes to the same thing in 1626. See a curious letter in Cabala, p. 224, showing what a combination had been formed against Buckingham, of all descriptions of malcontents.

[632] _Parl. Hist._ vol. ii. p. 6.

[633] _Id._ 33.

[634] The language of Lord-Keeper Coventry in opening the session was very ill calculated for the spirit of the Commons: "If we consider aright, and think of that incomparable distance between the supreme height and majesty of a mighty monarch and the submissive awe and lowliness of loyal subjects, we cannot but receive exceeding comfort and contentment in the frame and constitution of this highest court, wherein not only the prelates, nobles, and grandees, but the commons of all degrees, have their part; and wherein that high majesty doth descend to admit, or rather to invite, the humblest of his subjects to conference and counsel with him," etc. He gave them a distinct hint afterwards that they must not expect to sit long. _Parl. Hist._ 39.

[635] _Parl. Hist._ 60. I know of nothing under the Tudors of greater arrogance than this language. Sir Dudley Carleton, accustomed more to foreign negotiations than to an English House of Commons, gave very just offence by descanting on the misery of the people in other countries. "He cautioned them not to make the king out of love with parliaments by incroaching on his prerogative; for in his messages he had told them that he must then use new councils. In all Christian kingdoms there were parliaments anciently, till the monarchs seeing their turbulent spirits, stood upon their prerogatives, and overthrew them all, except with us. In foreign countries the people look not like ours, with store of flesh on their backs; but like ghosts, being nothing but skin and bones, with some thin cover to their nakedness, and wearing wooden shoes on their feet; a misery beyond expression, and that we are yet free from; and let us not lose the repute of a free-born nation by our turbulency in parliament." Rushworth.

This was a hint, in the usual arrogant style of courts, that the liberties of the people depended on favour, and not on their own determination to maintain them.

[636] _Parl. Hist._ 119; Hatsell, i. 147; Lords' Journals. A few peers refused to join in this.

Dr. Lingard has observed that the opposition in the House of Lords was headed by the Earl of Pembroke, who had been rather conspicuous in the late reign, and whose character is drawn by Clarendon in the first book of history. He held ten proxies in the king's first parliament, as Buckingham did thirteen. Lingard, ix. 328. In the second Pembroke had had only five, but the duke still came with thirteen. Lords' Journals, p. 491. This enormous accumulation of suffrages in one person led to an order of the house, which is now its established regulation, that no peer can hold more than two proxies. Lords' Journals, p. 507.

[637] _Parl. Hist._ 125; Hatsell, 141.

[638] Mr. Brodie has commented rather too severely on Bristol's conduct. Vol. ii. p. 109. That he was "actuated merely by motives of self-aggrandisement," is surely not apparent; though he might be more partial to Spain than we may think right, or even though he might have some bias towards the religion of Rome. The last, however, is by no means proved; for the king's word is no proof in my eyes.

[639] See the proceedings on the mutual charges of Buckingham and Bristol in Rushworth, or the _Parliamentary History_. Charles's behaviour is worth noticing. He sent a message to the house, desiring that they would not comply with the earl's request of being allowed counsel; and yielded ungraciously, when the Lords remonstrated against the prohibition. _Parl. Hist._ 97, 132. The attorney-general exhibited articles against Bristol as to facts depending in great measure on the king's sole testimony. Bristol petitioned the house "to take in consideration of what consequence such a precedent might be; and thereon most humbly to move his majesty for the declining, at least, of his majesty's accusation and testimony." _Id._ 98. The house ordered two questions on this to be put to the judges: 1. Whether, in case of treason or felony, the king's testimony was to be admitted or not? 2. Whether words spoken to the prince, who is after king, make any alteration in the case? They were ordered to deliver their opinions three days afterwards. But when the time came, the chief justice informed the house that the attorney-general had communicated to the judges his majesty's pleasure that they should forbear to give an answer. _Id._ 103, 106.

Hume says, "Charles himself was certainly deceived by Buckingham, when he corroborated his favourite's narrative by his testimony." But no assertion can be more gratuitous; the supposition indeed is impossible.

[640] _Parl. Hist._ 193. If the following letter is accurate, the privy-council themselves were against this dissolution: "Yesterday the Lords sitting in council at Whitehall to argue whether the parliament should be dissolved or not, were all with one voice against the dissolution of it; and to-day, when the lord keeper drew out the commission to have read it, they sent four of their own body to his majesty to let him know how dangerous this abruption would be to the state, and beseech him the parliament might sit but two days--he answered not a minute."--15 June, 1626. Mede's Letters, _ubi supra_. The author expresses great alarm at what might be the consequence of this step. Mede ascribes this to the council; but others, perhaps more probably, to the house of peers. The king's expression "not a minute" is mentioned by several writers.

