book ii. chap. 15. By this account, the court had profited by the

example of the queen. The sober way of life practised by the ladies of Elizabeth’s court appears from the same author. Reading, spinning, and needlework occupied the elder; music the younger. Id. ibid.]

[Footnote 44: NOTE RR, p. 391. Sir Charles Cornwallis, the king’s ambassador at Madrid, when pressed by the duke of Lernia to enter into a league with Spain, said to that minister, “Though his majesty was an absolute king, and therefore not bound to give an account to any of his actions, yet that so gracious and regardful a prince he was of the love and contentment of his own subjects, as I assured myself he would not think it fit to do any thing of so great consequence without acquainting them with his intentions.” Winwood, vol. ii. p. 222. Sir Walter Raleigh has this passage in the preface to his History of the World: “Philip II., by strong hand and main force, attempted to make himself not only an absolute monarch over the Netherlands, like unto the kings and monarchs of England and France, but, Turk like, to tread under his feet all their natural and fundamental laws, privileges, and ancient rights.” We meet with this passage in Sir John Davis’s Question concerning impositions, (p. 161:) “Thus we see, by this comparison, that the king of England doth lay but his little finger upon his subjects, when other princes and states do lay their heavy loins upon their people. What is the reason of this difference? from whence cometh it? assuredly not from a different power or prerogative; for the king of England is as absolute a monarch as any emperor or king in the world, and hath as many prerogatives incident to his crown.” Coke, in Cawdry’s case, says, “that by the ancient laws of this realm, England is an absolute empire and monarchy; and that the king is furnished with plenary and entire power, prerogative, and jurisdiction, and is supreme governor over all persons within this realm,’” Spencer, speaking of some grants of the English kings to the Irish corporations, says, “all which, though at the time of their first grant they were tolerable, and perhaps reasonable, yet now are most unreasonable and inconvenient. But all these will easily be cut off, with the superior power of her majesty’s prerogative, against which her own grants are not to be pleaded or enforced.” State of Ireland p. 1637, edit. 1706. The same author, in p. 1660, proposes a plan for the civilization of Ireland; that the queen should create a marshal in every county, who might ride about with eight or ten followers in search of stragglers and vagabonds: the first time he catches any, he may punish them more lightly by the stocks; the second time, by whipping; but the third time, he may hang them, without trial or process, on the first bough: and he thinks that this authority may more safely be intrusted to the provost marshal than to the sheriff; because the latter magistrate, having a profit by the escheats of felons, may be tempted to hang innocent persons. Here a real absolute, or rather despotic power is pointed out; and we may infer from all these passages, either that the word absolute bore a different sense from what it does at present, or that men’s ideas of the English, as well as Irish government, were then different. This latter inference seems juster. The word, being derived from the French, bore always the same sense as in that language. An absolute monarchy, in Charles I,’s answer to the nineteen propositions is opposed to a limited; and the king of England is acknowledged not to be absolute: so much had matters changed even before the civil war. In Sir John Fortescue’s treatise of absolute and limited monarchy, a book written in the reign of Edward IV., the word absolute is taken in the same sense as at present; and the government of England is also said not to be absolute. They were the princes of the house of Tudor chiefly who introduced that administration which had the appearance of absolute government. The princes before them were restrained by the barons; as those after them by the house of commons. The people had, properly speaking, little liberty in either of these ancient governments, but least in the more ancient.]

[Footnote 45: NOTE SS, p. 392. Even this parliament, which showed so much spirit and good sense in the affair of Goodwin, made a strange concession to the crown in their fourth session. Toby Mathews, a member, had been banished by order of the council, upon direction from his majesty. The parliament not only acquiesced in this arbitrary proceeding, but issued writs for a new election: such novices were they as yet in the principles of liberty. See Journ. 14th Feb. 1609. Mathews was banished by the king on account of his change of religion to Popery. The king had an indulgence to those who had been educated Catholics; but could not bear the new converts. It was probably the animosity of the commons against the Papists which made them acquiesce in this precedent, without reflecting on the consequences. The jealousy of liberty, though roused, was not yet thoroughly enlightened.]

