<301>In the busy session which had come to an end in May 1606, no time had been found for a discussion on that 1606.The discussion on the Union postponed.union with Scotland which James had so much at heart. By common consent the whole subject was postponed to the ensuing winter. Whatever difficulties might stand in the King’s way in England, it hardly seemed likely that he would meet with serious opposition in Scotland. Already, whilst the English Parliament was still in session, events had occurred in the northern kingdom which showed how much James could there venture on with impunity.
It is usually taken for granted that the accession of James to the throne of England enabled him to interfere with greater weight in Scottish affairs, and that 1603.Effects of the King’s accession to the English throne.it contributed in no small degree to the subsequent overthrow of the Presbyterian system. There can be little doubt that the effects of the change have been considerably exaggerated. It is true, indeed, that James was now safe from personal attack, but for any practical purpose his strength was hardly greater than it was before. He found no standing army in England which might serve to overawe his Scottish subjects, and, even if he had attempted to raise English forces to suppress any movement in the North, he would certainly have roused a spirit of resistance in all classes. Nor was the money which he squandered upon some of his countrymen likely to conciliate opposition. The men whose names figure in the accounts of the English Exchequer as receivers of pensions or of gifts, the <302>Hays, the Ramsays, and the Humes, were not the men who held the destinies of Scotland in their hands. The great nobility, who now formed the chief supports of the throne, and the statesmen who carried on the government of the country in the name of their Sovereign, were not appreciably the richer for the change which had placed James upon the throne of England.[415]
Whatever may have been the value of the victory which had been won by the King over the Presbyterian clergy, it was at least won by Scottish hands. His success owing to his coalition with the nobility.It was to the coalition between the Crown and the nobility that the success of James was owing. The nobility, having abandoned the hope of retaining their independence, were eager to obtain in exchange the direction of the government of the country. Before such strength as they were able to put forth when united under the Crown all resistance on the part of the clergy was impossible, and, with very few exceptions, they looked with jealous eyes upon the Presbyterian Church. The eloquence and the moral vigour of the clergy still caused James to hesitate before proceeding to extremities; but it is unlikely that, under any circumstances, he would have long refrained from putting forth his power, and he certainly was not possessed of sufficient wisdom to shrink from using for that purpose his creatures the Bishops.
If, however, the change in James’s position did not enable him to throw any greater weight than he had hitherto done into the scale of Scottish ecclesiastical politics, it was such as to make him look upon the contest in which he had been engaged from a new point of view, and to inspire him with greater resolution in dealing with that system of Church government which was every day assuming darker colours in his eyes. The example of the English Church was too enticing, and the contrast between the Convocation of the Province of Canterbury and a Scottish General Assembly was too striking, not to make him eager to free himself from what he considered as the disorderly scenes which, when he had been in Scotland, had continually interfered with the success of his most cherished projects.
<303>For a time, however, James seems to have laid aside his intention of introducing episcopacy into Scotland. July, 1604.The Assembly summoned to Aberdeen postponed.His first interference, on a large scale, with the Church after he crossed the Borders, was his postponement for a twelvemonth of the General Assembly which had been appointed to meet at Aberdeen in July 1604. It was no mere prorogation that he had in mind. In the following March he wrote that, unless the English Privy Council advised him to the contrary, March, 1605.James intends to have no general assemblies.he would never call another General Assembly as long as he lived.[416] If the Scottish Church would not submit to the organization which he believed to be the best, it should have no organization at all.
But, either from deliberate intention, or from mere carelessness, James set aside, upon his own responsibility, the law of the land. By the Act of 1592, to which the Presbyterian system owed its legal establishment, it was declared to be lawful for the Church to hold its General Assemblies at least once a year, if certain forms which had been complied with on this occasion were observed. And he had himself, at the last meeting of the Assembly, given his consent to the observance of this Act for the future.
Such disregard for the rights of the clergy was sure to draw upon James the suspicions of all who reverenced the existing constitution of the Church. In spite of the King’s orders, the Presbytery of St. Andrews, which was always the first to start forward as the champion of Presbyterianism, sent three ministers to Aberdeen, who, finding themselves alone, came away, leaving behind them a written protest that they were not to blame for the consequences of such a breach of the laws of God and man.
Though the Presbytery of St. Andrews stood alone in protesting against the illegality of the adjournment, there can be little doubt that the dissatisfaction was widely spread. The representatives of the Church, or, as they were commonly called, the Commissioners of the General Assembly, had been chosen in accordance with the Act of the Assembly of 1600. Though they had not been suffered to sit in Parliament, they <304>had been treated with respect by the King, and had been consulted on Church affairs, to the exclusion of other ministers. At a meeting of the ministers held at Perth in October 1604, Oct. 1604.Meeting of ministers at Perth.hard words were spoken both of the Bishops and of these Commissioners of the Assembly, who were accused of using their position to draw all ecclesiastical power into their hands. The King’s declaration that he had no intention of altering the existing system, which seems to have been in accordance with his intentions at the time,[417] was looked upon with suspicion. This suspicion was converted into certainty upon the appearance, in June 1605, of June 7, 1605.Second postponement of the meeting of the Assembly.a letter addressed to the Presbyteries by the King’s Commissioner, Sir Alexander Straiton, of Lauriston; and the Commissioners of the Assembly, informing them that the King had directed another prorogation of the Assembly, which they had in the meantime themselves summoned to meet in July at Aberdeen, on the ground that it was impossible for him to consider of the matters which would come before them until the close of the sessions of the two Parliaments, which were to be engaged in settling the question of the union.[418]
In committing this renewed breach of the law, James appears to have been influenced by the belief that, if he allowed the Assembly to meet, Causes which influenced the King.it would denounce the Bishops and overthrow even what little had been done by the earlier Assemblies in favour of the appointment of representatives of the Church in Parliament,[419] and when news was brought to the Chancellor of the meeting of the Assembly, he at once asked ‘if there was any Act made against the Bishops and Commissioners.’[420] To the Bishops, indeed, who actually sat in Parliament, the Assembly could do little harm, as they held their seats by virtue of the Act of Parliament passed in 1597, and they would not be affected by a repeal of the Act of the Assembly, by which <305>voters were allowed to appear on behalf of the Church. Indeed, several new Bishops, and the two Archbishops of St. Andrews and Glasgow, Gladstanes and Spottiswoode, had been recently appointed by the King, without the slightest pretence of conforming to the mode of election prescribed by the Assembly. With the Commissioners the case was different. Their tenure of office was at an end as soon as the next Assembly met, and by simply refusing to reappoint them, the Assembly would put an end to the only link which existed for the time between the King and the Church. That such a course would be adopted was not in itself unlikely. They were, not unreasonably, regarded with great dislike by the vehement Presbyterians, as men who lent the weight of their authority to the support of the Crown against the clergy. That such a body should be in existence, in some form or another, was looked upon by James as a necessary part of the system upon which he proposed to govern the Church. If he could have been sure of having commissioners always by his side who would give him the support of an ecclesiastical authority in keeping the clergy in due submission to himself, he would probably have been satisfied. But this was exactly what he never could be sure of. Day by day the episcopal system appeared more desirable in his eyes. It was not an ecclesiastical, it was purely a political question. Commissioners owed a divided allegiance, and might be removed from office at any time. Bishops were creatures of his own, and, by the very necessity of their position, would do his bidding, whatever it might be.
Against this attempt of the King to interfere with the Church all that was noblest in Scotland revolted. The Presbyterians felt that Presbyterian opposition.they had right on their side. It was impossible that such a scheme as that of James could be confined to restricting them from interfering with merely temporal matters. If their Assemblies were silenced, or if they were only allowed to vote and speak under the eye of the Court, there was an end for ever of that freedom for which they had struggled so manfully. The kingdom of Christ, of which they constituted themselves the champions, may have been possessed in their eyes of attributes and powers which had their <306>origin merely in their own imaginations; but it is impossible to mistake the real nature of the contest in which they were engaged. It was one, like that between the medieval Popes and Emperors, out of which, at the time when it was entered on, no satisfactory issue was possible. The King, in claiming to silence the voice of the clergy when it was disagreeable to himself, was in reality attempting to silence that criticism in the absence of which all authority becomes stagnant and corrupt. The clergy, in claiming the right of criticism for themselves alone, in the name of an assumed Divine right, was making the independent development of lay society impossible. The only real cure for the disorder was complete liberty of speech, and liberty of speech, in the face of the immense power of the nobility, was only attainable by organization. To crush that organization, as James was now preparing to do, was to play into the hands of the nobility, and to weaken, as far as it was possible, the strongest bulwark of thought over force which then existed in Scotland.
This time, too, the law of the land was on the side of the clergy. The Act of 1592 distinctly guaranteed the yearly meetings of the Assembly. When, therefore, it was known that the King had ordered the Assembly to be again postponed, though the majority were unwilling to irritate him by disobeying the command, there were a few who felt that to yield at such a time would be to betray the cause of the Church and of the law, from fear of the consequences of resisting an arbitrary and illegal mandate.
On July 2, 1605, therefore, nineteen ministers assembled at Aberdeen. A few more would have joined them, if they had not been led to suppose that Meeting of the ministers at Aberdeen.the day of meeting had been the 5th instead of the 2nd of the month.[421] This discrepancy in the letter by which the prorogation had been notified to them has been supposed to have been owing to a design on the part of the Government to bring them to Aberdeen in detached bodies.