[641] Rushworth, Kennet.

[642] Mede's Letters--"On Monday the judges sat in Westminster-hall to persuade the people to pay subsidies; but there arose a great tumultuous shout amongst them: 'A parliament! a parliament! else no subsidies!' The levying of the subsidies, verbally granted in parliament, being propounded to the subsidy men in Westminster, all of them, saving some thirty among five thousand (and they all the king's servants), cried 'A parliament! a parliament!' etc. The same was done in Middlesex on Monday also, in five or six places, but far more are said to have refused the grant. At Hicks's hall the men of Middlesex assembled there, when they had heard a speech for the purpose, made their obeisance; and so went out without any answer affirmative or negative. In Kent the whole county denied, saying that subsidies were matters of too high a nature for them to meddle withal, and that they durst not deal therewith, lest, hereafter they might be called in question." July 22, _et post_. In Harleian MSS. xxxvii. fol. 192, we find a letter from the king to the deputy lieutenant and justices of every county, informing them that he had dissolved the last parliament because the disordered passion of some members of that house, contrary to the good inclination of the greater and wiser sort of them, had frustrated the grant of four subsidies, and three-fifteenths, where they had promised; he therefore enjoins the deputy lieutenants to cause all the troops and bands of the county to be mustered, trained, and ready to march, as he is threatened with invasion; that the justices do divide the county into districts, and appoint in each able persons to collect and receive moneys, promising the parties to employ them in the common defence; to send a list of those who contribute and those who refuse, "that we may hereby be informed who are well affected to our service, and who are otherwise." July 7, 1626. It is evident that the pretext of invasion, which was utterly improbable, was made use of in order to shelter the king's illegal proceedings.

[643] Rushworth's Abr. i. 270.

[644] The 321st volume of Hargrave MSS. p. 300, contains minutes of a debate at the council-table during the interval between the second and third parliaments of Charles, taken by a counsellor. It was proposed to lay an excise on beer; others suggested that it should be on malt, on account of what was brewed in private houses. It was then debated "how to overcome difficulties, whether by persuasion or force. Persuasion, it was thought, would not gain it; and for judicial courses, it would not hold against the subject that would stand upon the right of his own property, and against the fundamental constitutions of the kingdom. The last resort was to a proclamation; for in star-chamber it might be punishable, and thereupon it rested." There follows much more; it seemed to be agreed that there was such a necessity as might justify the imposition; yet a sort of reluctance is visible even among these timid counsellors. The king pressed it forward much. In the same volume (p. 393) we find other proceedings at the council-table, whereof the subject was, the censuring or punishing of some one who had refused to contribute to the loan of 1626 on the ground of its illegality. The highest language is held by some of the conclave in this debate.

Mr. D'Israeli has collected from the same copious reservoir, the manuscripts of the British Museum, several more illustrations, both of the arbitrary proceedings of the council, and of the bold spirit with which they were resisted. _Curiosities of Literature_, New Series, iii. 381. But this ingenious author is too much imbued with "the monstrous faith of many made for one," and sets the private feelings of Charles for an unworthy and dangerous minion, above the liberties and interests of the nation.

[645] Rushworth, Kennet.

[646] See above, in chap. v. Coke himself, while chief justice, had held that one committed by the privy-council was not bailable by any court in England. _Parl. Hist._ 310. He had nothing to say when pressed with this in the next parliament, but that he had misgrounded his opinion upon a certain precedent, which being nothing to the purpose, he was now assured his opinion was as little to the purpose. _Id._ 325; _State Trials_, iii. 81.

[647] _State Trials_, iii. 1-234; _Parl. Hist._ 246, 259, etc.; Rushworth.

[648] At the council-table, some proposing a parliament, the king said, he did abominate the name. Mede's Letters, 30th Sept. 1626.

[649] Rushworth; Mede's Letters in Harl. MSS. _passim_.

[650] Rushworth's Abr. i. 304; Cabala, part ii. 217. See what is said of this by Mr. Brodie, ii. 158.

[651] A commission addressed to Lord Wimbledon, 28th Dec. 1625, empowers him to proceed against soldiers or dissolute persons joining with them, who should commit any robberies, etc., which by martial law ought to be punished with death, by such summary course as is agreeable to martial law, etc. Rymer, xviii. 254. Another, in 1626, may be found. P. 763. It is unnecessary to point out how unlike these commissions are to our present mutiny-bills.