[Footnote 46: NOTE TT, p. 394. At that time, men of genius and of enlarged minds had adopted the principles of liberty, which were as yet pretty much unknown to the generality of the people. Sir Matthew Hales has published a remonstrance against the king’s conduct towards the parliament during this session. The remonstrance is drawn with great force of reasoning and spirit of liberty; and was the production of Sir Francis Bacon and Sir Edwin Sandys, two men of the greatest parts and knowledge in England. It is drawn in the name of the commons; but as there is no hint of it in the journals, we must conclude, either that the authors, sensible that the strain of the piece was much beyond the principles of the age, had not ventured to present it to the house, or that it had been for that reason rejected. The dignity and authority of the commons are strongly insisted upon in this remonstrance; and it is there said, that their submission to the ill treatment which they received during the latter part of Elizabeth’s reign, had proceeded from their tenderness towards her age and her sex. But the authors are mistaken in these facts: for the house received and submitted to as bad treatment in the beginning and middle of that reign. The government was equally arbitrary in Mary’s reign, in Edward’s, in Henry VIII. and VII.’s. And the further we go back into history, though there might be more of a certain irregular kind of liberty among the barons, the commons were still of less authority.]

[Footnote 47: NOTE UU, p. 398. This parliament passed an act of recognition of the king’s title in the most ample terms. They recognized and acknowledged, that immediately upon the dissolution and decease of Elizabeth, late queen of England, the imperial crown thereof did, by inherent birthright and lawful and undoubted succession, descend and come to his most excellent majesty, as being lineally, justly, and lawfully next and sole heir of the blood royal of this realm. I James I. cap. 1. The Puritans, though then prevalent, did not think proper to dispute this great constitutional point. In the recognition of Queen Elizabeth, the parliament declares, that the queen’s highness is, and in very deed and of most mere right ought to be, by the laws of God and by the laws and statutes of this realm, our most lawful and rightful sovereign, liege lady, and queen, etc. It appears, then, that if King James’s divine right be not mentioned by parliament, the omission came merely from chance, and because that phrase did not occur to the compiler of the recognition; his title being plainly the same with that of his predecessor, who was allowed to have a divine right.]

[Footnote 50: NOTE XX, p. 405. Some historians have imagined, that the king had secret intelligence of the conspiracy, and that the letter to Monteagle was written by his direction, in order to obtain the praise of penetration in discovering the plot. But the known facts refute this supposition. That letter, being commonly talked of, might naturally have given an alarm to the conspirators, and made them contrive their escape. The visit of the lord chamberlain ought to have had the same effect. In short, it appears that nobody was arrested or inquired after for some days, till Fawkes discovered the names of the conspirators. We may infer, however, from a letter in Winwood’s Memorials, (vol. ii p. 171,) that Salisbury’s sagacity led the king in his conjectures, and that the minister, like an artful courtier, gave his master the praise of the whole discovery.

[Footnote 51: NOTE YY, p. 417. We find the king’s answer in Winwood’s Memorials, vol. iii. r. 198, 2d edit. “To the third and fourth, (namely, that it might be lawful to arrest the king’s servants without leave, and that no man should be enforced to lend money, nor to give a reason why he would not,) his majesty sent us an answer, that because we brought precedents of antiquity to strengthen those demands, he allowed not of any precedents drawn from the time of usurping or decaying princes, or people too bold and wanton; that he desired not to govern in that commonwealth where subjects should be assured of all things, and hope for nothing. It was one thing ‘submittere principatum legibus,’ and another thing ‘submittere principatum subditis.’ That he would not leave to posterity such a mark of weakness upon his reign; and therefore his conclusion was, ‘non placet petitio, non placet exemplum.:’ yet with this mitigation, that in matters of loans he would refuse no reasonable excuse, nor should my lord chamberlain deny the arresting of any of his majesty’s servants, if just cause was shown.” The parliament, however, acknowledged at this time with thankfulness to the king, that he allowed disputes and inquiries about his prerogative much beyond what had been indulged by any of his predecessors. Parliament. Hist. vol. v. p. 230. This very session he expressly gave them leave to produce all their grievances, without exception.]

[Footnote 52: NOTE ZZ, p. 420. It may not be unworthy of observation, that James, in a book called The true Laws of free Monarchies, which he published a little before his accession to the crown of England, affirmed, “That a good king, although he be above the law, will subject and frame his actions thereto, for example’s sake to his subjects, and of his own free will, but not as subject or bound thereto.” In another passage, “According to the fundamental law already alleged, we daily see, that in the parliament, (which is nothing else but the head court of the king and his vassals,) the laws are but craved by his subjects, and only made by him at their rogation, and with their advice. For albeit the king make daily statutes and ordinances, enjoining such pains thereto as he thinks meet, without any advice of parliament or estates, yet it lies in the power of no parliament to make any kind of law or statute, without his sceptre be to it, for giving it the force of a law.” King James’s Works, p. 202. It is not to be supposed that, at such a critical juncture, James had so little sense as directly, in so material a point, to have openly shocked what were the universal established principles of that age: on the contrary, we are told by historians, that nothing tended more to facilitate his accession, than the good opinion entertained of him by the English on account of his learned, and judicious writings. The question, however, with regard to the royal power, was at this time become a very dangerous point; and without employing ambiguous, insignificant terms, which determined nothing, it was impossible to please both king and parliament. Dr. Cowell, who had magnified the prerogative in words too intelligible, fell this session under the indignation of the commons. Parliament. Hist vol. v. p. 221. The king himself after all his magnificent boasts, was obliged to make his escape through a distinction which he framed between a king in abstracto and a king in concreto: an abstract king, he said, had all power; but a concrete king was bound to observe the laws of the country which he governed. King James’s Works, p. 533. But how bound? by conscience only? or might his subjects resist him, and defend their privileges? This he thought not fit to explain. And so difficult is it to explain that point, that to this day, whatever liberties may be used by private inquirers, the laws have very prudently thought proper to maintain a total silence with regard to it.]