As soon as this little handful were assembled, Straiton <307>presented them with a letter from the lords of the Council. As, however, Straiton presents them with the letter of the Council.the letter was directed ‘To the Brethren of the Ministry convened in their Assembly in Aberdeen,’ they refused to open it till they had constituted themselves into a regular Assembly by choosing a Moderator. Straiton, after suggesting John Forbes of Alford as a proper person, left the room. As soon as he was gone, Forbes was unanimously elected, and, the Assembly being constituted, the letter of the Council was opened. It was found to contain a warning not to offend the King by meeting without his consent, and an order to leave Aberdeen without appointing any time or place for the next Assembly. To the first point the ministers were ready to agree. They had no wish to push matters to extremities by attempting to transact business in defiance of the King; but they were by no means willing to surrender the independence of the Assembly, by leaving in the King’s hands the appointment of its meetings. They did, however, what they could to avoid anything which looked like disloyalty. They sent for Straiton, and begged him to name any day he pleased, however distant, and assured him that they would willingly submit to his decision. It was only after his refusal to agree to their proposal, that The Assembly prorogues itself.they themselves adjourned the Assembly to the first Tuesday in September. It was then, and not till then, that the King’s Commissioner declared that he did not consider them to be a lawful Assembly, as the Moderator of the last Assembly, who ought to have opened the meeting, was not present. He followed this up by threatening the ministers with the treatment of rebels if they did not instantly break up their meeting. Having accomplished the object for which they had come, they left the town without making any resistance. Nine other ministers, who arrived on the 4th and 5th, also went home, after signifying their approval of the conduct of their brethren.[422]
Either during his last conversation with the ministers, or on his way home, Straiton remembered that the effect of what had <308>just passed under his eyes would be Straiton falsifies his account of the Assembly.to bring to an end the authority of the Commissioners of the last Assembly, if the nineteen ministers who had just left Aberdeen constituted a real Assembly. Accordingly, fearing lest he should be brought to account for not using more active measures, he determined to invent a story which would save him from disgrace. On his return to Edinburgh he boldly declared that, on the day before the ministers met, he had published a proclamation at the Market Cross at Aberdeen, forbidding them to take part in the Assembly.[423] To this falsehood he afterwards added an equally fictitious account of the forcible exclusion of himself from the room in which the Assembly was held.
Unfortunately the men who occupied the principal positions in the Council were not likely to give themselves much trouble to sift the matter to the bottom. The Chancellor, who now bore the title of Earl of Dunfermline, had formerly, as Alexander Seton, been brought into frequent collisions with the clergy. Elphinstone, who had now become Lord Balmerino and President of the Court of Session as well as Secretary of State, had also old grudges which he was not unwilling to pay off. They were both Catholics, and as such they wished to do everything in their power to depress the Presbyterian clergy. They therefore, as soon as they received a letter from James urging them to take steps against the ministers, instead of attempting to enlighten his mind as to the deception which had been practised upon him, threw themselves readily into the course of persecution which he pointed out;[424] although Dunfermline had not long before assured Forbes that he would be quite content if the Assembly should act in the precise way in which its proceedings had been actually carried on, and, when he first saw an account of what had passed, had approved of all that had been done.
Accordingly, on July 25, the Scottish Council issued a proclamation prohibiting the Assembly from meeting in September. <309>On the same day, Forbes was summoned before the Council, and on his giving it as his opinion that the meeting at Aberdeen was a lawful Assembly, he was committed to custody in Edinburgh Castle, from whence, a few days later, he was removed to Blackness, where he was soon joined by John Welsh, one of those who had not appeared at Aberdeen till after the conclusion of the proceedings, but who was regarded by the Government with suspicion as a man who was warmly attached to the Presbyterian discipline.[425] Four others were at the same time sent down to Blackness.
The King was determined to carry out his authority with a high hand. He sent down a letter which all the Presbyteries were directed to have read from the pulpit, in which he explicitly affirmed that the law was not intended to bind him to observe under all circumstances the privileges by which any body or estate in the kingdom was allowed to meet or to deliberate.[426] This letter the Presbyteries refused to read, but it was published by authority some months afterwards. He also directed certain captious questions to be put to the imprisoned ministers, which were intended to entangle them into an admission of the unlawfulness of the Aberdeen Assembly.
On their refusal to do this, they were summoned, with some of the other ministers who shared in their steadfastness, to appear on October 24 Their declinature.before the Council, in order to hear the Assembly declared to be unlawful, and to receive their own sentence for taking part in it.[427] On the <310>appointed day they were brought before the Council, and, after in vain beseeching the Lords to refer their case to a General Assembly, gave in a declinature, in which they refused to acknowledge the jurisdiction of the Council in a question concerning the rights of the Church, and referred their cause to the next Assembly. James, when he heard of the course which they had taken, directed that they should be brought to trial The King directs that they shall be brought to trial.upon a charge of treason, under the Act of 1584, which pronounced it to be treasonable to refuse to submit to the jurisdiction of the Council. In order to insure a conviction, he sent down the Earl of Dunbar to use his authority with all who might be inclined to throw obstacles in the way. The very choice of such a representative was significant of the distance from the Scottish clergy to which James had drifted. Dunbar, who, as Sir George Hume, had accompanied James to England, was not a Presbyterian, and it was questionable whether he was even a Protestant.
In the proceedings which followed, it is neither the abstruse points of law which were so diligently argued, nor even the fate of the bold and fearless men whose lives and fortunes were at stake, which principally attracts our attention. The real question at issue was, whether the King’s Government was worthy to occupy the position which it had taken up. If the Assemblies were not to be allowed to meet and to deliberate <311>independently of the authority of the State, what was to be substituted for them? Was their claim of Divine right to be met by calm deliberation, and by unswerving justice, allowing liberty of action wherever liberty was possible; or by an exhibition of petty intrigues resting upon the support of brute force? In other words, did James appear as the standard-bearer of law and order against ecclesiastical anarchy, or was he clothing, ignorantly or knowingly, his own arbitrary will in the forms of political wisdom? In reality it was James himself who was on his trial, not the prisoners at the bar.
The proceedings did not commence in a very promising manner. It was necessary to remove the place of trial from Edinburgh 1606.The trial to be at Linlithgow.to Linlithgow, lest the Chancellor and his associates should be unable to carry out their purpose in the face of a population which sympathised strongly with the ministers.[428] On the morning of January 10, the six who were confined at Blackness were hurried before the Council at Linlithgow, and, after all efforts had been made in vain to induce them to withdraw their declinature, were ordered to prepare for trial.
Criminal trials in England were not to be regarded at this period as models of justice, but it is certain that the most subservient judge who had ever sat upon the English Bench would have been shocked at the manner in which preparations were made for procuring a verdict against the ministers. Dunbar began by tampering with the judges. He plainly told them that if they did what he called their duty, they might expect to enjoy the favour of the King; but that, on the other hand, if they failed in satisfying him, certain disgrace and punishment would overtake them. He then addressed himself to packing a jury, knowing well that unless extraordinary precautions were taken he would fail in his object. At last he found fifteen men amongst his own friends and relations who, as he hoped, would serve his purpose. To make everything sure, he finally filled the town with his followers, who would be ready to prevent any attempt to rescue the prisoners, and who might also serve the <312>purpose of overawing the Court, in case that, even constituted as it was, it might by some chance show a spirit of independence.[429] As if this were not enough, it was arranged that the Lords of the Council themselves, whose jurisdiction was impeached, should sit as assessors on the Court, to assist in judging their own case.
The question of law was argued before the jury were admitted into court. The pleadings turned upon Decision of the question of law.purely legal points, as to the interpretation of words in certain Acts of Parliament, and upon the extent to which the Act of 1584 was repealed by the Act of 1592. In these discussions there is no interest whatever. They barely touch upon the great questions at issue, and there can be no doubt that the decision which was finally given against the prisoners had been settled beforehand.
When this part of the trial had been brought to a conclusion, the jury was admitted. As soon as they appeared, The jury admitted.they were addressed by Sir Thomas Hamilton, the Lord Advocate. He told them that it had been already settled by the court that the declinature of members was treasonable, and that all that was left to the jury was to find whether the declinature had proceeded from the prisoners or not. He assured them that the document which he produced was in the handwriting of the ministers; there could therefore be no difficulty in bringing in the verdict for which he asked. He concluded by telling the jury that if they acquitted the prisoners they must expect to be called in question for their wilful error, by which their own lives and property would be endangered.
In spite of the opposition of the prisoner’s counsel, the jury were being sent out of court to consider the verdict, when Forbes’s speech.Forbes asked to be allowed to address them in the name of his brethren. Having obtained permission he went over the whole story of his supposed offence in words which must have gone to the hearts of all who were not utterly deaf to the voice of a true man speaking for his life. After <313>protesting that Straiton’s story of the proclamation at the Market Cross of Aberdeen was utterly false from beginning to end, he showed that the direction of the Council’s letter by which the ministers assembled at Aberdeen were required to disperse, was enough to prove that that meeting was regarded as a lawful Assembly by the very Council which had afterwards called them to account. The only point in which the ministers had been disobedient was in refusing to dissolve the Assembly without appointing time or place for the next meeting. In doing this he asserted that they had acted in accordance with the laws of the kingdom as well as of the Church. The truth was that they were brought into danger in order to support the pretensions of the Commissioners of the Assembly, who were labouring to introduce the Romish hierarchy in place of the Church and Kingdom of Christ. He reminded the jurors that they had all of them subscribed to the confession of faith, and had sworn to maintain the discipline of the Church, and he adjured them to judge on that day as they would be judged when they were called to render an account to God of the oath which they had sworn.
After some altercation between Forbes and the Lord Advocate, Welsh addressed the jury. He spoke even more strongly than Forbes had done of Welsh’s speech.the sole right of the Church to judge of ecclesiastical questions. As soon as he had finished, Hamilton told the jury that they ought not to be moved by what they had just heard, and, after admonishing them to perform their duty, he concluded by again threatening them with punishment if they refused to find a verdict against the prisoners. On the conclusion of this address, Forbes read a passage out of the covenant in which King and people had once united to protest their devotion to the Protestant faith; and then turning to Dunbar requested him to remind the King of the punishment which had overtaken Saul for his breach of the covenant which had been made with the Gibeonites, and to warn him lest a similar judgment should befall him and his posterity if he broke that covenant to which he had sworn. After this, as the other prisoners declared it to be unnecessary to add <314>anything to that which had been already said, the jury were ordered to retire to consider their verdict.