[652] Bishop Williams, as we are informed by his biographer, though he promoted the petition of right, stickled for the additional clause adopted by the Lords, reserving the king's sovereign power; which very justly exposed him to suspicion of being corrupted. For that he was so is most evident by what follows; where we are told that he had an interview with the Duke of Buckingham, when they were reconciled; and "his grace had the bishop's consent with a little asking, that he would be his grace's faithful servant in the next session of parliament, and was allowed to hold up a seeming enmity, and his own popular estimation, that he might the sooner do the work." Hacket's _Life of Williams_, pp. 77, 80. With such instances of baseness and treachery in the public men of this age, surely the distrust of the Commons was not so extravagant as the school of Hume pretend.

[653] The debates and conferences on this momentous subject, especially on the article of the habeas corpus, occupy near two hundred columns in the _New Parliamentary History_, to which I refer the reader.

In one of these conferences, the Lords, observing what a prodigious weight of legal ability was arrayed on the side of the petition, very fairly determined to hear counsel for the Crown. One of these, Serjeant Ashley, having argued in behalf of the prerogative in a high tone, such as had been usual in the late reign, was ordered into custody; and the Lords assured the other house, that he had no authority from them for what he had said. _Id._ 327. A remarkable proof of the rapid growth of popular principles!

[654] Hargrave MSS. xxxii. 97.

[655] _Parl. Hist._ 436.

[656] Stat. 3 Car. I. c. 1. Hume has printed in a note the whole statute with the preamble, which I omit for the sake of brevity, and because it may be found in so common a book.

[657] _Parl. Hist._ 431.

[658] Rushworth Abr. i. 409.

[659] _Parl. Hist._ 441, etc.

[660] Cawdrey's Case, 5 Reports; Cro. Jac. 37; Neal, p. 432. The latter says, above three hundred were deprived; but Collier reduces them to forty-nine. P. 687. The former writer states the nonconformist ministers at this time in twenty-four counties to have been 754; of course the whole number was much greater. P. 434. This minority was considerable; but it is chiefly to be noticed, that it contained the more exemplary portion of the clergy; no scandalous or absolutely illiterate incumbent, of whom there was a very large number, being a nonconformist. This general enforcement of conformity, however it might compel the majority's obedience, rendered the separation of the incompliant more decided. Neal, 446. Many retired to Holland, especially of the Brownist, or Independent denomination. _Id._ 436. And Bancroft, like his successor Laud, interfered to stop some who were setting out for Virginia. _Id._ 454.

[661] Lord Bacon, in his advertisement respecting the _Controversies of the Church of England_, written under Elizabeth, speaks of this notion as newly broached. "Yea and some indiscreet persons have been bold in open preaching to use dishonourable and derogatory speech and censure of the churches abroad; and that so far, as some of our men ordained in foreign parts have been pronounced to be no lawful ministers."--Vol. i. p. 382. It is evident, by some passages in Strype, attentively considered, that natives regularly ordained abroad in the presbyterian churches were admitted to hold preferment in England; the first bishop who objected to them seems to have been Aylmer. Instances, however, of foreigners holding preferment without any re-ordination, may be found down to the civil wars. _Annals of Reformation_, ii. 522, and Appendix, 116; _Life of Grindal_, 271; Collier, ii. 594; Neal, i. 258.

The divine right of episcopacy is said to have been laid down by Bancroft, in his famous sermon at Paul's cross, in 1588. But I do not find anything in it to that effect. It is, however, pretty distinctly asserted, if I mistake not the sense, in the canons of 1606. Overall's _Convocation Book_, 179, etc. Yet Laud had been reproved by the university of Oxford in 1604, for maintaining, in his exercise for bachelor of divinity, that there could be no true church without bishops, which was thought to cast a bone of contention between the church of England and the reformed upon the Continent. Heylin's _Life of Laud_, 54.

Cranmer and some of the original founders of the Anglican church, so far from maintaining the divine and indispensable right of episcopal government, held bishops and priests to be the same order.

[662] See the queen's injunctions of 1559 (_Somers Tracts_, i. 65), and compare preamble of 5 and 6 of Edw. VI. c. 3.