[Footnote 53: NOTE AAA, p. 434. Parliament. Hist. vol. v. p. 290. So little fixed at this time were the rules of parliament, that the commons complained to the peers of a speech made in the upper house by the bishop of Lincoln; which it belonged only to that house to censure, and which the other could not regularly be supposed to be acquainted with. These at least are the rules established since the parliament became a real seat of power and scene of business: neither the king must take notice of what passes in either house, nor either house of what passes in the other, till regularly informed of it. The commons, in their famous protestation 1621, fixed this rule with regard to the king, though at present they would not bind themselves by it. But as liberty was yet new, those maxims which guard and regulate it were unknown and unpractised.]

[Footnote 54: NOTE BBB, p. 452. Some of the facts in this narrative, which seem to condemn Raleigh, are taken from the king’s declaration, which, being published by authority when the facts were recent, being extracted from examinations before the privy council, and subscribed by six privy councillors, among whom was Abbot, archbishop of Canterbury, a prelate nowise complaisant to the court, must be allowed to have great weight, or rather to be of undoubted credit. Yet the most material facts are confirmed either by the nature and reason of the thing, or by Sir Walter’s own apology and his letters. The king’s declaration is in the Harleian Miscellany, vol. iii. No. 2.

1. There seems to be an improbability that the Spaniards, who knew nothing of Raleigh’s pretended mine, should have built a town, in so wide a coast, within three miles of it. The chances are extremely against such a supposition; and it is more natural to think that the view of plundering the town led him thither, than that of working a mine. 2. No such mine is there found to this day. 3. Raleigh in fact found no mine, and in fact he plundered and burned a Spanish town. Is it not more probable, therefore, that the latter was his intention? How can the secrets of his breast be rendered so visible as to counterpoise certain facts? 4. He confesses, in his letter to Lord Carew, that though he knew it, yet he concealed from the king the settlement of the Spaniards on that coast. Does not this fact alone render him sufficiently criminal? 5. His commission empowers him only to settle on a coast possessed by savage and barbarous inhabitants. Was it not the most evident breach of orders to disembark on a coast possessed by Spaniards? 6. His orders to Keymis, when he sent him up the river, are contained in his own apology; and from them it appears that he knew (what was unavoidable) that the Spaniards would resist, and would oppose the English landing and taking possession of the country. His intentions, therefore, were hostile from the beginning. 7. Without provocation, and even when at a distance, he gave Keymis orders to dislodge the Spaniards from their own town. Could any enterprise be more hostile? And, considering the Spaniards as allies to the nation, could any enterprise be more criminal? Was he not the aggressor, even though it should be true that the Spaniards fired upon his men at landing? It is said he killed three or four hundred of them. Is that so light a matter? 8. In his letter to the king, and in his apology, he grounds his defence on former hostilities exercised by the Spaniards against other companies of Englishmen. These are accounted for by the ambiguity of the treaty between the nations. And it is plain, that though these might possibly be reasons for the king’s declaring war against that nation, they could never entitle Raleigh to declare war, and, without any commission, or contrary to his commission, to invade the Spanish settlements. He pretends indeed that peace was never made with Spain in the Indies; a most absurd notion! The chief hurt which the Spaniards could receive from England was in the Indies; and they never would have made peace at all, if hostilities had been still to be continued on these settlements. By secret agreement, the English were still allowed to support the Dutch, even after the treaty of peace. If they had also been allowed to invade the Spanish settlements, the treaty had been a full peace to England, while the Spaniards were still exposed to the full effects of war. 9. If the claim to the property of that country, as first discoverers, was good, in opposition to present settlement, as Raleigh pretends, why was it not laid before the king, with all its circumstances, and submitted to his judgment? 10. Raleigh’s force is acknowledged by himself to have been insufficient to support him in the possession of St. Thomas, against the power of which Spain was master on that coast; yet it was sufficient as he owns, to take by surprise and plunder twenty towns. It was not therefore his design to settle, but to plunder. By these confessions, which I have here brought together, he plainly betrays himself. 11. Why did he not stay and work his mine, as at first he projected? He apprehended that the Spaniards would be upon him with a greater force. But before he left England, he knew that this must be the case, if he invaded any part of the Spanish colonies. His intention therefore never was to settle, but only to plunder. 