Then was seen the effect which earnest words can have even upon men who have been brought together for the express reason that The jury consider their verdict.they were unlikely to sympathise with the prisoners. The jury, packed as it had been, began to doubt what the verdict was to be. One of them begged that some one else might be substituted in his place. Another asked for more information on the point at issue. A third begged for delay. When all these requests had been refused, they left the court. As soon as they had met together, it was found that they were inclined to brave all threats and to acquit the prisoners. The foreman of the jury, Stewart of Craighall, being himself liable to the penalties of the law, did not dare to oppose the will of the Council. He accordingly, as soon as he found what was the opinion of the majority, went back into the court, together with the Lord Justice Clerk, who had been illegally present in the jury room, and warned the judges what was likely to be the result. The Councillors, in order to save their credit, made one more attempt to persuade the prisoners to withdraw their declinature. Having failed to produce any effect, they not only tried what could be done by again threatening the jury, but they sent some of their number in to assure them that they would do no harm to the prisoners by convicting them, as the King had no intention of pushing matters to extremes, and only wished to have the credit of a verdict on his side, in order to proceed to bring about a pacification with greater likelihood of success. Influenced by these threats and promises, nine out of the fifteen gave way, and The prisoners pronounced guilty.the verdict of guilty was pronounced by the majority which, according to the law of Scotland, was sufficient for the purpose. The sentence was deferred till the King’s pleasure should be known.[430]
Such a victory was equivalent to a defeat. If the power of the King was established too firmly by means of his coalition <315>with the nobility to make it likely that any actual danger was to be apprehended, Effect of the trial.he had at least notified to all who cared for honesty and truthfulness that it was only by falsehood and trickery that he had succeeded in establishing his claims. From henceforward it would be unnecessary to go into any elaborate argument in favour of the independence of the Church Courts. It would be sufficient to point to the trial at Linlithgow, and to ask whether that was the kind of justice which was so much better than that which was dispensed in the Ecclesiastical Courts. So strong was the general feeling on the subject, that when James wrote to the Council pressing them to bring to a trial the remaining ministers who had also signed the declinature, he received a reply informing him that it was very improbable that such a course would be attended with any good result, and recommending him to drop the prosecution in order to avoid an acquittal.[431]
In the whole course of James’s reign there is not one of his actions which brings out so distinctly the very worst side of his character. There can be no doubt that he really believed that he was justified in what he was doing, and that he blinded himself to the radical injustice of his proceedings, and to the scandalous means by which his objects were effected. He began by fancying that the ministers had acted illegally, and then read every law or principle to which they appealed through the coloured spectacles of his own feelings and interests. To any knowledge of the true solution of the really difficult questions which were involved in the dispute, he never had the slightest pretensions, excepting in his own eyes and in those of his courtiers.
The six ministers remained for some months in prison. At last, in October, they were condemned to perpetual banishment. Banishment of the six ministers.As they went down to the boat, at Leith, which was to carry them away in the darkness of the night, the people, who crowded down to the beach to see them go, heard them singing the twenty-third Psalm. They had passed through the valley of the shadow of death, and had feared no evil. In prison and in banishment He who <316>had been their shepherd suffered them not to want. They, too, deserve the name of Pilgrim Fathers. Earthly hope they had none; they went not forth to found an empire beyond the seas; they went forth to spend the last days of their weary pilgrimage in foreign lands. But their work was not there: it was in the hearts of their Scottish countrymen, to whom they had at the peril of their lives borne testimony to the truth. They had done their part to build up the Church and nation, which neither James nor his Council would be able to enslave for ever.
Eight other ministers, who also Imprisonment of the other eight.refused to retract their declinature, were exiled to various places on the coast and islands of Scotland.[432]
The Linlithgow trial had brought clearly before the eyes of the nation the real worth of the judicial institutions of the country. It remained to be seen whether its legislative body was any more fit to call the General Assembly to account. Whatever may have been the intentions of the King during the first years of his reign in England, there can be no doubt that he was now bent upon bringing the clergy under his feet by restoring to the Bishops their jurisdiction. He accordingly The Parliament at Perth.summoned a Parliament to meet at Perth in July, in order to pass an Act for the restitution to the Bishops of the property of their sees which had been formally annexed to the Crown. It was notorious that many of the nobility looked askance upon the new Bishops. But their opposition was not of a nature to hold out against those arguments which the Government was able to use. With the conscientious hatred of Episcopacy which animated the Presbyterians, they had nothing in common; all that they felt was a mere dislike of the rise of an order which might vie in wealth and influence with themselves. With such men as these it was easy to strike a bargain. Let them assent to the repeal of the Act of Annexation, by which so much of the Church land had been declared to be Crown property, and if the King were allowed to use some of it to endow his new Bishops, he would carve out of it no less than seventeen temporal lordships for <317>the nobility.[433] Such arguments as these were unanswerable. The Parliament speedily passed the Acts which gave permission for the change, and added another, declaring that the King’s authority was supreme ‘over all estates, persons, and causes whatsoever.’[434]
The position occupied by James’s Bishops was unique in the history of Episcopacy. There have been instances in which laymen have borne Position of the Bishops.the title of Bishop, and there have been instances in which Bishops have passed gradually from the exercise of purely spiritual functions to the enjoyment of temporal jurisdiction; but nowhere, excepting in Scotland, has a class of ministers existed who were clothed in all the outward pomp and importance of temporal lordships, whilst they were without any ecclesiastical authority whatever. Such a state of things was too ridiculous to continue long. Any attempt to rule the Church by means of the subservient courts of law, and the half-careless, half-corrupt Parliaments, was certain in the long run to prove a failure. Everything tended to make James more determined to give real authority to his Bishops, or, in other words, to himself.
But if this was to be accomplished, James shrank from carrying out his purpose by a simple act of authority. To do him justice, when James determines to give them ecclesiastical authority.a scheme of this kind came into his head, he always contrived to persuade himself that it was impossible for anyone to oppose it excepting from factious or interested motives. Just as to the end of his life he continued to believe that the English House of Commons misrepresented the loyal feelings of the nation, he now believed that the dislike of Bishops was confined to a few turbulent resisters of all authority. And such was his opinion of the justice of his cause and of the force of his own arguments, that he flattered himself with the notion that even those who had hitherto resisted his wishes must give way if he could once be brought face to face with them.
<318>In a proclamation issued in the preceding autumn,[435] the King had declared that he intended to 1605.Sept. 26.make no alteration in the government of the Church, excepting with the advice of those whom he called the wisest and best of the clergy; and he accordingly directed that a General Assembly should be held at Dundee in July. In February 1606.Questions put to the Synods.he sent round five questions to all the Synods, intended to induce them to give their assent to an acknowledgment of the King’s authority in calling the Assemblies, and to promise to support the Commissioners, leaving untouched the position of the Bishops.[436] Failing to obtain any satisfactory answer, he wrote to eight of the principal ministers still remaining at liberty, in the number of whom both Andrew Melville and his nephew James were included, directing them to present themselves in London on September 15, in order to discuss the question at issue between the ministers and the Crown. In spite of their disinclination to enter upon a discussion which they knew to be useless, they consented to comply with the request. Their first conference with the King was held on September 22, in the presence of several members of the Scottish Council, and of some of the Bishops and other ministers who were favourable to the claims of the King. They found that they were required, Conference at Hampton Court.as a preliminary step, to give an opinion on the lawfulness of the Assembly at Aberdeen. As anyone but James would have foreseen, it was to no purpose that arguments were addressed to them to prove the correctness of the King’s view of the case, or that they were called upon to listen, day after day, to polemical sermons from the most distinguished preachers of the Church of England. They refused to part with their conviction on this point, or to allow that there was any possible way of pacifying the Church of Scotland, excepting by the convocation of a free General Assembly. Upon discovering that his logic had been expended upon them in vain, James resorted to the disgraceful <319>expedient of ordering the men who had come up to England on the faith of his invitation, to be committed to custody. It was not long before a circumstance occurred which gave him an excuse for severer measures. An epigram was put into his hands which had been Melville’s verses.written by Andrew Melville, on what seemed to him the Popish ceremonies practised in the King’s Chapel at one of the services which he had been compelled to attend.[437] The verses had not been put in circulation, nor was it intended that they should be; but James, glad of an opportunity of revenging himself upon the man whom he detested, ordered him to be Nov. 30.His imprisonmentbrought before the Privy Council. When there, Melville, amidst the taunting words of the members of this unsympathising tribunal, with a not unnatural ebullition of impatience, turned fiercely upon Bancroft who had charged him with something very like treason, and reminding him of all his real and supposed faults, ended his invective by telling him, as he shook one of his lawn sleeves, that these were Romish rags, and part of the mark of the beast. Such a scene had never before occurred in the decorous Council Chamber at Whitehall, and the Lords were not likely to leave it unnoticed. He was committed by them to the custody of the Dean of St. Paul’s, from whence he was, after another examination, transferred to the Tower. There he remained a prisoner for four years, till and banishment.he was allowed to leave England at the request of the Duke of Bouillon, in whose University at Sedan he passed the remaining years of his life as Professor of Divinity. Treatment of the other ministers.His nephew, whose sole crime was his refusal to acknowledge the King’s ecclesiastical supremacy, was sent into confinement at Newcastle. The six other ministers were relegated to different parts of Scotland.
<320>The cycle of injustice was now complete. In the course of one short year the judicature, the Parliament, and the King had proved to demonstration that they were not in a position to demand of the Church the surrender of her independence. In theory, the view taken by James in protesting against the claim of the clergy to exclusive privileges approached more nearly to those which are very generally accepted in our own day, than do those which were put forward by Melville and Forbes. But that which is yielded to the solemn voice of the law may well be refused to the wilfulness of arbitrary power.
