Part 2

First, to maintain, in what she might, a unity in France, that that kingdom, being at peace within itself, might be a bulwark to keep back the power of Spain by land. Next, to preserve an amity and league between that State and us; that so we might join in aid of the Low Countries, and by that means receive their help and ships by sea.

Then, that this treble cord, so wrought between France, the States, and us, might enable us, as occasion should require, to give assistance unto others; by which means, the experience of that time doth tell us, we were not only free from those fears that now possess and trouble us, but then our names were fearful to our enemies. See now what correspondence our action hath had with this.

Square it by these rules. It did induce as a necessary consequence the division in France between the Protestants and their king, of which there is too woeful, too lamentable an experience. It has made an absolute breach between that State and us; and so entertains us against France, France in preparation against us, that we have nothing to promise to our neighbors, hardly for ourselves. Nay, but observe the time in which it was attempted, and you shall find it not only varying from those principles, but directly contrary and opposite _ex diametro_ to those ends; and such as from the issue and success rather might be thought _a conception of Spain than begotten here with us_.[B]

[B] This allusion or insinuation of Eliot’s provoked an instantaneous uproar. Buckingham had visited the Courts of Spain and France, and his name had been associated with discreditable intrigues. In the streets of London there had been talk of “treasonable correspondence,” and of “a sacrifice to vanity or passion of the most sacred duties of patriotism.” When Eliot, therefore, alluded to the act of England as springing from the “conception of Spain,” he struck a sensitive spot. The Chancellor, Sir Humphrey May, sprang to his feet, and exclaimed: “Sir, this is strange language. It is arraigning the Council.” But a general shout arose demanding that Eliot should go on. Then the Chancellor said: “If Sir John Eliot is to go on, I claim permission to go out.” In an instant, the Sergeant, by order of the House, opened the door, and, according to testimony of Alured, who was present, “they all bade him begone! Yet he stayed, and heard Sir John out.” It is evident from this incident that Eliot had the sympathies of the House in his firm grasp. When quiet was restored, Sir John resumed his argument.

Mr. Speaker, I am sorry for this interruption, but much more sorry if there have been occasion; wherein, as I shall submit myself wholly to your judgment to receive what censure you shall give me if I have offended, so in the integrity of my intentions, and clearness of my thoughts, I must still retain this confidence, that no greatness may deter me from the duties which I owe to the service of the country, the service of the King. With a true English heart, I shall discharge myself as faithfully and as really, to the extent of my poor powers, as any man whose honors or whose offices most strictly have obliged him.

You know the dangers Denmark was then in, and how much they concerned us; what in respect of our alliance with that country, what in the importance of the Sound; what an acquisition to our enemies the gain thereof would be, what loss, what prejudice to us! By this division, we, breaking upon France, France being engaged by us, and the Netherlands at amazement between both, neither could intend to aid that luckless King whose loss is our disaster.

Can those now, that express their troubles at the hearing of these things, and have so often told us in this place of their knowledge in the conjunctures and disjunctures of affairs, say they advised in this? Was _this_ an act of council, Mr. Speaker? I have more charity than to think it; and unless they make a confession of themselves, I cannot believe it.[7]

What shall I say? I wish there were not cause to mention it; and, but out of apprehension of the danger that is to come if the like choice hereafter be not now prevented, I could willingly be silent. But my duty to my Sovereign and to the service of this House, the safety and the honor of my country, are above all respects; and what so nearly trenches to the prejudice of these, may not, shall not, be forborne.

At Cadiz,[8] then, in that first expedition we made, when they arrived and found a conquest ready (the Spanish ships, I mean), fit for the satisfaction of a voyage, and of which some of the chiefs then there have since themselves assured me the satisfaction would have been sufficient, either in point of honor, or in point of profit. Why was it neglected? Why was it not achieved? it being of all hands granted how feasible it was.

Afterward, when, with the destruction of some men, and the exposure of some others (who, though their fortunes have not since been such, then by chance came off), when, I say, with the losses of our serviceable men, that unserviceable fort was gained, and the whole army landed, why was there nothing done, nothing once attempted? If nothing were intended, wherefore did they land? If there were a service, why were they shipped again?

Mr. Speaker, it satisfies me too much in this, when I think of their dry and hungry march unto that drunken quarter (for so the soldiers termed it) where was the period of their journey, that divers of our men being left as a sacrifice to the enemy, that labor was at an end.