12. He acknowledges that he knew neither the depth nor riches of the mine, but only that there was some ore there. Would he have ventured all his fortune and credit on so precarious a foundation? 13. Would the other adventurers, if made acquainted with this, have risked every thing to attend him? Ought a fleet to have been equipped for an experiment? Was there not plainly an imposture in the management of this affair? 14. He says to Keymis, in his orders, “Bring but a basket full of ore, and it will satisfy the king that my project was not imaginary.” This was easily done from the Spanish mines, and he seems to have been chiefly displeased at Keymis for not attempting it. Such a view was a premeditated apology to cover his cheat. 15. The king in his declaration imputes it to Raleigh, that as soon as he was at sea, he immediately fell into such uncertain and doubtful talk of his* mine, and said that it would be sufficient if he brought home a basket full of ore. From the circumstance last mentioned, it appears that this imputation was not without reason. 16. There are many other circumstances of great weight in the king’s declaration: that Raleigh, when he fell down to Plymouth, took no pioneers with him, which he always declared to be his intention; that he was nowise provided with instruments for working a mine, but had a sufficient stock of warlike stores; that young Raleigh, in attacking the Spaniards, employed the words, which, in the narration, I have put in his mouth; that the mine was movable, and shifted as he saw convenient; not to mention many other public facts, which prove him to have been highly criminal against his companions as well as his country. Howel, in his letters, says, that there lived in London, in 1645, an officer, a man of honor, who asserted that he heard young Raleigh speak these words, (vol. ii. letter 63.) That was a time when there was no interest in maintaining such a fact. 17. Raleigh’s account of his first voyage to Guiana proves him to have been a man capable of the most extravagant credulity or most impudent imposture. So ridiculous are the stories which he tells of the Inca’s chimerical empire in the midst of Guiana; the rich city of El Dorado, or Manao, two days’ journey in length, and shining with gold and silver; the old Peruvian prophecies in favor of the English, who, he says, were expressly named as the deliverers of that country, long before any European had ever touched there; the Amazons, or republic of women; and in general, the vast and incredible riches which he saw on that continent, where nobody has yet found any treasures. This whole narrative is a proof that he was extremely defective either in solid understanding, or morals, or both. No man’s character indeed seems ever to have been carried to such extremes as Raleigh’s, by the opposite passions of envy and pity. In the former part of his life, when he was active and lived in the world, and was probably best known, he was the object of universal hatred and detestation throughout England; in the latter part, when shut up in prison, he became, much more unreasonably, the object of great love and admiration.

As to the circumstances of the narrative, that Raleigh’s pardon was refused him, that his former sentence was purposely kept in force against him, and that he went out under these express conditions, they may be supported by the following authorities: 1. The king’s word, and that of six privy counsellors, who affirm it for fact. 2. The nature of the thing. If no suspicion had been entertained of his intentions, a pardon would never have been refused to a man to whom authority was intrusted. 3. The words of the commission itself where he is simply styled Sir Walter Raleigh, and not faithful and not beloved, according to the usual and never-failing style on such occasions. 4. In all the letters which he wrote home to Sir Ralph Winwood and to his own wife, he always considers himself as a person unpardoned and liable to the law. He seems, indeed, immediately upon the failure of his enterprise, to have become desperate, and so have expected the fate which he met with.

It is pretended, that the king gave intelligence to the Spaniards of Raleigh’s project; as if he had needed to lay a plot for destroying a man whose life had been fourteen years, and still was, in his power. The Spaniards wanted no other intelligence to be on their guard, than the known and public fact of Raleigh’s armament. And there was no reason why the king should conceal from them the project of a settlement which Raleigh pretended, and the king believed, to be entirely innocent.

The king’s chief blame seems to have lain in his negligence, in allowing Raleigh to depart without a more exact scrutiny: but for this he apologizes by saying, that sureties were required for the good behavior of Raleigh and all his associates in the enterprise, but that they gave in bonds for each other: a cheat which was not perceived till they had sailed, and which increased the suspicion of bad intentions.