As yet, James did not venture upon proposing to introduce a copy of the English Episcopacy into Scotland; but he determined to make James’s plan of Constant Moderators.an effort to bring the Bishops whom he had nominated into some connection with the working machinery of the Church. There can be no doubt that, in detaining the eight ministers in England, he had been as much influenced by the hope of depriving the Scotch clergy of their support, as by the annoyance which he felt at their pertinacious resistance. But even at a time when no less than twenty-two of the leading ministers had been driven away from the scenes of their labours, he did not venture to summon a freely chosen Assembly, with the intention of asking it to surrender into the hands of the Bishops the least fraction of the powers which had hitherto been possessed by the Presbyteries and Assemblies of the Church. He had, in consequence, again prorogued the Assembly, which was to have met in the course of the summer.
Still, however, some means must be taken to cloak the usurpation which he meditated. He issued summonses to the various Presbyteries, The Linlithgow Convention.calling upon them to send to Linlithgow certain ministers who were nominated by himself, in order that they might confer with some of the nobility and of the officers of state, on the best means to repress the progress of Popery, and that they might determine upon the means which were to be taken for the preservation of the peace of the Church. On December 13, 1606, this assembly of nominees met, according to the King’s directions; and though the members at first showed some signs of <321>independence, they were in the end, by the skilful management of the Earl of Dunbar, brought to agree to all that was proposed to them. The chief concession obtained was, that in order that there might be an official always ready to counteract the designs of the Catholics, a ‘Constant Moderator,’ who might be entrusted with this permanent duty, should be substituted in all the Presbyteries for the Moderators who had hitherto been elected at each meeting. In the same way the Synods, or Provincial Assemblies, were also to be provided with permanent Moderators. Whenever a vacancy occurred, the Moderators of the Presbyteries were to be chosen by the Synod to which the Presbytery belonged. The Synod was itself to be presided over by any Bishop who might be acting as Moderator of any of the Presbyteries within its bounds, and it was only to be allowed to elect its own Moderator in cases where no Bishop was thus to be obtained. The Moderators, however, were to be liable to censure, and even to deprivation, in the Church courts. This arrangement, such as it was, was not to come into action at once. The first list of Moderators of all the Presbyteries in Scotland was drawn up by the Linlithgow Convention, and in it were to be found the names of all the Bishops for the Presbyteries in which they resided.[438]
This Act left, indeed, the whole machinery of Presbyterianism in full action. But it accustomed the clergy to see the nominees of the Crown presiding in their courts, and might easily lead the way to fresh encroachments. It was hardly likely, however, that the decisions of this irregular Convention would be universally accepted as equal in authority to those of a free Assembly. It was soon found that resistance was to be expected, and the determination to resist was strengthened by a report which was generally circulated, to the effect that the Act of the Convention had been surreptitiously altered by the King, a report which gained increased credence from the circumstance that some of the ministers had in vain attempted to gain a sight of the original document.
James, however, determined to carry his scheme into effect <322>in spite of all opposition. On January 17, 1607, an order was issued to all the Presbyteries, 1607.The Moderators forced on the Church.admonishing them to accept the Moderators on pain of being declared guilty of rebellion. The same threat was held over the head of those Moderators who might be unwilling to accept the post to which they had been appointed. Some gave way before superior force, but others refused to obey the command. In the Synods the resistance was still stronger, as it was believed that the order to admit the Bishops as Moderators over these large assemblies had been improperly added to the Acts of the Convention. One Synod only, that of Angus, submitted at once to the change. It was only after a prolonged resistance that the others gave way to commands which they knew themselves to be unable to resist.
James had thus secured most of the objects at which he aimed. Driven, by the pertinacity of the ministers who had met at Aberdeen, Success of the King.to abandon his scheme of leaving the Scottish Church without any organization at all, he had fallen back on his older plan of giving it an organization which would to a great extent subject it to his own control. Presbyteries and Synods and General Assemblies were to meet as in the olden days, but they would meet under the presidence of Moderators appointed by himself, and in the Synods that Moderator would almost always be a person who bore the name of Bishop. It was not likely that James would stop here, and he had little more to do to give to the Bishops the presidency by right. Yet even what he had done had been enough to put an end to that collision between the ecclesiastical and the civil powers which had threatened danger to the State.
Unhappily the means to which James owed his victory brought discredit upon the cause in which he was engaged. There had been Causes of his success.no little chicanery in his interpretation or evasion of the law, and the fact that his main supporters, Dunfermline and Balmerino, were Catholics, undoubtedly injured him in the estimation of the Protestants of Scotland. Yet, after every admission is made, it is undeniable that, ever since the tumult in Edinburgh in 1596, there had <323>been a considerable want of animation on the part of those classes on whom the Presbyterian clergy depended for support. What opposition there had been, came almost entirely from the ministers themselves. Not only were the great nobles, with one or two exceptions, banded together against them as one man, but the lesser gentry, and even the boroughs, were lukewarm in their cause.
The explanation of this change of feeling is not very difficult to find. In the first place the cause of Presbyterianism was no longer connected with resistance to foreign interference, with regard to which Scotchmen have at all times been so sensitive. In the early part of James’s reign the ministers could appeal to the nation against the intrigues of France. At a later period, it was the dread of a Spanish invasion which gave point to their invectives against the northern earls. But with Huntly’s defeat, in 1595, all this was at an end. If for a short time it was still supposed that Huntly and Errol were likely to renew their invitations to the Spanish Court, all suspicions of such behaviour on their part quickly died away, and the question between the King and the clergy could be treated as a mere matter of internal policy with which national prejudices had nothing whatever to do.
Nor were the King’s innovations of such a nature as to provoke opposition from the ordinary members of Scottish congregations. The same sermons were likely to be preached by the same men, whether the General Assembly or the King got the upper hand. The proceedings of the Kirk-sessions were carried on exactly as before. There was, above all, nothing which addressed the eye in the changes which had been brought about. Men who would have been horror-struck at such alterations as those which were afterwards carried out in England by the authority of Laud, looked on with indifference as long as they saw the old familiar services conducted as they had been accustomed to see them conducted in their boyhood. To superficial observers — and in no age or country is their number a limited one — the question at issue was merely one of jurisdiction, by which the integrity of the Gospel was not in any way affected.
<324>The real evil lay rather in that which might be done, than in that which had actually taken place. Neither the General Assembly nor the Parliament could claim to be a fair representation of the Scottish nation, because that nation was too deeply cleft asunder to have any real representation at all. Under such circumstances, the King was the sole representative of unity. As long as he acted as a reconciler he might go on his path unmolested, but if he, or his successor, should at any time cease to be content with keeping the peace, and should proceed to try the temper of the people by the introduction of changes in their mode of worship, he might excite an opposition which he would find it hard to control. If a national feeling were aroused against him, it would find an outlet either in the Assembly or in Parliament — perhaps in both combined.
It is not unlikely that these proceedings in Scotland may have had some effect upon the minds of the members of the English House of Commons, 1606.Nov. 18.Opening of the English Parliament.when they were called on to take the first steps in drawing closer the bonds of union with a country in which the forms of justice were so abused as they had been in the condemnation of Forbes and his brother ministers. The session which opened on November 18, 1606, was understood to be devoted to the consideration of the proposals which had been made by the Commissioners appointed from both countries. The Report of the Commissioners for the Union.Those proposals had been framed with a due regard for the susceptibilities of the two nations. On two of them but little difference of opinion was likely to arise. It could hardly be doubted that it was expedient to repeal those laws by which either country had taken precautions against hostile attacks from the other, or that some arrangement ought to be made for the mutual extradition of criminals.
The other two points were far more likely to give rise to opposition. The most essential measures by which the prosperity of the two kingdoms could be insured, were the establishment of freedom of commercial intercourse between them, and the naturalisation in each of them of the natives of the other.
<325>After mature deliberation, the Commissioners had determined to recommend that certain productions of each country Commercial union.should not be allowed to be exported to the other. The English were afraid of a rise in the price of cloth, if their sheep-farmers were permitted to send their wool to be manufactured in Scotland; and the Scotch were equally alarmed at the prospect of high prices for meat, if their cattle could be driven across the Tweed to a more profitable market than Edinburgh or Perth could offer. With these and two or three other exceptions, the whole commerce of the two countries was to be placed on an equal footing. The Scotchman was to be allowed to sell his goods in London as freely as he could in Edinburgh; and he was to be permitted to take part in those commercial enterprises upon which so much of the prosperity of England was already founded. A similar liberty was to be granted to Englishmen in Scotland; though, for the present, at least, its value would be merely nominal.
A commercial union of this description made it necessary to take into consideration the question of naturalisation. Unfortunately, Naturalisation.it was impossible to avoid touching upon political difficulties. The best course would have been to have naturalised entirely, in each kingdom, all persons born in the other, but to have incapacitated them, at least for a certain time, from holding any high official position. There would have been less difficulty in drawing up a measure of this kind, as, of the six Scotchmen who had been sworn into the English Privy Council soon after the accession of James, all except one had been already naturalised by Act of Parliament,[439] and might fairly have been regarded as exceptions from the rule which was to be proposed.