For the next undertaking, at Rhée, I will not trouble you much; only this in short: Was not that whole action carried against the judgment and opinion of the officers? those that were of council? Was not the first, was not the last, was not all, in the landing, in the intrenching, in the continuance there, in the assault, in the retreat? Did any advice take place of such as were of the council? If there should be a particular disquisition thereof, these things would be manifest, and more. I will not instance now the manifestation that was made for the reason of these arms; nor by whom, nor in what manner, nor on what grounds it was published; nor what effects it has wrought, drawing, as you know, almost all the whole world into league against us! Nor will I mention the leaving of the mines, the leaving of the salt, which were in our possession; and of a value as it is said, to have answered much of our expense. Nor that great wonder, which nor Alexander nor Cæsar ever did, the enriching of the enemy by courtesies when the soldiers wanted help! nor the private intercourses and parlies with the fort, which continually were held. What they intended may be read in the success, and upon due examination thereof they would not want the proofs. For the last voyage to Rochelle, there needs no observation; it is so fresh in memory. Nor will I make an inference or corollary on all. Your own knowledge shall judge what truth, or what sufficiency they express.

For the next, the ignorance or corruption of our ministers, where can you miss of instances? If you survey the court, if you survey the country, if the church, if the city be examined; if you observe the bar, if the bench; if the courts, if the shipping; if the land, if the seas; all these will render you variety of proofs. And in such measure and proportion as shows the greatness of our sickness, that if it have not some speedy application for remedy, our case is most desperate.

Mr. Speaker, I fear I have been too long in these particulars that are past, and am unwilling to offend you; therefore in the rest I shall be shorter. And in that which concerns the impoverishing of the King, no other arguments will I use than such as all men grant.

The exchequer you know is empty, the reputation thereof gone! The ancient lands are sold, the jewels pawned, the plate engaged, the debt still great, and almost all charges, both ordinary and extraordinary, borne by projects! What poverty can be greater? What necessity so great? What perfect English heart is not almost dissolved into sorrow for the truth?

For the oppression of the subject, which, as I remember, is the next particular I proposed, it needs no demonstration. The whole kingdom is a proof. And for the exhausting of our treasures, that oppression speaks it. What waste of our provisions, what consumption of our ships, what destruction of our men, have been,—witness the journey to Algiers![9] Witness that with Mansfield! Witness that to Cadiz! Witness the next! Witness that to Rhée! Witness the last! (And I pray God we may never have more such witnesses.) Witness likewise the Palatinate! Witness Denmark! Witness the Turks! Witness the Dunkirkers! _Witness all!_ What losses we have sustained! How we are impaired in munition, in ships, in men! It has no contradiction! We were never so much weakened, nor had less hope how to be restored!

These, Mr. Speaker, are our dangers; these are they do threaten us, and are like that Trojan horse brought in cunningly to surprise us! For in these do lurk the strongest of our enemies ready to issue on us; and if we do not now the more speedily expel them, these will be the sign and invitation to the others. They will prepare such entrance that we shall have no means left of refuge or defence; for if we have these enemies at home, how can we strive with those that are abroad? But if we be free from these, no others can impeach us! Our ancient English virtue, that old Spartan valor, cleared from these disorders; being in sincerity of religion once made friends with Heaven; having maturity of councils, sufficiency of generals, incorruption of officers, opulency in the king, liberty in the people, repletion in treasures, restitution of provisions, reparation of ships, preservation of men—our ancient English virtue, I say thus rectified, will secure us.

But unless there be a speedy reformation in these, I know not what hope or expectation we may have.

These things, sir, I shall desire to have taken into consideration. That as we are the great council of the kingdom, and have the apprehension of these dangers, we may truly represent them to the King; wherein I conceive we are bound by a treble obligation of duty unto God, of duty to his Majesty, and of duty to our country.

And therefore I wish it may so stand with the wisdom and judgment of the house, that they may be drawn into the body of a _Remonstrance_, and there with all humility expressed; with a prayer unto his Majesty, that for the safety of himself, for the safety of the kingdom, for the safety of religion, he will be pleased to give us time to make perfect inquisition thereof; or to take them into his own wisdom and there give them such timely reformation as the necessity of the cause, and his justice do import. And thus, sir, with a large affection and loyalty to his Majesty, and with a firm duty and service to my country, I have suddenly, and it may be with some disorder, expressed the weak apprehensions I have, wherein if I have erred, I humbly crave your pardon, and so submit it to the censure of the House.

JOHN PYM.

When the English Parliament of 1628 came together, the King told them: “If you do not your duty, mine would then order me to use those other means which God has put into my hand.” Charles’s notion of Parliamentary duty was simply that the members should vote necessary supplies, and then leave the expenditures to the royal will. Parliament, however, insisted upon some assurances that abuses would not be repeated. The Petition of Right, as we saw in our account of Eliot, was the result. Though the King was obliged to give his assent to the petition, it soon became evident that he had no intention to carry out its provisions either in the letter or in the spirit. The liberal supplies granted by Parliament after the signing of the petition were soon exhausted. Every expedient of economy was resorted to in order to avoid the necessity of calling another Parliament.