Perhaps the king ought also to have granted Raleigh a pardon for his old treason, and to have tried him anew for his new offences. His punishment in that case would not only have been just, but conducted in a just and unexceptionable manner. But we are told, that a ridiculous opinion at that time prevailed in the nation, (and it is plainly supposed by Sir Walter in his apology,) that, by treaty, war was allowed with the Spaniards in the Indies, though peace was made in Europe: and while that notion took place, no jury would have found Raleigh guilty. So that had not the king punished him upon the old sentence, the Spaniards would have had a just cause of complaint against the king, sufficient to have produced a war, at least to have destroyed all cordiality between the nations.

This explication I thought necessary in order to clear up the story of Raleigh; which, though very obvious, is generally mistaken in so gross a manner, that I scarcely know its parallel in the English history.]

[Footnote 55: NOTE CCC, p. 458 This parliament is remarkable for being the epoch in which were first regularly formed, though without acquiring these denominations, the parties of court and country; parties which have ever since continued, and which, while they often threaten the total dissolution of the government, are the real causes of its permanent life and vigor. In the ancient feudal constitution, of which the English partook with other European nations, there was a mixture, not of authority and liberty, which we have since enjoyed in this island, and which now subsist uniformly together; but of authority and anarchy, which perpetually shocked with each other, and which took place alternately, according as circumstances were more or less favorable to either of them. A parliament composed of barbarians, summoned from their fields and forests, uninstructed by study, conversation, or travel; ignorant of their own laws and history, and unacquainted with the situation of all foreign nations; a parliament called precariously by the king, and dissolved at his pleasure; sitting a few days, debating a few points prepared for them, and whose members were impatient to return to their own castles, where alone they were great, and to the chase, which was their favorite amusement: such a parliament was very little fitted to enter into a discussion of all the questions of government, and to share, in a regular manner, the legal administration. The name, the authority of the king alone appeared, in the common course of government; in extraordinary emergencies, he assumed, with still better reason, the sole direction; the imperfect and unformed laws left in every thing a latitude of interpretation; and when the ends pursued by the monarch were in general agreeable to his subjects, little scruple or jealousy was entertained with regard to the regularity of the means. During the reign of an able, fortunate, or popular prince, no member of either house, much less of the lower, durst think of entering into a formed party in opposition to the court; since the dissolution of the parliament must in a few days leave him unprotected to the vengeance of his sovereign, and to those stretches of prerogative which were then so easily made in order to punish an obnoxious subject. During an unpopular and weak reign, the current commonly ran so strong against the monarch, that none durst enlist themselves in the court party; or if the prince was able to engage any considerable barons on his side, the question was decided with arms in the field, not by debates or arguments in a senate or assembly. And upon the whole, the chief circumstance which, during ancient times, retained the prince in any legal form of administration, was, that the sword, by the nature of the feudal tenures, remained still in the hands of his subjects; and this irregular and dangerous check had much more influence than the regular and methodical limits of the laws and constitution. As the nation could not be compelled, it was necessary that every public measure of consequence, particularly that of levying new taxes, should seem to be adopted by common consent and approbation.

The princes of the house of Tudor, partly by the vigor of their administration, partly by the concurrence of favorable circumstances, had been able to establish a more regular system of government; but they drew the constitution so near to despotism, as diminished extremely the authority of the parliament. The senate became in a great degree the organ of royal will and pleasure: opposition would have been regarded as a species of rebellion: and even religion, the most dangerous article in which innovations could be introduced, had admitted, in the course of a few years, four several alterations, from the authority alone of the sovereign. The parliament was not then the road to honor and preferment: the talents of popular intrigue and eloquence were uncultivated and unknown: and though that assembly still preserved authority, and retained the privilege of making laws and bestowing public money, the members acquired not upon that account, either with prince or people, much more weight and consideration. What powers were necessary for conducting the machine of government, the king was accustomed of himself to assume. His own revenues supplied him with money sufficient for his ordinary expenses. And when extraordinary emergencies occurred, the prince needed not to solicit votes in parliament, either for making laws or imposing taxes, both of which were now became requisite for public interest and preservation.

The security of individuals, so necessary to the liberty of popular councils, was totally unknown in that age. And as no despotic princes, scarcely even the Eastern tyrants, rule entirely without the concurrence of some assemblies, which supply both advice and authority, little but a mercenary force seems then to have been wanting towards the establishment of a simple monarchy in England. The militia, though more favorable to regal authority than the feudal institutions, was much inferior in this respect to disciplined armies; and if it did not preserve liberty to the people, it preserved at least the power, if ever the inclination should arise, of recovering it.