The question was, however, complicated by a distinction drawn by the legal authorities who were consulted[440] by the <326>Commissioners. They declared that by the common law of England, the Post-nati (as those who were born in Scotland after the accession of James were technically called) were as little to be regarded as aliens as if they had been born in Exeter or York. They were born within the King’s allegiance, and they must be regarded as his subjects as far as his dominions extended. The Ante-nati, or those born before the King’s accession, on the other hand, did not obtain this privilege. The Commissioners, therefore, proposed a declaratory Act pronouncing the Post-nati, in either kingdom, to be possessed of all the privileges of natives of the other. They also advised that the same rights should be communicated to the Ante-nati by statute. The question of the reservation of the high offices of state was beset with still greater difficulties. If the Commissioners had been left to themselves, they would probably have recommended that the Ante-nati should be incapacitated from holding these dignities, whilst the Post-nati should be entitled to accept them. This would, at all events, have thrown back the difficulty for at least twenty years. By that time the chief reasons for apprehending evil consequences from the measure would have ceased to exist. After twenty years of close commercial intercourse, the two peoples would have become assimilated to one another; the generation which had been growing up in Scotland since 1603 would be strangers to James, and would be still greater strangers to his successor. By that time the favourites of the Sovereign would be Englishmen. If it would be still possible for the King to swamp the House of Lords and the public offices with Scotchmen, who might be supposed to feel no especial regard for the English Constitution, it would also be possible for him to find Englishmen who would be equally ready to support him in his claims. In fact, the event proved that the danger which threatened the Constitution did not arise from the possible extension of the area from which officials could be selected, but from the want of control which Parliament was able to exercise over the officials after their selection by the King. When Charles I. wished to find a Strafford or a Laud, it was not necessary for him to go in search of him beyond the Tweed.
<327>It is possible that if the Commissioners had followed their own judgment they might have seen their recommendations pass into law, in spite of the prejudices by which they were certain to be assailed in the House of Commons. But, unfortunately, in order to carry out this proposal, it was necessary to interfere with one of the prerogatives of the Crown; and when James heard that his prerogative was to be touched, he was sure to take alarm, and to do battle for a shadow even more strenuously than he was ready to contend for the substance. In this case the difficulty lay in the acknowledged right of the Crown to issue letters of denization to aliens, by which all the rights of naturalisation might be conferred, excepting that of inheriting landed property in England. Although, however, a denizen might not inherit land, he was capable of holding it by grant or purchase, and of transmitting it to his descendants. He was also capable of holding all offices under the Crown. James protested, no doubt with perfect sincerity at the time, that he had no desire ‘to confer any office of the Crown, any office of judicature, place, voice, or office in Parliament, of either kingdom, upon the subjects of the other born before the decease of Elizabeth.’[441] Under these circumstances, a sensible man would have gladly allowed a clause to be inserted, depriving him of the power of granting such offices by letters of denization to the Ante-nati. Even then he would still have been able to enrich any new Scottish favourites by gifts of money, and to those who were already naturalised he might assign as much more land as he pleased. Unluckily, James considered that he would be disgraced by such an attack upon his prerogative. The plan which he adopted had, at least, the merit of ingenuity: he agreed to the proposal of the Commissioners to refuse to the Ante-nati the right of holding offices, but he also required that the future Act of naturalisation should contain a distinct recognition of his right to issue letters of denization, and thus to break through those very restrictions which the House was to be asked to impose; though at the same time he gave a promise that he would make no use of this right of which he was so eager to obtain the acknowledgment. <328>It is strange that he did not foresee that the House of Commons would regard such a proposal as this with indignation, and would look upon it as an attempt to delude them with specious words.
James, unfortunately, was incapable of bridling his tongue. When he addressed the Houses on the first day of the session, The King’s speech.he entered upon a long attack upon the conduct of those who had prepared the Petition of Grievances at the end of the last session, even though he acknowledged that he had found some of the requests made to be worthy of attention. In treating of the Union he was no less injudicious. On this question he was far in advance of the average English opinion. He foresaw the benefits which would accrue to both nations from a complete amalgamation, and he was not unnaturally impatient of the conservative timidity of the Commons, which dreaded each step into the unknown. Yet he would have been far more likely to secure his immediate object if he had been less conspicuously open, and had avoided showing to the world his eagerness for a far closer amalgamation than that to which the assent of Parliament was now invited. “Therefore, now,” he said, after recounting the benefits to be expected, “let that which hath been sought so much, and so long, and so often, by blood, and by fire, and by the sword, now it is brought and wrought by the hand of God, be embraced and received by a hallelujah; and let it be as Wales was, and as all the Heptarchy was, united to England, as the principal; and let all at last be compounded and united into one kingdom. And since the crown, the sceptre, and justice, and law, and all is resident and reposed here, there can be no fear to this nation, but that they shall ever continue continual friends; and shall ever acknowledge one Church and one king, and be joined in a perpetual marriage, for the peace and prosperity of both nations, and for the honour of their King.“
We can appreciate the prescience of such words now. When they were uttered, they must have raised strange questionings in the minds of the hearers. What, they may well have asked, was this one law and one Church in which they were invited to participate? Were they not asked to abandon <329>some of the rights of Englishmen, and, what was quite as much to the point, to sacrifice some of the interests of Englishmen?
So preoccupied were the Commons with the question of the Union, that the King’s answer to their grievances was Nov. 19.The answer to the grievances.allowed to pass unchallenged. On the 21st the Report of the Commissioners of the Union was read. At once a storm of opposition arose amongst the English merchants against the proposal to set free the commerce of the two countries. The merchants declared that they would certainly be ruined by the competition with which they were threatened. Debates on commercial intercourse.Scotchmen would come in and out of England; they would always be in the way when they wanted to drive a bargain; but as soon as the time came round when taxes and subsidies were to be demanded, they would slip over the border, leaving the burden upon the shoulders of their English rivals. There were quite enough Englishmen engaged in the trading companies, and it was most undesirable that Scotchmen should rob them of their livelihood. To these and similar complaints the Scottish merchants had no difficulty in replying. They received the support of Salisbury, who, if he did not regard the Union with any great enthusiasm, had, at all events, too much sense to be led away by the fallacies by which it was assailed.[442]
The feeling of the merchants found expression in the House of Commons. That House agreed, as a matter of course, to abolish the hostile laws; but though they were ready enough to protest against the monopoly of the trading companies, they looked with prejudiced eyes upon the principle of commercial freedom when it seemed to tell against themselves. On December 17, a scene occurred at a conference with the Lords which augured ill for the success of the measure. The staid Lord Chancellor scolded the merchants for the petition which they had drawn up against the Union. Fuller, in his rash, headlong way, said that the Scotch were pedlers rather than merchants. For this speech he was taken to task by the Lords, who told the Commons that, if they did not <330>yield with a good grace, the King would take the matter in hand, and would carry out the Union by his own authority. Under these circumstances the House gave way, so far as to accept certain starting-points which might serve for the heads of a future Bill, though it refused to give to them its formal adhesion.[443] Upon this Parliament was adjourned to February 10.
A few days after the reassembling of the House, Sir Christopher Pigott, who had been chosen to succeed to the vacancy in the Feb. 13.Sir Christopher Pigott’s speech.representation of Buckinghamshire caused by the resignation of Sir Francis Goodwin, poured forth a torrent of abuse against the whole Scottish nation. He said that they were beggars, rebels, and traitors. There had not been a single King of Scotland who had not been murdered by his subjects. It was as reasonable to unite Scotland and England as it would be to place a prisoner at the bar upon an equal footing with a judge upon the bench.[444] No expression of displeasure was heard, and though this silence is attributed in the journals to the astonishment of his hearers there can be little doubt that they secretly sympathised with the speaker. Their temper cannot have been improved by the knowledge that the King had determined to make use of 44,000l. out of the subsidies which they had so recently granted, in paying the debts of three of his favourites. The fact that two of these, Lord Hay[445] and Lord Haddington, were Scotchmen, must have increased the disgust with which the prodigality of the King was regarded in the House of Commons.[446]
The next day James heard what had passed. He immediately sent for Salisbury, and after rating him for not giving him earlier information, and for having allowed Pigott to go so long unpunished, he summoned the Council, and commanded <331>them to take immediate steps for bringing the delinquent to justice.
The Commons, on hearing what had taken place in the Council, determined to deal with the matter themselves. They excused themselves for taking no steps at the time on the plea that it was not well to answer a fool according to his folly. After some debate, they resolved that Pigott, being a member of the House, was not liable to be called in question elsewhere. They then ordered that he should be expelled the House and committed to the Tower. In less than a fortnight, he was released upon the plea of ill-health.
Meanwhile, the House had commenced the discussion of the important question of naturalisation. On February 14, Debates on naturalisation.the debate was opened by Fuller. Fuller’s speech.He compared England to a rich pasture, which was threatened with an irruption of a herd of famished cattle. He proceeded to draw a most desponding picture of the state of the country. There was not sufficient preferment for the numbers of scholars who crowded to the Universities. Feb. 14.The inhabitants of London were already far too numerous. The existing trade did not suffice for the support of the merchants who attempted to live by it. If this was a true account of the evils under which the country was labouring, how could room be found for the impending invasion from the North? He then asked, in language which never failed in meeting with a response in the House of Commons, whether this doctrine of the naturalisation of the rising generation of Scots by the mere fact of their being born under the dominion of the King were really according to law. This theory made matters of the greatest importance depend not upon the law, but upon the person of the Sovereign. The consequences of such a doctrine would be fatal. If Philip and Mary had left a son, that son would have inherited the dominions of both his parents, and would have naturalised the Spaniards and the Sicilians in England, without any reference to Parliament. What might have happened fifty years before, might always happen at any moment under similar circumstances.[447]
<332>The debate was resumed on the 17th. Towards the close of the sitting, Bacon rose to answer the objections which had been made. Feb. 17.Bacon replies.He was, perhaps, the only man in England besides the King who was really enthusiastic in support of the Union. He had meditated on it long and deeply. He had occupied a prominent position in the debates upon the subject in 1604. He had written more than one paper[448] in which he laid his views before the King. He had taken a leading part as one of the Commissioners by whom the scheme which was now before the House had been produced. To the part which he then took he always looked back with satisfaction. Only once in the Essays which form one of his titles to fame, did he recur to events in which he had himself been engaged, and that single reference was to the Commission of the Union.[449] He would himself, perhaps, have been willing to go even further than his fellow-commissioners had thought proper to go. Like James, he looked forward hopefully to the day when one Parliament should meet on behalf of both countries, and when one law should govern the two nations; and he hoped that that law might be made consonant with the truest dictates of justice. He knew, indeed, that there was little prospect of such a result in his own day, but he was desirous that a beginning at least should be made.