[663] The first of these Sabbatarians was a Dr. Bound, whose sermon was suppressed by Whitgift's order. But some years before, one of Martin Mar-prelate's charges against Aylmer was for playing at bowls on Sundays: and the word sabbath as applied to that day may be found occasionally under Elizabeth, though by no means so usual as afterwards. One of Bound's recommendations was that no feasts should be given on that day, "except by lords, knights, and persons of quality;" for which unlucky reservation his adversaries did not forget to deride him. Fuller's _Church History_, p. 227. This writer describes in his quaint style the abstinence from sports produced by this new doctrine; and remarks, what a slight acquaintance with human nature would have taught Archbishop Laud, that "the more liberty people were offered, the less they used it; it was sport for them to refrain from sport." See also Collier, 643; Neal, 386; Strype's _Whitgift_, 530; May's _Hist. of Parliament_, 16.

[664] Heylin's _Life of Laud_, 15; Fuller, part ii. p. 76.

The regulations enacted at various times since the Reformation for the observance of abstinence in as strict a manner, though not ostensibly on the same grounds, as it is enjoined in the church of Rome, may deserve some notice. A statute of 1548 (2 and 3 Edward VI. c. 19), after reciting that one day or one kind of meat is not more holy, pure, or clean than another, and much else to the same effect, yet "forasmuch as divers of the king's subjects, turning their knowledge therein to gratify their sensuality, have of late more than in times past broken and contemned such abstinence, which hath been used in this realm upon the Fridays and Saturdays, the embering days and other days commonly called vigils, and in the time commonly called Lent, and other accustomed times; the king's majesty considering that due and godly abstinence is a mean to virtue and to subdue men's bodies to their soul and spirit, and considering also especially that fishers and men using the trade of fishing in the sea may thereby the rather be set on work, and that by eating of fish much flesh shall be saved and increased," enacts, after repealing all existing laws on the subject, that such as eat flesh at the forbidden seasons shall incur a penalty of ten shillings, or ten days' imprisonment _without flesh_, and a double penalty for the second offence.

The next statute relating to abstinence is one (5th Eliz. c. 5) entirely for the increase of the fishery. It enacts (§ 15, etc.) that no one, unless having a licence, shall eat flesh on fish-days, or on Wednesdays, now made an additional fish-day, under a penalty of £3, or three months' imprisonment. Except that every one having three dishes of sea-fish at his table, might have one of flesh also. But "because no manner of person shall misjudge of the intent of this statute," it is enacted that whosoever shall notify that any eating of fish or forbearing of flesh mentioned therein is of any necessity for the saving of the soul of man, or that it is the service of God, otherwise than as other politic laws are and be; that then such persons shall be punished as spreaders of false news (§ 39 and 40). The act 27th Eliz. c. 11, repeals the prohibition as to Wednesday; and provides that no victuallers shall vend flesh in Lent, nor upon Fridays or Saturdays, under a penalty. The 35th Eliz. c. 7, § 22, reduces the penalty of three pounds or three months' imprisonment, enacted by 5th of Eliz. to one-third. This is the latest statute that appears on the subject.

Many proclamations appear to have been issued in order to enforce an observance so little congenial to the propensities of Englishmen. One of those in the first year of Edward was before any statute; and its very words respecting the indifference of meats in a religious sense were adopted by the legislature the next year. Strype's _Eccles. Memor._ ii. 81. In one of Elizabeth's, A.D. 1572, as in the statute of Edward, the political motives of the prohibition seem in some measure associated with the superstition it disclaims; for eating in the season of Lent is called "licentious and carnal disorder, in contempt of God and man, and only to the satisfaction of devilish and carnal appetite;" and butchers, etc., "ministering to such foul lust of the flesh," were severely mulcted. Strype's _Annals_, ii. 208. But in 1576 another proclamation to the same effect uses no such hard words, and protests strongly against any superstitious interpretation of its motive. _Life of Grindal_, p. 226. So also in 1579 (Strype's _Annals_, ii. 608), and, as far as I have observed, in all of a later date, the encouragement of the navy and fishery is set forth as their sole ground. In 1596, Whitgift, by the queen's command, issued letters to the bishops of his province, to take order that the fasting-days, Wednesday and Friday, should be kept, and no suppers eaten, especially on Friday evens. This was on account of the great dearth of that and the preceding year. Strype's _Whitgift_, p. 490. These proclamations for the observance of Lent continued under James and Charles, as late, I presume, as the commencement of the civil war. They were diametrically opposed to the puritan tenets; for, notwithstanding the pretext about the fishery, there is no doubt that the dominant ecclesiastics maintained the observance of Lent as an ordinance of the church. But I suspect that little regard was paid to Friday and Saturday as days of weekly fast. Rymer, xvii. 131, 134, 349; xviii. 268, 282, 961.