But so low at that time ran the inclination towards liberty, that Elizabeth, the last of that arbitrary line, herself no less arbitrary, was yet the most renowned and most popular of all the sovereigns that had filled the throne of England. It was natural for James to take the government as he found it, and to pursue her measures, which he heard so much applauded; nor did his penetration extend so far as to discover, that neither his circumstances nor his character could support so extensive an authority. His narrow revenues and little frugality began now to render him dependent on his people, even in the ordinary course of administration: their increasing knowledge discovered to them that advantage which they had obtained; and made them sensible of the inestimable value of civil liberty. And as he possessed too little dignity to command respect, and too much good nature to impress fear, a new spirit discovered itself every day in the parliament; and a party, watchful of a free constitution, was regularly formed in the house of commons.

But notwithstanding these advantages acquired to liberty, so extensive was royal authority, and so firmly established in all its parts, that it is probable the patriots of that age would have despaired of ever resisting it, had they not been stimulated by religious motives, which inspire a courage unsurmountable by any human obstacle.

The same alliance which has ever prevailed between kingly power and ecclesiastical authority, was now fully established in England; and while the prince assisted the clergy in suppressing schismatics and innovators, the clergy, in return, inculcated the doctrine of an unreserved submission and obedience to the civil magistrate. The genius of the church of England, so kindly to monarchy, forwarded the confederacy; its submission to episcopal jurisdiction; its attachment to ceremonies, to order, and to a decent pomp and splendor of worship; and, in a word, its affinity to the tame superstition of the Catholics, rather than to the wild fanaticism of the Puritans.

On the other hand, opposition to the church, and the persecutions under which they labored, were sufficient to throw the Puritans into the country party, and to beget political principles little favorable to the high pretensions of the sovereign. The spirit too of enthusiasm; bold, daring, and uncontrolled; strongly disposed their minds to adopt republican tenets; and inclined them to arrogate, in their actions and conduct, the same liberty which they assumed in their rapturous flights and ecstasies. Ever since the first origin of that sect, through the whole reign of Elizabeth as well as of James, Puritanical principles had been understood in a double sense, and expressed the opinions favorable both to political and to ecclesiastical liberty. And as the court, in order to discredit all parliamentary opposition, affixed the denomination of Puritans to its antagonists, the religious Puritans willingly adopted this idea, which was so advantageous to them, and which confounded their cause with that of the patriots or country party. Thus were the civil and ecclesiastical factions regularly formed; and the humor of the nation, during that age, running strongly towards fanatical extravagancies, the spirit of civil liberty gradually revived from its lethargy, and by means of its religious associate, from which it reaped more advantage than honor, it secretly enlarged its dominion over the greater part of the kingdom.

This note was in the first editions a part of the text; but the author omitted it, in order to avoid as much as possible the style of dissertation in the body of his History. The passage, however, contains views so important, that he thought it might be admitted as a footnote]

[Footnote 56: NOTE DDD, p. 465. This protestation is so remarkable, that it may not be improper to give it in its own words. “The commons now assembled in parliament, being justly occasioned thereunto, concerning sundry liberties, franchises, and privileges of parliament, amongst others here mentioned, do make this protestation following: That the liberties, franchises, and jurisdictions of parliament are the ancient and undoubted birthright and inheritance of the subjects of England; and that the urgent and arduous affairs concerning the king, state, and defence of the realm and of the church of England, and the maintenance and making of laws, and redress of mischiefs and grievances which daily happen within this realm, are proper subjects and matter of counsel and debate in parliament; and that, in the handling and proceeding of those businesses, every member of the house of parliament hath, and of right ought to have, freedom of speech to propound, treat, reason, and bring to conclusion the same; and that the commons in parliament have like liberty and freedom to treat of these matters, in such order as in their judgment shall seem fittest; and that every member of the said house hath like freedom from all impeachment, imprisonment, and molestation, (other than by censure of the house itself,) for or concerning any speaking, reasoning, or declaring of any matter or matters touching the parliament or parliament business. And that if any of the said members be complained of or questioned for any thing done or said in parliament, the same is to be shown to the king by the advice and assent of all the commons assembled in parliament, before the king give credence to any private information.” Franklyn, p. 65. Rush, vol. i p. 53. Kennet, p. 747. Coke, p. 77.]

[Footnote 57: NOTE EEE, p. 434. The moment the prince embarked at St. Andero’s, he said to those about him, that it was folly in the Spaniards to use him so ill, and allow him to depart: a proof that the duke had made him believe they were insincere in the affair of the marriage and the Palatinate; for as to his reception in other respects, it had been altogether unexceptionable. Besides, had not the prince believed the Spaniards to be insincere, he had no reason to quarrel with them, though Bucking-* *ham had. It appears, therefore, that Charles himself must have been deceived. The multiplied delays of the dispensation, though they arose from accident, afforded Buckingham a plausible pretext for charging the Spaniards with insincerity.]