These views he still held, but he had learnt that they were far beyond anything which he could expect to accomplish. He contented himself,[450] in reply to Fuller, with advocating the measure before the House. He adjured his hearers to raise their minds above all private considerations and petty prejudices, and to look upon the proposed change with the eyes of statesmen. It had been said that England would be inundated with new comers, and that there would not be sufficient provision for the children of the soil. He answered that no such incursion was to be expected. Men were not to be moved as easily as cattle. If a stranger brought with him no means of his own, and had <333>no way of supporting himself in the country to which he came, he would starve. But even if this were not the case, he denied that England was fully peopled. The country could with ease support a larger population than it had ever yet known. Fens, commons, and wastes were crying out for the hand of the cultivator. If they were too little, the sea was open. Commerce would give support to thousands. Ireland was waiting for colonists to till it, and the solitude of Virginia was crying aloud for inhabitants.[451] To the objection that it was unfair to unite poor Scotland to rich England, he replied that it was well that the difference consisted ‘but in the external goods of fortune; for, indeed, it must be confessed that for, the goods of the mind and the body they are’ our other ‘selves; for to do them but right,’ it was well known ‘that in their capacities and understandings they are a people ingenious; in labour, industrious; in courage, valiant; in body, hard, active, and comely.’ The advantages of a union with such a people were not to be measured by the amount of money they might have in their pockets. With respect to the legal part of the question, he expressed himself satisfied that the Post-nati were already naturalised; but he thought it advisable that this should be declared by statute. He concluded by pointing out the dangers which might ensue if the present proposals were rejected. Quarrels might break out, and estrangement, and even separation might follow. If, on the other hand, the House would put all prejudices aside, they would make the United Kingdom to be the greatest monarchy which the world had ever seen.
Admirable as this argument was, and conclusively as it met all the objections which had been raised by the prejudices of the time, it is plain that there was One point passed over by Bacon.one part of Fuller’s speech which it left wholly unanswered. If England and Scotland were called upon to unite because all persons born after the King’s accession were born within the King’s allegiance, why might not Spain and England be called upon to unite under similar circumstances? Bacon and the judges might repeat as often as they pleased that the <334>naturalisation of the Post-nati was in accordance with the law; the common-sense of the House of Commons told them that it ought not to be so. Since the precedents had occurred, upon which the judges rested their opinion, circumstances had changed. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the ties of allegiance had been much stronger, and the ties of nationality much weaker, than they afterwards became. If, however, the Commons had been ready to make their acceptance of the Union contingent upon the King’s assent to an Act declaring that, in all future cases, naturalisation should not follow mere allegiance, they would probably have found no difficulty with James. But they were alarmed lest the concession of English privileges to the Post-nati should be unaccompanied by the subjection of the Post-nati to English law. In the conference which ensued,[452] Sir Edwin Sandys Feb. 25.Conference with the Lords.argued the question from the Commons’ point of view. He boldly declared that times were changed, and that the precedents were of no avail under the altered circumstances, and he ended by suggesting that it would be better to give merely limited privileges to the Post-nati.[453] The lawyers of the Lower House were less successful. Instead of assailing the position in the only way in which it was possible to succeed, they attempted to support their conclusion upon technical grounds. The judges being consulted, gave their opinions, with one exception, against the theory of the House of Commons, Coke especially bringing his immense stores of learning to bear upon the case.
For once in his life he and Bacon were agreed. But it need hardly be said, that if they came to the same conclusion, they Opinion of Coke in favour of the naturalisation of the Post-nati by the common law.did not arrive at it by the same road. Bacon, in his enthusiasm for the cause in which he was engaged, had overlooked the evils which might hereafter ensue from the admission of those technical grounds upon which part of his argument was based, <335>but which can hardly be supposed to have had any part in influencing his judgment. To Coke those technical grounds were everything. For the broader aspects of the case he cared nothing; but his reverence for the English common law amounted to a passion. He considered the system of which he was the acknowledged master to be the purest emanation of perfect wisdom. Whatever opposed the common law was treated by him with contemptuous arrogance. For the sake of the common law he had bullied Jesuits in his youth; for the sake of the same common law he was in his old age to stand forward to oppose his Sovereign. On this occasion there could be no doubt which side of the question would receive his support. English law had grown up under two distinct influences. The influence of the judges had drawn it in one direction, the influence of Parliament had drawn it in another. The natural tendency of the judges was to put forward on every occasion the authority of the Sovereign; the natural tendency of Parliament was to give expression to the rights of the nation. It happened that Parliament had never had occasion to legislate directly upon the subject, and Coke had no difficulty in quoting precedent after precedent to show that the decisions of the courts were all in favour of his doctrine of naturalisation by allegiance. The appeal of Sandys to a reasonable construction of the law in consequence of the altered condition of the country, he treated with cool contempt. He was there to declare what the common law declared, and of any other argument he knew nothing.
The Commons stood firm: they knew that whatever might be the value of Coke’s arguments, they were in the right in placing The Commons refuse to give way.the important question before them on a wider basis than that of the technical law. Whilst they doubted what course to take, they were informed that the Lords had consented to hear any practical suggestion which the Commons might agree to make.[454]
<336>Accordingly, on March 14, the Commons made a proposal of their own.[455] They were ready to do away with the distinction between the Ante-nati and the Post-nati, March 14.At the Lords’ request, they propose a measure on the subject.and were willing to naturalise by statute all the King’s Scottish subjects. They would thus get rid of the difficulty attending the exercise of the prerogative. A clause was to be introduced, declaring those who held property in England to be subject to all the burdens connected with it; and it was to be added that natives of Scotland were to be excluded from a very considerable number of official positions. The proposed measure would have met all the difficulties of the case. The disqualifying portions of the Act would certainly be repealed as soon as the natives of England and Scotland began to feel that they were in reality members of a common country.
The Government desired time to consider this proposition, especially as there was reason to believe that the Commons thought of supporting it by passing a vote in direct condemnation of the opinion of the Judges that the Post-nati were already naturalised. The King’s ministers accordingly took the somewhat extraordinary step of advising the Speaker to exaggerate a slight indisposition, in order that the Commons might be unable, in his absence, to proceed to any business of importance.[456] Soon afterwards the dispute entered on a new stage. The Commons made the sweeping proposal that March 28.the Union should be made still more complete by bringing about an identity of the laws of the two nations, in order that Scotchmen who were to be admitted to honours and property in England might be subject to the law which was current in England. Bacon opposed this plan, on the ground that, excellent as it was, it would lead to intolerable delay.[457] At last it was known that May 30.The King’s speech.the King would himself address the two Houses. The speech which he delivered on this occasion[458] was decidedly superior to any that <337>had yet fallen from his lips. For once he had a cause to plead which was not his own, and in pleading the cause of his country, and in striving to promote the future welfare of both nations, he allowed but few traces to be seen of that petulance by which his speeches were usually disfigured. He told the Houses plainly, that he looked forward to a perfect union between the countries; but he told them no less plainly, that he was aware that such a union would be a question of time. For the present, all that he asked was the passing of the measure now before them. Though he trusted that they would not object to a complete naturalisation of the Post-nati, he would be ready to consent to any reasonable limitations upon his right of appointment to offices under the Crown. The tone of this speech, so much kindlier and more earnest than had been expected, produced a favourable impression on the House of Commons, and it was thought by some that if the question had been put to the vote immediately, the King would have obtained the greater part of his demands.[459] The speech was, however, followed by an adjournment for nearly three weeks, and when the House met again after Easter the impression had worn off. There was much discussion upon the course to be pursued, and it was only after the King had rated them for their delay that the House determined to confine its attention to the points upon which there was little difference, and to reserve the questions of commerce and naturalisation for future consideration. A Bill was accordingly drawn up for the abolition of those laws in which Scotland was regarded as a hostile country, on the condition that statutes of a similar description should be repealed in the next Parliament which met in Scotland. It was also decided to introduce into this Bill clauses regulating the manner in which Englishmen were to be brought to trial for offences committed in Scotland. During the last four years much had been done for the pacification of the Borders. The transportation to Ireland of many of the worst offenders had been attended with satisfactory results, and the <338>harmony which now for the first time existed between the officers on the two sides of the frontier, had brought some kind of peace and order into that wild district. Still, the old mosstrooping spirit was not to be changed in a day. The Commissioners had therefore proposed that persons charged with criminal offences of a certain specified character should be handed over for trial to the authorities of the kingdom in which the offences had been committed. In this proposal, which had been acted upon since the accession of James, they were supported by the Commissioners for the Borders, who, as well as the gentry[460] of the northern shires, were unwilling to see any change introduced which would lessen the chances of bringing to conviction the Scottish plunderers who still infested their lands. They thought that if the thief were to be sent back to be tried in his own country, it would be impossible to procure a conviction, as no hostile witness would dare to present himself among the neighbours of the accused person.