This abstemious system, however, was only compulsory on the poor. Licences were easily obtained by others from the privy-council in Edward's days, and afterwards from the bishop. They were empowered, with their guests, to eat flesh on all fasting-days for life. Sometimes the number of guests was limited. Thus the Marquis of Winchester had permission for twelve friends; and John Sanford, draper of Gloucester, for two. Strype's _Memorials_, ii. 82. The act above mentioned for encouragement of the fishery, 5th Eliz. c. 5, provides that £1 6_s._ 8_d._ shall be paid for granting every licence, and 6_s._ 8_d._ annually afterwards, to the poor of the parish. But no licence was to be granted for eating beef at any time of the year, or veal from Michaelmas to the first of May. A melancholy privation to our countrymen! but, I have no doubt, little regarded. Strype makes known to us the interesting fact, that Ambrose Potter, of Gravesend, and his wife, had permission from Archbishop Whitgift "to eat flesh and white meats in Lent, during their lives; so that it was done soberly and frugally, cautiously, and avoiding public scandal as much as might be, and giving 6_s._ 8_d._ annually to the poor of the parish." _Life of Whitgift_, 246.

The civil wars did not so put an end to the compulsory observance of Lent and fish days but that similar proclamations are found after the Restoration, I know not how long. Kennet's Register, p. 367 and 558. And some orthodox Anglicans continued to make a show of fasting. The following extracts from Pepys' diary are, perhaps, characteristic of the class. "I called for a dish of fish which we had for dinner, this being the first day of Lent; and I do intend to try whether I can keep it or no." Feb. 27, 1661. "Notwithstanding my resolution, yet for want of other victuals, I did eat flesh this Lent, but am resolved to eat as little as I can."

[665] Wilson, 709.

[666] Debates in parliament, 1621, vol. i. pp. 45, 52. The king requested them not to pass this bill, being so directly against his proclamation. _Id._ 60. Shepherd's expulsion is mentioned in Mede's Letters, Harl. MSS. 389.

[667] Vol. ii. 97. Two acts were passed (1 Car. I. c. 1 and 3 Car I. c. 2) for the better observance of Sunday; the former of which gave great annoyance, it seems, to the orthodox party. "Had any such bill," says Heylin, "been offered in King James's time, it would have found a sorry welcome; but this king being under a necessity of compliance with them, resolved to grant them their desires in that particular, to the end that they might grant his also in the aid required, when that obstruction was removed. The Sabbatarians took the benefit of this opportunity for the obtaining of this grant, the first that ever they obtained by all their strugglings, which of what consequence it was we shall see hereafter." _Life of Laud_, p. 129. Yet this statute permits the people lawful sports and pastimes on Sundays within their own parishes.

[668] Without loading the page with too many references on a subject so little connected with this work, I mention Strype's _Annals_, vol. i. p. 118, and a letter from Jewel to P. Martyr in Burnet, vol. iii. Appendix 275.

[669] Collier, 568.

[670] Strype's _Annals_, i. 207, 294.

[671] Strype's _Whitgift_, 434-472.

[672] It is admitted on all hands that the Greek fathers did not inculcate the predestinarian system. Elizabeth having begun to read some of the fathers, Bishop Cox writes of it with some disapprobation, adverting especially to the Pelagianism of Chrysostom and the other Greeks. Strype's _Annals_, i. 324.

[673] Winwood, iii. 293. The intemperate and even impertinent behaviour of James in pressing the states of Holland to inflict some censure or punishment on Vorstius, is well known. But though Vorstius was an Arminian, it was not precisely on account of those opinions that he incurred the king's peculiar displeasure, but for certain propositions as to the nature of the Deity, which James called atheistical, but which were in fact Arian. The letters on this subject in Winwood are curious. Even at this time, the king is said to have spoken moderately of predestination as a dubious point (p. 452), though he had treated Arminius as a mischievous innovator for raising a question about it; and this is confirmed by his letter to the States in 1613. Brandt, iii. 129; and see p. 138; See Collier, p. 711, for the king's sentiments in 1616; also Brandt, iii. 313.

[674] Sir Dudley Carleton's _Letters and Negotiations, passim_; Brandt's _History of Reformation in Low Countries_, vol. iii. The English divines sent to this synod were decidedly inclined to Calvinism, but they spoke of themselves as deputed by the king, not by the church of England which they did not represent.