At first there was perhaps no clearly defined purpose to cause any positive breach of constitutional obligation, but gradually the government drifted into a policy of the most flagrant oppression. No Parliament was called for eleven years. The powers of the prerogative were strained at every point. Knighthood was forced on the gentry in order that large sums might be extorted as the price of composition. Enormous fines were levied for removing defects in title deeds. Large sums were exacted of landowners for encroachments on the crown lands. London, in consequence of its open sympathy with the Parliamentary cause, became a special object of royal dislike. An edict was issued prohibiting the enlargement of the metropolis; and large districts in the suburbs were saved from demolition only by the payment of three years’ rental to the royal treasury. The powers of the Court of Star Chamber were applied to the trying of causes on the simple information of the King’s attorney, and the court was authorized to adjudge any punishment short of death. Under its jurisdiction enormous fines were levied for the most trifling offences. A simple brawl between two wealthy lords had to be atoned for by the payment of £5,000, and more than twice that sum was exacted of a gentleman as a fine for contracting marriage with his niece. Monopolies, which had been formally abandoned both by Elizabeth and by James, were now revived in direct and open violation of the Petition of Right, in order that large sums might be realized from the persons receiving the privileges bestowed by the concession. Nearly every article of domestic necessity had to be procured directly or indirectly from some monopolist; and, consequently, the expense of living was very greatly increased. Customs duties were levied just as if they had been voted by Parliament, and after a time writs were issued for a general levy of benevolences from the shires. Thus, one by one, even the most flagrant of the abuses he had promised to abolish, were resorted to without hesitation and without scruple.

Not less flagrant were the abuses of a religious nature. The Commons, in the last moments of the session of 1629, had resolved that “whoever should bring in innovations in religion,” as well as “whoever advised the levy of subsidies not granted in Parliament,” was to be regarded as “a capital enemy of the kingdom and commonwealth.” And yet it was to “bring in innovations in religion” that the energies of the English church were now chiefly directed. At the head of the church was Archbishop Laud, whose determination was “to raise the Church of England to what he conceived to be its real position as a branch, though a reformed branch, of the great Catholic church throughout the world.” He protested alike against the innovations of Rome and the innovations of Calvin. In his view the Episcopal succession was the essence of the church; and, therefore, when the Lutheran and Calvanistic churches rejected the office of Bishop, they “ceased to be churches at all.” As he rejected the church of the reformers, and as he acknowledged Rome as a true branch of the church, he drew constantly nearer to Rome, and removed further and further from the doctrines of the Reformers. In all parts of England ministers who refused to conform were expelled from their cures. It was this aggressive and revolutionary policy that drove thousands of Puritans to New England. Three thousand emigrants left England in a single year; and during the period between 1629 and 1640 no less than about twenty thousand Puritans found a refuge in the New World.

In Scotland resistance to the innovations of Laud took a more active turn. Royal proclamation had been made, reinstating the Episcopal forms; but when the Dean of Edinburgh opened the new Prayer Book, a murmur of discontent ran through the congregation, and a stool, hurled by one of the members, felled him to the ground. Petitions for the removal of the Prayer Book were showered in upon the court. Various writers were dragged before the Star Chamber and branded as “trumpets of sedition.” To a petition presented by the Duke of Hamilton the King replied: “I will rather die than yield to these impertinent and damnable demands.” Of these seething discontents, what is sometimes called the “Bishops’ War” was the result. The King was determined to suppress opposition by force of arms, and for that purpose he committed the fatal error of calling over Strafford from Ireland. Scotland at once arose to resist him, while at his back all England was at the point of revolt. A London mob burst into the Bishop’s palace at Lambeth, and then proceeded to break up the sittings of the High Commission at St. Paul’s. Charles, finding the army in no condition to cope with the discontents of the time, at length, with great reluctance, yielded to his advisers, and once more summoned the Houses of Parliament.