The House of Commons looked at the question from a different point of view. The Northern gentry had been eager to support a system which made conviction easy, but they had forgotten to inquire how it would work in the case of an innocent man. Under it, an Englishman charged with a crime which he had not committed, might be sent into Scotland for trial. June.Prisoners to be tried in their own country.When he was once amongst his accusers, he could hardly hope to escape the gallows. The House of Commons preferred the safety of the innocent to the certainty of condemning the guilty.[461] In the spirit which was afterwards to pervade the criminal jurisprudence of the country, they decided that the accused should be tried on his own side of the Borders. Nor was the House content even with this safeguard against an unjust verdict. By an iniquitous custom which had become the tradition of the law of England, no counsel was allowed to <339>speak on behalf of a prisoner accused of felony, nor was an oath administered to the witnesses who were called to speak on his behalf. This custom was the relic of a system which had long passed away. As long as the jury were sworn witnesses, they only called in additional witnesses for the purpose of obtaining further information. The prisoner did not call any witnesses at all. In due course of time, the sworn witnesses became judges of the fact, and the witnesses for the prosecution were regarded as accusers, in some measure filling the places of the old sworn witnesses. While, therefore, an oath was tendered to them, persons who might appear to give their testimony on behalf of the prisoner, were looked upon as irregularly present, and were left unsworn. The consequence was, that an excuse was given to an unfair jury to neglect evidence tendered in support of the prisoner, because it had not been confirmed by an oath.
As usual, the lawyers had invented reasons for approving of a custom which had grown up unperceived amongst them. When Sandys proposed that the prisoners in Border trials should be allowed the assistance of counsel, and added that he should be glad to see the same course adopted over all England, Hobart immediately rose and declared that he regarded this as an attempt to shake the corner-stone of the law, and advised that such suggestions should be reserved for the time when they might be deliberating on a general revision of the laws of the two countries.[462] In a similar spirit, arguments were brought against the proposal to allow the witnesses of the prisoner to be sworn.[463] In spite of all opposition, the proposed clause was carried. Another clause was also carried, which ordered that juries should be chosen from a higher class of men than that from which they were selected in the rest of the country, and power was given them to reject such witnesses as they might suppose to be inclined, from affection or malice, to falsify their evidence. Nothing, however, was done to give the prisoner the benefit of counsel.[464]
<340>If these long debates had led but to a slight result, they at least served to commend Bacon to the King. At last, after years of weary waiting, his feet were fairly placed on the ladder of promotion. June 25.Bacon Solicitor-General.On June 25, before the close of the session, he became Solicitor-General, Doderidge having been induced to accept the post of King’s Serjeant, according to the arrangement proposed by Ellesmere in the preceding summer. By his marked ability in the conduct of an unpopular cause, in which his whole sympathies were engaged, Bacon had done more than enough to entitle him to the honour which he now achieved.
Busy as the session had been, the Commons had not been so preoccupied with the debates on the Union as to be unable to pay attention to the complaints of the English merchants trading in Spain. Ever since the treaty had been signed, in 1604, 1605.Relations between England and Spain.the relations between Spain and England had been subjected to a strain, arising from the ill-feeling which was the legacy of the long war — a feeling which the Government strove in vain to allay, by repeated attempts to draw the bonds of amity closer than the character of the two nations would warrant.
In the spring of 1605 the question of the neutrality of the English ports reached a crisis. The Spanish admiral, Don Louis Fajardo, had received Conflict between Spanish and Dutch ships in Dover harbour.orders to transport 12,000 men from Spain into the Netherlands. If, as was not improbable, he was unable to land them in Flanders, he was to set them on shore in England, where it was supposed that they would obtain protection till means could be obtained to send them across the Straits in small boats which might slip over from time to time. The execution of this commission was entrusted by the admiral to Pedro de Cubia, who seized upon a number of foreign vessels which happened to be lying at Lisbon, and converted them into transports for his soldiers. One of these was an English vessel, and another was the property of a Scotchman.
On May 14 the fleet left Lisbon. By the time that it had arrived at the entrance of the Channel, the Dutch Admiral Haultain had taken up a position off Dover, with the intention <341>of barring the passage of the Straits. The Spaniards neglected even to take the ordinary precaution of keeping together. On June 2, two of their ships found themselves in the presence of the enemy. The crews, after firing a few shots, ran them both on shore. A few of those who were on board escaped by swimming. The remainder, according to the custom which prevailed in those horrible wars, were massacred to a man.
The next day the eight remaining vessels came up. The leading ship, on board which was the Spanish admiral, was the English merchantman which had been seized at Lisbon. The English crew were still on board, and their knowledge of the coast stood the admiral in good stead. They kept the vessel close to the shore, and were able to slip into Dover harbour without suffering much damage. Of the others, one was cut off by the enemy. As on the preceding day, the Dutch took few prisoners, and threw the greater part of the officers and men into the sea. Two more vessels shared the same fate. They attempted to run on shore, but were boarded before the crews could escape. The remaining four made their way into the harbour. The Dutch, in the ardour of the combat, forgot that their enemies were now under the protection of the English flag. This was too much for the commander of the Castle, who had for two days been a spectator of the butchery which had been committed under his eyes. He gave orders to fire upon the aggressors, who drew off with the loss of about a hundred men.
This affair gave rise to a long series of negotiations. The Spanish ambassador, thinking that James would be sufficiently annoyed at Negotiations respecting the Spanish soldiers.the proceedings of the Dutch fleet to grant him anything which he might choose to ask, demanded that the remainder of the troops should be conveyed to Flanders under the protection of the English fleet. This was at once refused, but James allowed himself to be prevailed upon to request the States to give permission to the Spaniards to pass over. When he heard that this demand had been rejected, he offered to allow them to remain at Dover so long as they were maintained at the expense of the King of Spain. This offer was accepted, and they remained in England for some months. Their numbers were much thinned by the <342>destitution which was caused by the neglect of their own Government. At last, in December, the handful that remained took advantage of one of the long winter nights, when the blockading fleet had been driven from the coast by a storm, and made their way over to Dunkirk and Gravelines.[465]
In Spain itself, the English merchants who had begun, even before the conclusion of the treaty, to visit the country, were but ill satisfied with the treatment they received. 1604.Englishmen ill-treated by the Inquisition in Spain.The officers of the Inquisition declared loudly that their authority was not derived from the King of Spain, and that, therefore, they were not bound by the treaty which he had made.[466] On the arrival of the Earl of Nottingham, who was sent over on a special mission to swear to the peace on behalf of the King of England, the Spanish Government at first 1605.Ratification of the treaty.declined to include in the instrument of ratification the additional articles by which English Protestants were freed from persecution. Nottingham refused to give way, and the whole treaty was solemnly ratified.[467] But it was not long before Sir Charles Cornwallis, who remained in Spain as the ordinary ambassador, had to complain that these articles were not carried into execution. As soon as an English ship arrived in port, it was boarded by the officials of the Inquisition, who put questions to the sailors about their religion, and searched the vessel for heretical books. If any of the crew went on shore, they were liable to ill-treatment if they refused to kiss the relics which were offered to them as a test of their religion. It was not till nearly four months after the ratifications had been exchanged that an order was obtained from the King, putting a stop to these practices.[468]
The growing estrangement between the two countries must have made the Spanish Government still more eager to convert the peace with England into a close alliance. In <343>July 1605, hints were thrown out to Cornwallis at Madrid, similar to Proposition for a marriage between the Prince Henry and the infauta.those which had been thrown out by the Spanish ambassadors in England, that the King of Spain would gladly see his eldest daughter married to Prince Henry. Spain would surrender to the young couple its claims to a large portion of the Netherlands. If the proposed marriage were not agreeable, a large sum of money, as well as the possession of some fortified towns in the Low Countries, would be guaranteed to James if he could persuade the Dutch to give up their independence upon certain conditions which were afterwards to be agreed upon. Salisbury, who probably thought that these overtures might be made the basis of negotiations which might give peace to the Netherlands, and who was compelled by the receipt of his pension to keep up at least the appearance of a good understanding with the Court of Spain, directed Cornwallis to ask that some definite proposal should be submitted to him.[469] The suggestion that James should mediate was repeated. After some delay the English Council directed Cornwallis to inform the Spaniards that James was unwilling to propose to the States to accept his mediation, as it was certain that they would refuse to submit to their old masters upon any terms. If, however, the Spaniards still desired it, he would direct Winwood to sound the minds of the Dutch upon the subject. If, on the other hand, the alternative of the marriage were preferred by Spain, he would ask the States whether they would be Growing coolness between Spain and England.willing to receive his son as their sovereign. The Spaniards, however, who had perhaps never intended to do more than to lure James away from his alliance with the Dutch, upon further consideration raised objections to the marriage of the Infanta with a Protestant, and the negotiation fell to the ground.
After the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot, all chance of a close alliance between the two Governments was for the present at an end. The knowledge that the English troops in the service of the Archduke had been intended by the conspirators to cooperate with them by invading England, induced James to refuse <344>to allow any further levies to be made.[470] A few weeks later, a clause in the new Recusancy Act prescribed that no person should be allowed to leave the realm without taking the oath of allegiance, which must have effectually prevented many from passing over to Flanders. Nor was the news of the severity with which the Catholics were treated in England likely to make James popular in Spain. James, on his part, was no less irritated at the refusal of the Archduke to give up Owen and Baldwin, who were believed to have been implicated in the conspiracy, and he knew that in the course which had been taken, the Court of Brussels had the full support of that of Spain.
Nor was James unwarranted in supposing that the feeling of horror with which he was regarded in Spain might lead to the formation of Plots formed in Spain.fresh conspiracies against his person. At no time were the despatches of the ambassadors at Madrid and Brussels fuller of reports of plots and conspiracies than in the summer of 1606. Of these plots, however, one only came to a head.