[675] There is some obscurity about the rapid transition of the court from Calvinism to the opposite side. It has been supposed that the part taken by James at the synod of Dort was chiefly political, with a view to support the house of Orange against the party headed by Barnevelt. But he was so much more of a theologian than a statesman, that I much doubt whether this will account satisfactorily for his zeal in behalf of the Gomarists. He wrote on the subject with much polemical bitterness, but without reference, so far as I have observed, to any political faction; though Sir Dudley Carleton's letters show that _he_ contemplated the matter as a minister ought to do. Heylin intimates that the king grew "more moderate afterwards, and into a better liking of those opinions which he had laboured to condemn at the synod of Dort." _Life of Laud_, 120. The court language, indeed, shifted so very soon after this, that Antonio de Dominis, the famous half-converted Archbishop of Spalato, is said to have invented the name of doctrinal puritans for those who distinguished themselves by holding the Calvinistic tenets. Yet the synod of Dort was in 1618; while De Dominis left England not later than 1622. Buckingham seems to have gone very warmly into Laud's scheme of excluding the Calvinists. The latter gave him a list of divines on Charles's accession, distinguishing their names by O. and P. for orthodox and puritan; including several tenets in the latter denomination, besides those of the quinquarticular controversy; such as the indispensable observance of the Lord's day, the indiscrimination of bishops and presbyters, etc. _Life of Laud_, 119. The influence of Laud became so great that to preach in favour of Calvinism, though commonly reputed to be the doctrine of the church, incurred punishment in any rank. Davenant, Bishop of Salisbury, one of the divines sent to Dort, and reckoned among the principal theologians of that age, was reprimanded on his knees before the privy-council for this offence. Collier, p. 750. But in James's reign the University of Oxford was decidedly Calvinistic. A preacher, about 1623, having used some suspicious expressions, was compelled to recant them, and to maintain the following theses in the divinity school: Decretum prædestinationis non est conditionale--Gratia sufficiens ad salutem non conceditur omnibus. Wood, ii. 348. And I suppose it continued so in the next reign, so far as the university's opinions could be manifested. But Laud took care that no one should be promoted, as far as he could help it, who held these tenets.

[676] Winwood, vol. i. pp. 1, 52, 388; _Lettres d'Ossat_, i. 221; Birch's _Negotiations of Edmondes_, p. 36. These references do not relate to the letter said to have been forged in the king's name, and addressed to Clement VIII. by Lord Balmerino. But Laing, _Hist. of Scotland_, iii. 59, and Birch's _Negotiations_, etc. 177, render it almost certain that this letter was genuine, which indeed has been generally believed by men of sense. James was a man of so little consistency or sincerity that it is difficult to solve the problem of this clandestine intercourse. But it might very likely proceed from his dread of being excommunicated, and, in consequence, assassinated. In a proclamation, commanding all jesuits and priests to quit the realm, dated in 1603, he declares himself personally "so much beholden to the new bishop of Rome for his kind office and private temporal carriage towards us in many things, as we shall ever be ready to requite the same towards him as Bishop of Rome in state and condition of a secular prince." Rymer, xvi. 573. This is explained by a passage in the memoirs of Sully (l. 15). Clement VIII., though before Elizabeth's death he had abetted the project of placing Arabella on the throne, thought it expedient, after this design had failed, to pay some court to James, and had refused to accept the dedication of a work written against him, besides, probably, some other courtesies. There is a letter from the king addressed to the pope, and probably written in 1603, among the Cottonian MSS. Nero B. vi. 9, which shows his disposition to coax and coquet with the Babylonian, against whom he so much inveighs in his printed works. It seems that Clement had so far presumed as to suggest that the Prince of Wales should be educated a catholic; which the king refuses, but not in so strong a manner as he should have done. I cannot recollect whether this letter has been printed, though I can scarcely suppose the contrary. Persons himself began to praise the works of James, and show much hope of what he would do. Cotton, Jul. B. vi. 77.

The severities against catholics seem at first to have been practically mitigated. Winwood, ii. 78. Archbishop Hutton wrote to Cecil, complaining of the toleration granted to papists, while the puritans were severely treated. _Id._ p. 40; Lodge, iii. 251. "The former," he says, "partly by this round dealing with the puritans, and partly by some extraordinary favour, have grown mightily in number, courage, and influence."--"If the gospel shall quail, and popery prevail, it will be imputed principally unto your great counsellors, who either procure or yield to grant toleration to some." James told some gentlemen who petitioned for toleration, that the utmost they could expect was connivance. Carte, iii. 711. This seems to have been what he intended through his reign, till importuned by Spain and France to promise more.