[Footnote 58: NOTE FFF, p. 486. Among other particulars, he mentions a sum of eighty thousand pounds borrowed from the king of Denmark. In a former speech to the parliament, he told them that he had expended five hundred thousand pounds in the cause of the palatine, besides the voluntary contributions given him by the people. See Franklyn, p. 50. But what is more extraordinary, the treasurer, in order to show his own good services, boasts to the parliament, that by his contrivance sixty thousand pounds had been saved in the article of exchange in the sums remitted to the palatine. This seems a great sum; nor is it easy to conceive whence the king could procure such vast sums as would require a sum so considerable to be paid in exchange. From the whole, however, it appears, that the king had been far from neglecting the interests of his daughter and son-in-law, and had even gone far beyond what his narrow revenue could afford.]

[Footnote 59: NOTE GGG, p. 486. How little this principle had prevailed during any former period of the English government, particularly during the last reign, which was certainly not so perfect a model of liberty as most writers would represent it, will easily appear from many passages in the history of that reign. But the ideas of men were much changed during about twenty years of a gentle and peaceful administration. The commons, though James of himself had recalled all patents of monopolies, were not contented without a law against them, and a declaratory law too; which was gaining a great point, and establishing principles very favorable to liberty: but they were extremely grateful when Elizabeth, upon petition, (after having once refused their requests,) recalled a few of the most oppressive patents, and employed some soothing expressions towards them.

The parliament had surely reason, when they confessed, in the seventh of James, that he allowed them more freedom of debate than ever was indulged by any of his predecessors. His indulgence in this particular, joined to his easy temper, was probably one cause of the great power assumed by the commons. Monsieur de la Boderie, in his despatches, (vol. i. p. 449,) mentions the liberty of speech in the house of commons as a new practice.]

[Footnote 60: NOTE HHH, p. 491. Rymer, tom. xviii. p. 224. It is certain that the young prince of Wales, afterwards Charles II., had Protestant governors from his early infancy; first the earl of Newcastle, then the marquis of Hertford. The king, in his memorial to foreign churches after the commencement of the civil wars, insists on his care in educating his children in the Protestant religion, as a proof that he was nowise inclined to the Catholic, Rush. vol. v. p. 752. It can scarcely, therefore, be questioned, but this article, which has so odd an appearance, was inserted only to amuse the pope, and was never intended by either party to be executed.]

[Footnote 61: NOTE III, p. 499. “Monarchies,” according to Sir Walter Raleigh, “are of two sorts touching their power or authority, viz. 1. Entire, where the whole power of ordering all state matters, both in peace and war, doth by law and custom appertain to the prince, as in the English kingdom; where the prince hath the power to make laws, league, and war, to create magistrates, to pardon life, of appeal, etc. Though to give a contentment to the other degrees, they have a suffrage in making laws, yet ever subject to the prince’s pleasure and negative will. 2. Limited or restrained, that hath no full power in all the points and matters of state, as the military king that hath not the sovereignty in time of peace, as the making of laws, etc., but in war only, as the Polonian king.” Maxims of State.

And a little after: “In every just state, some part of the government is, or ought to be, imparted to the people, as in a kingdom, a voice and suffrage in making laws; and sometimes also of levying of arms, (if the charge be great, and the prince forced to borrow help of his subjects,) the matter rightly may be propounded to a parliament, that the tax may seem to have proceeded from themselves. So consultations and some proceedings in judicial matters may in part be referred to them. The reason, lest, seeing themselves to be in no number nor of reckoning, they mislike the state or government.” This way of reasoning differs little from that of King James, who considered the privileges of the parliament as matters of grace and indulgence, more than of inheritance. It is remarkable that Raleigh was thought to lean towards the Puritanical party, notwithstanding these positions. But ideas of government change much in different times.

Raleigh’s sentiments on this head are still more openly expressed in his Prerogatives of Parliaments, a work not published till after his death. It is a dialogue between a courtier, or counsellor, and a country justice of peace, who represents the patriot party, and defends the highest notion of liberty which the principles of that age would bear. Here is a passage of it: “Counsellor. That which is done by the king, with the advice of his private or privy council, is done by the king’s absolute power. Justice. And by whose power is it done in parliament but by the king’s absolute power? Mistake it not, my lord: the three estates do but advise as the privy council doth; which advice if the king embrace, it becomes the king’s own act in the one, and the king’s law in the other,” etc.