In April of 1640, the newly-elected members came together. During the eleven years that had elapsed since the dismissal of the Parliament of 1629, many of the old leaders had passed away. Sir Edward Coke and Sir Robert Philips were dead, and Eliot had perished as a martyr in prison. But in the meantime a new leader had appeared. By the consent of all, that distinction was now held by John Pym. This gentleman, now fifty-four years of age, had been the companion of Eliot in the third Parliament of Charles, and, next to Eliot and Wentworth, had been acknowledged the most effective speaker in that body. But in the course of the past eleven years his talents and his energy had caused him everywhere to be hailed as the popular leader. He was a gentleman of good family, a graduate of Oxford, and an Episcopalian in religion. His influence was probably all the greater because he did not belong to the extreme party. We are told that he was no fanatic, that he was genial and even convivial in his nature. He has been called by Mr. Forster the first great popular organizer in English politics. In company with Hampden he rode through several of the English counties, as Anthony Wood states, “with a view of promoting elections of the puritanical brethren.” He urged the people to meet and send petitions to Parliament, and by him the custom of petitioning was first organized into a system. When the new House of Commons was called to order every one looked to Pym as by a common instinct for guidance.

The speech with which Pym responded to this expectation is doubtless one of the most remarkable in the history of British eloquence. It abounds in passages which, for weight of argument and closeness of reasoning, remind one of the compositions of Lord Bacon. Throughout the whole there is a precision of statement, and a gravity of manner that show plainly enough that he was not unconscious of the responsibility that rested upon him. The speech has been a matter of general comment with all the historians of the period, for there is abundant evidence of its extraordinary influence on Parliament and on the people of England. And yet, until within a few years, no complete copy of it was known to be in existence. Several mutilated versions were published in the seventeenth century, but these conveyed a very imperfect impression of its power. Mr. May, the historian of the Long Parliament says that “Mr. Pym, a grave and religious gentleman, in a long speech of almost two hours, recited a catalogue of grievances which at that time lay heavy on the commonwealth, of which many abbreviated copies, as extracting the heads only, were with great greediness taken by gentleman and others throughout the kingdom, for it was not then the fashion to print speeches in Parliament.” These “abbreviated copies” “of heads only,” were until recently supposed to be the only reports of the speech in existence. But Mr. Forster, when writing his Life of Pym, was led to institute a careful search among the world of papers in the British Museum; and his effort was rewarded with success. He discovered a report of the speech with corrections by Pym’s own hand. This version, corrected by the orator himself, is the one here reproduced. It is somewhat abridged by Mr. Forster; and the report given in the third person is preserved. In unabbreviated form it has never been published.

JOHN PYM.

ON THE SUBJECT OF GRIEVANCES IN THE REIGN OF CHARLES I. HOUSE OF COMMONS. APRIL 5, 1640.

After an interval of eleven years since the dissolution of the Third Parliament of Charles I., the Fourth or Short Parliament was opened by the King on the 3d of April, 1640. In his opening speech, Charles simply said: “My Lords and Gentlemen: There never was a king that had a more great and weighty cause to call his people together than myself: I will not trouble you with the particulars. I have informed my Lord Keeper, and command him to speak, and desire your attention.” After this short and ungracious declaration, the Lord Keeper proceeded to speak in a very lofty and absurd strain in regard to the Royal Prerogative, and ending with the admonition, “that his Majesty did not expect advice from them, much less that they should interfere in any office of mediation, which would not be grateful to him: but that they should, as soon as might be, give his Majesty a supply, and that he would give them time enough afterwards to represent grievances to him.”

Two days later, as soon as Parliament assembled, a number of petitions were presented, “complaining of ship-money projects and monopolies, the star-chamber and high-commission courts and other grievances.” Between the consideration of these petitions and deference to the King’s request to grant supplies at once, there was a hesitation; and it was of this sense of “divided duty” that Pym determined to avail himself. Clarendon says: “Whilst men gazed upon each other, looking who should begin (much the greater part having never before sat in Parliament) Mr. Pym, a man of good reputation, but much better known afterwards, who had been as long in these assemblies as any man then living, broke the ice, and in a set discourse of about two hours,” addressed the House.

Never Parliament had greater business to dispatch, nor more difficulties to encounter; therefore we have reason to take all advantages of order and address, and hereby we shall not only do our own work, but dispose and inable ourselves for the better satisfaction of his Majesty’s desire of supply. The grievances being removed, our affections will carry us with speed and cheerfulness, to give his Majesty that which may be sufficient both for his honor and support. Those that in the very first place shall endeavor to redress the grievances, will be found not to hinder, but to be the best furtherers of his Majesty’s service. He that takes away weights, doth as much advantage motion, as he that addeth wings. Divers pieces of this main work have been already propounded; his endeavor should be to present to the House a model of the whole. In the creation, God made the world according to that idea or form which was eternally preëxistent in the Divine mind. Moses was commanded to frame the tabernacle after the pattern showed him in the mount. Those actions are seldom well perfected in the execution, which are not first well moulded in the design and proposition.