[677] 1 Jac. I. c. 4. The penalties of recusancy were particularly hard upon women, who, as I have observed in another place, adhered longer to the old religion than the other sex; and still more so upon those who had to pay for their scruples. It was proposed in parliament, but with the usual fate of humane suggestions, that husbands going to church, should not be liable for their wives' recusancy. Carte, 754. But they had the alternative afterwards, by 7 Jac. I. c. 6, of letting their wives lie in prison or paying £10 a month.

[678] Lingard, ix. 41, 55.

[679] From comparing some passages in Sir Charles Cornwallis's despatches, (Winwood, vol. ii. pp. 143, 144, 153, with others in Birch's account of Sir Thomas Edmondes's negotiations, p. 233, _et seq._) it appears that the English catholics were looking forward at this time to some crisis in their favour, and that even the court of Spain was influenced by their hopes. A letter from Sir Thomas Parry to Edmondes, dated at Paris, 10 Oct. 1605, is remarkable: "Our priests are very busy about petitions to be exhibited to the king's majesty at this parliament, and some further designs upon refusal. These matters are secretly managed by intelligence with their colleagues in those parts where you reside, and with the two nuncios. I think it were necessary for his majesty's service that you found means to have privy spies amongst them, to discover their negotiations. Something is at present in hand amongst these desperate hypocrites, which I trust God shall divert by the vigilant care of his majesty's faithful servants and friends abroad, and prudence of his council at home." Birch, p. 233. There seems indeed some ground for suspicion that the nuncio at Brussels was privy to the conspiracy; though this ought not to be asserted as an historical fact. Whether the offence of Garnet went beyond misprision of treason has been much controverted. The catholic writers maintain that he had no knowledge of the conspiracy, except by having heard it in confession. But this rests altogether on his word; and the prevarication of which he has been proved to be guilty (not to mention the damning circumstance that he was taken at Hendlip in concealment along with the other conspirators), makes it difficult for a candid man to acquit him of a thorough participation in their guilt. Compare Townsend's _Accusations of History against the Church of Rome_ (1825), p. 247, containing extracts from some important documents in the State Paper-Office, not as yet published, with _State Trials_, vol. ii.; and see Lingard, ix. 160, etc. Yet it should be kept in mind that it was easy for a few artful persons to keep on the alert by indistinct communications a credulous multitude whose daily food was rumour; and the general hopes of the English Romanists at the moment are not evidence of their privity to the gunpowder-treason, which was probably contrived late, and imparted to very few. But to deny that there was such a plot, or, which is the same thing, to throw the whole on the contrivance and management of Cecil, as has sometimes been done, argues great effrontery in those who lead, and great stupidity in those who follow. The letter to Lord Monteagle, the discovery of the powder, the simultaneous rising in arms in Warwickshire, are as indisputable as any facts in history. What then had Cecil to do with the plot, except that he hit upon the clue to the dark allusions in the letter to Monteagle, of which he was courtier enough to let the king take the credit? James's admirers have always reckoned this, as he did himself, a vast proof of sagacity; yet there seems no great acuteness in the discovery, even if it had been his own. He might have recollected the circumstances of his father's catastrophe, which would naturally put him on the scent of gunpowder. In point of fact, however, the happy conjecture appears to be Cecil's. Winwood, ii. 170. But had he no previous hint? See Lodge, iii. 301.

The Earl of Northumberland was not only committed to the Tower on suspicion of privity in the plot, but lay fourteen years there, and paid a fine of £11,000 (by composition for £30,000), before he was released. Lingard, ix. 89. It appears almost incredible that a man of his ability, though certainly of a dangerous and discontented spirit, and rather destitute of religion than a zealot for popery, which he did not, I believe, openly profess, should have mingled in so flagitious a design. There is indeed a remarkable letter in Winwood, vol. iii. p. 287, which tends to corroborate the suspicions entertained of him. But this letter is from Salisbury, his inveterate enemy. Every one must agree, that the fine imposed on this nobleman was preposterous. Were we even to admit that suspicion might justify his long imprisonment, a participation in one of the most atrocious conspiracies recorded in history was, if proved, to be more severely punished; if unproved, not at all.

[680] 3 Jac. I. c. 4, 5.