The earl of Clare, in a private letter to his son-in-law, Sir Thomas Wentworth, afterwards earl of Strafford, thus expresses himself “We live under a prerogative government, where book law submits to lex loquens.” He spoke from his own and all his ancestors experience. There was no single instance of power which a king of England might not at that time exert, on pretence of necessity or expediency: the continuance alone, or frequent repetition of arbitrary administration, might prove dangerous, for want of force to support it. It is remarkable, that this letter of the earl of Clare was written in the first year of Charles’s reign; and consequently must be meant of the general genius of the government, not the spirit or temper of the monarch. See Strafford’s Letters, vol. i. p. 32. From another letter in the same collection, (vol. i. p. 10,) it appears that the council sometimes assumed the power of forbidding persons disagreeable to the court to stand in the elections. This authority they could exert in some instances; but we are not thence to inter, that they could shut the door of that house to every one who was not acceptable to them. The genius of the ancient government reposed more trust in the king, than to entertain any such suspicion; and it allowed scattered instances of such a kind, as would have been totally destructive of the constitution, had they been continued without interruption.

I have not met with any English writer in that age who speaks of England as a limited monarchy, but as an absolute one, where the people have many privileges. That is no contradiction. In all European monarchies the people have privileges; but whether dependent or independent on the will of the monarch, is a question that in most governments it is better to forbear. Surely that question was not determined before the age of James. The rising spirit of the parliament, together with that king’s love of general, speculative principles, brought it from its obscurity, and made it be commonly canvassed. The strongest testimony that I remember from a writer of James’s age in favor of English liberty, is in Cardinal Bentivoglio, a foreigner, who mentions the English government as similar to that of the Low Country provinces under their princes, rather than to that of France or Spain. Englishmen were not so sensible that their prince was limited, because they were sensible that no individual had any security against a stretch of prerogative: but foreigners, by comparison, could perceive that these stretches were at that time, from custom or other causes, less frequent in England than in other monarchies. Philip de Comines, too, remarked the English constitution to be more popular in his time than that of France. But in a paper written by a patriot in 1627, it is remarked, that the freedom of speech in parliament had been lost in England since the days of Comines. Franklyn, p. 238. Here is a stanza of Malherbe’s Ode to Mary de Medicis, the queen regent, written in 1614.

Entre les rois à qui cet age Doit son principal ornement, Ceux de la Tamise et du Tage Font louer leur gouvernement: Mais en de si calmes provinces, Où le peuple adore les princes, Et met au gré le plus haut L’honneur du sceptre légitime, Sauroit-on excuser le crime De ne regner pas comme il faut.

The English, as well as the Spaniards, are here pointed out as much more obedient subjects than the French, and much more tractable and submissive to their princes. Though this passage be taken from a poet, every man of judgment will allow its authority to be decisive. The character of a national government cannot be unknown in Europe; though it changes sometimes very suddenly. Machiavel, in his Dissertations on Livy, says repeatedly, that France was the most legal and most popular monarchy then in Europe.]

[Footnote 62: NOTE KKK, p. 499. Passive obedience is expressly and zealously inculcated in the homilies composed and published by authority in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. The convocation, which met in the very first year of the king’s reign, voted as high monarchical principles as are contained in the decrees of the University of Oxford during the rule of the Tories. These principles, so far from being deemed a novelty introduced by James’s influence, passed so smoothly, that no historian has taken notice of them: they were never the subject of controversy, or dispute, or discourse; and it is only by means of Bishop Overall’s Convocation Book, printed near seventy years after, that we are acquainted with them. Would James, who was so cautious, and even timid, have ventured to begin his reign with a bold stroke, which would have given just ground of jealousy to his subjects? It appears from that monarch’s Basilicon Doron, written while he was in Scotland, that the republican ideas of the origin of power from the people, were at that time esteemed Puritanical novelties. The patriarchal scheme, it is remarkable, is inculcated in those votes of the convocation preserved by Overall; nor was Filmer the first inventor of those absurd notions.]

[Footnote 63: NOTE LLL, p. 514. That of the honest historian Stowe seems not to have been of this number. “The great blessings of God,” says he, “through increase of wealth in the common subjects of this land, especially upon the citizens of London; such within men’s memory, and chiefly within these few years of peace, that, except there were now due mention of some sort made thereof, it would in time to come be held incredible,” etc. In another place, “Amongst the manifold tokens and signs of the infinite blessings of Almighty God bestowed upon this kingdom, by the wondrous and merciful establishing of peace within ourselves, and the full benefit of concord with all Christian nations and others; of all which graces let no man dare to presume he can speak too much; whereof in truth there can never be enough said, neither was there ever any people less considerate and less thankful than at this time, being not willing to endure the memory of their present happiness, as well as in the universal increase of commerce and traffic throughout the kingdom, great building of royal ships and by private merchants, the repeopling of cities, towns, and villages, beside the discernible and sudden increase of fair and costly buildings, as well within the city of London as the suburbs thereof, especially within these twelve years,” etc.]