[681] Carte, iii. 782; Collier, 690; Butler's _Memoirs of Catholics_; Lingard, vol. ix. 97; Aikin, i. 319. It is observed by Collier, ii. 695, and indeed by the king himself, in his _Apology for the Oath of Allegiance_ (edit. 1619), p. 46, that Bellarmine plainly confounds the oath of allegiance with that of supremacy. But this cannot be the whole of the case; it is notorious that Bellarmine protested against any denial of the pope's deposing power.

[682] Lingard, ix. 215. Drury, executed in 1607, was one of the twelve priests who, in 1602, had signed a declaration of the queen's right to the crown, notwithstanding her excommunication. But, though he evidently wavered, he could not be induced to say as much now in order to save his life. _State Trials_, ii. 358.

[683] Lord Bacon, wise in all things, always recommended mildness towards recusants. In a letter to Villiers, in 1616, he advises that the oath of supremacy should by no means be tendered to recusant magistrates in Ireland; "the new plantation of protestants," he says, "must mate the other party in time." Vol. ii. p. 530. This has not indeed proved true; yet as much, perhaps, for want of following Bacon's advice, as for any other cause. He wished for a like toleration in England. But the king, as Buckingham lets him know, was of a quite contrary opinion; for, "though he would not by any means have a more severe course held than his laws appoint in that case, yet there are many reasons why there should be no mitigation above that which his laws have exerted, and his own conscience telleth him to be fit." He afterwards professes "to account it a baseness in a prince to show such a desire of the match [this was in 1617] as to slack anything in his course of government, much more in propagation of the religion he professeth, for fear of giving hinderance to the match thereby."--Page 562. What a contrast to the behaviour of this same king six years afterwards! The Commons were always dissatisfied with lenity, and complained that the lands of recusants were undervalued; as they must have been, if the king got only £6000 per annum by the compositions. Debates in 1621, vol. i. pp. 24, 91. But he valued those in England and Ireland at £36,000. Lingard, 215, from _Hardwicke Papers_.

[684] The absurd and highly blamable conduct of Buckingham has created a prejudice in favour of the court of Madrid. That they desired the marriage is easy to be believed; but that they would have ever sincerely co-operated for the restoration of the Palatinate, or even withdrawn the Spanish troops from it, is neither rendered probable by the general policy of that government, nor by the conduct it pursued in the negotiation. Compare _Hardwicke State Papers_, vol. i.; Cabala, 1, _et post_; Howell's _Letters_; _Clarendon State Papers_, vol. i. _ad initium_, especially p. 13.

A very curious paper in the latter collection (p. 14) may be thought, perhaps, to throw light on Buckingham's projects, and account in some measure for his sudden enmity to Spain. During his residence at Madrid in 1623, a secretary who had been dissatisfied with the court revealed to him a pretended secret discovery of gold mines in a part of America, and suggested that they might be easily possessed by any association that could command seven or eight hundred men; and that after having made such a settlement, it would be easy to take the Spanish flotilla, and attempt the conquest of Jamaica and St. Domingo. This made so great an impression on the mind of Buckingham, that, long afterwards in 1628, he entered into a contract with Gustavus Adolphus, who bound himself to defend him against all opposers in the possession of these mines, as an absolute prince and sovereign, on condition of receiving one-tenth of the profits; promising especially his aid against any puritans who might attack him from Barbadoes or elsewhere, and to furnish him with four thousand men and six ships of war, to be paid out of the revenue of the mines.

This is a very strange document, if genuine. It seems to show that Buckingham, aware of his unpopularity in England, and that sooner or later he must fall, and led away, as so many were, by the expectation of immense wealth in America, had contrived this arrangement, which was probably intended to take place only in the event of his banishment from England. The share that Gustavus appears to have taken in so wild a plan is rather extraordinary, and may expose the whole to some suspicion. It is not clear how this came among the Clarendon papers; but the indorsement runs: "Presented, and the design attempted and in some measure attained by Cromwell, anno 1652." I should conjecture therefore that some spy of the king's procured the copy from Cromwell's papers.

I have since found that Harte had seen a sketch of this treaty, but he does not tell us by what means. _Hist. Gust. Adolph._ i. 130. But that prince, in 1627, laid before the diet of Sweden a plan for establishing a commerce with the West Indies; for which sums of money were subscribed. _Id._ 143.

[685] _Hardwicke Papers_, pp. 402, 411, 417. The very curious letters in this collection relative to the Spanish match are the vouchers for my text. It appears by one of Secretary Conway's, since published (Ellis,