On July 6, a certain Captain Newce[471] was brought before the Privy Council. His account of himself was, that he had served in Ireland during the war, but Newce’s examination.had been dismissed from his post when the army was reduced. In May 1605, he had come to London, and, at Salisbury’s recommendation, the Dutch ambassador had promised him a captain’s command if he could succeed in levying a company for the States. With this object in view he returned to Ireland, provided with recommendatory letters to the Deputy. Ireland was at this time full of discharged soldiers, whose services were no longer required. When he arrived there, he found that he was too late, as all the Englishmen who were willing to serve the States had already given in their names to another officer who was employed on a similar errand. He then tried to prevail upon Irishmen to serve under him. They told him that they had no objection to enlisting again, but that, if they were to fight at all, they preferred fighting on the side of Spain. Newce, who, like many others in the days before the army had <345>become a profession for life, had no scruples in joining any side which would pay him, readily assented, and sailed for Spain with two hundred men. Upon his arrival, the authorities, who knew that he had formerly served under the English Government, put him in prison as a spy, and dispersed his men amongst different regiments. Shortly after this he fell in with a Colonel Franceschi, who incited him to take vengeance upon the English Government, by which he had been deprived of his command in Ireland. He obtained from him several particulars of the state of the Irish fortifications, and told him that, if war should break out, he should be provided with 10,000l. and a force with which he might invade that country. Franceschi, who had probably received some vague intelligence of the existence of the Gunpowder Plot, added that peace could not long endure. Ere long, he said, he would hear strange news from England, where, if he had not been deceived, there would be great changes before Christmas. Meanwhile, it was suggested to him that he would do good service if he would go into the Low Countries and enter into a correspondence with some of his old comrades who were in the service of the States, as he might be able to induce them to betray some of the towns which were intrusted to their keeping.
Newce accordingly left Spain, as if for the purpose of travelling into Flanders; but instead of going directly to his destination, he slipped over to England, and told the whole story to Salisbury, who directed him to continue on good terms with Franceschi, and to let him know when any plot which might be in hand was ripe for execution. Going over to the Low Countries, he again met Franceschi, and was told by him of a secret service which would bring him great rewards. He could not obtain any information of the nature of this service, but he was informed that if he would go into England, a brother of Franceschi’s should join him there, and acquaint him with all that was necessary for him to know. He accordingly returned to England in the beginning of March. It was not till June 29 that Tomaso Franceschi, who had been sent over by his brother, joined him at Dover. He had crossed in companionship with an Irishman, named Ball, who acted as <346>secretary to the Spanish ambassador in London. Upon their arrival in London, if Newce is to be believed, Franceschi offered him 40,000l. as a reward for He is asked to betray some Dutch fortified towns.the service which he was to perform, but refused to tell him what it was, unless he would first take an oath of secrecy. He was also to find an associate, and to send his own wife and child, as well as the wife, son, or brother of his associate, to Antwerp, to be kept as hostages for his fidelity. After making some difficulties, he was at last induced to take the oath of secrecy, and was told that he was required to assist in betraying Bergen-op-Zoom, Flushing, or Rammekens. On the following day he met Franceschi upon Tower Hill. He had taken the precaution of requesting a friend named Leddington to follow them, and to do his best to overhear their conversation. Franceschi repeated the proposal of betraying Flushing, and they went down the river together to look for a vessel to take Newce over to Holland. Leddington[472] asserted that, as they were returning from a fruitless search for such a vessel, he overheard Franceschi say, “Proposal to murder the King.A brave-spirited fellow, with a good horse and a pistol, might do it and go a great way after in a day and night;” to which Newce answered, “The best time for it would be when he did hunt at Royston.” These words were declared by Newce to have been part of a conversation in which Franceschi proposed to him to murder the King; and it must be confessed that, if they were really spoken, they could bear no other interpretation.
On the following morning, Newce met Franceschi at the Spanish ambassador’s. He told him that there were difficulties in the way of betraying the towns in the Netherlands. Ball’s attempt to poison Newce.Soon after these words had passed between them, Ball offered Newce some sweetmeats, some of which he ate at the time, and the remainder he took home, where he and his wife, and some other women, partook of them. Soon afterwards, all who had tasted them were seized with sickness. A physician who was sent for declared that they had been poisoned. Newce immediately sent to inform Salisbury of <347>what had happened. Franceschi was Franceschi and Ball arrested,at once arrested. The Spanish ambassador refused to surrender Ball, upon which Salisbury sent to seize him, even in the ambassador’s house. Franceschi admitted that there had been a plot for the betrayal of one of the towns, but denied that he had ever said a word about murdering the King.[473] Newce, however, when confronted with him, persisted in the truth of his story. Ball, after some prevarication, admitted that he had given the sweetmeats to Newce.
If Franceschi had been an Englishman, and if Ball had not been under the ambassador’s protection, further inquiries would undoubtedly have been made. but are subsequently released.As the matter stood, the Government thought it prudent to let the investigation drop. Newce’s character was not sufficiently good to enable Salisbury to rely upon his evidence, and he was unwilling to give further provocation to the ambassador, whose privileges he had recently set at nought, by ordering an arrest to be made in his house. It was not long before Ball was set at liberty; Franceschi was kept in the Tower for more than a year, at the expiration of which time, he, too, was allowed to leave the country.[474]
Whilst the Spaniards were becoming more and more hostile to England, there was little hope that English traders who fell into their power would receive even simple justice at their hands. These traders were now very numerous. In 1604 the Commons had declared strongly in favour of 1604.The trade with Spain.throwing open the commerce with Spain to all Englishmen who were willing to engage in it. The proposal had been resisted by the Government on the ground that the burden of protecting the trade ought to fall in the first place on the merchants themselves, and that some organization was necessary in order to provide payment for the consuls who were <348>to act on behalf of English mariners and traders in the Spanish ports. After the end of the first session of Parliament Chief Justice Popham proposed, as a compromise, that 1605.The Spanish Company.a company should be formed, but that it should be open to all who were willing to contribute a fixed sum. Salisbury eagerly adopted the plan, and in 1605 a Spanish company was established on this footing.[475]
In the session of 1605–6, however, it appeared that the House of Commons was dissatisfied with this arrangement. 1606.Opposition of the Commons.There were many owners of small craft in the Channel ports, who had hoped to be able to make a livelihood by running their vessels to Lisbon or Corunna, though it was out of their power to pay the subscription required by the new company. Their cause was taken up in the Commons, and a Bill was brought in declaring that all subjects of his Majesty should have full liberty of trade with France, Spain, and Portugal, in spite of any charters which had been or might at any future time be granted.[476] Salisbury saw that the feeling of the Commons was too strong to be resisted, and the Bill passed through both Houses without opposition.
The petty traders thus admitted to commercial intercourse with Spain did not always receive advantage from the privilege which they had craved. Their treatment by the Spanish authorities was often exceedingly harsh. The slightest suspicion of the presence of Dutch goods in an English vessel was enough to give rise to the seizure of the whole cargo. The merchants complained, with reason, of the wearisome delays of the Spanish courts. Whatever had once been confiscated on any pretext, was seldom, if ever, restored. Even if the owner was sufficiently fortunate to obtain a decision in his favour, the value of the property was almost invariably swallowed up in the expenses of the suit, swollen, as they were, by the bribes which it was necessary to present to the judges. It was suspected that the Government was as often prevented from doing justice by its inability to furnish the compensation demanded, as from any <349>intention to defraud. But whatever its motives may have been, the consequences were extremely annoying. That English ships trading with America should have been seized, can hardly be considered matter for surprise. But English patience was rapidly becoming exhausted, when it was known in London that ship after ship had been pillaged, upon one pretence or another, even in Spanish waters. Cornwallis represented to the Spanish Government the hardships under which his countrymen were suffering. He was met with smooth words, and promises were given that justice should be done; but for a long time these promises were followed by no practical result whatever.
Such were the grievances which, in 1607, the merchants laid before the Commons. They selected the case of the ‘Trial,’ as one which was 1607.The merchants petition the House of Commons.likely to move the feelings of the House. On February 26, Sir Thomas Lowe, one of the members for the City of London, brought their case forward. The ‘Trial’ on her return from Alexandria, in the autumn of 1604, had fallen in with a Spanish fleet. The Mediterranean was at that time infested by swarms of pirates, in whose enterprises Englishmen had taken their share. The Spaniards, on their part, were not content with attempting to repress piracy. Orders had been given to their officers to prevent all traffic with Jews and Mahometans, on the ground that it was unlawful to trade with the enemies of the Christian religion. On this occasion, the purser of the ‘Trial’ was summoned on board the admiral’s ship, and was told by that officer — so runs the narrative which was read in the House of Commons — ‘that he was commanded to make search for Turks’ and Jews’ goods,[477] of which, if our ship had none aboard, he then had nothing to say to them, for that now a happy peace was concluded between the Kings, so as they would but only make search, and, not finding any, would dismiss them. But, notwithstanding their promises, albeit they found no Turks’ nor Jews’ goods, they then alleged against them that their ship was a ship of war,[478] and that they had taken from a Frenchman a piece of ordnance, a sail, and a hawser.’ The Englishmen <350>endeavoured to prove that the ship was a peaceable merchantman; but in spite of all that they could say, the Spaniard ‘commanded the purser to be put to the torture, and hanged him up by the arms upon the ship’s deck, and, the more to increase his torture,’ they hung heavy weights to his heels; ‘nevertheless he endured the torture the full time, and confessed no otherwise than truth. So then they put him the second time to torture again, and hanged him up as aforesaid; and, to add more torment, they tied a live goat to the rope, which, with her struggling did, in most grievous manner, increase his torment, all which the full time he endured. The third time, with greater fury, they brought him to the same torment again, at which time, by violence, they brake his arms, so as they could torment him no longer; nevertheless he confessed no otherwise but the truth of their merchants’ voyage. All which, with many other cruelties, being by our mariners at sea endured for the space of two months, all which time they enforced ship and men to serve them to take Turks, as they pretended.’ The poor men were at last sent to Messina, where the officers were put in prison, and the crew sent to the galleys, ‘where they endured more miseries than before, insomuch as few or none of them but had the hair of their heads and faces fallen away; and in this misery either by torment, straitness of prison, or other cruel usage, in a short time the master, merchant, and purser died, and to their deaths never confessed other but the truth; and, being dead, they would afford them none other burial but in the fields and sea-sands. All of our men being wasted, saving four,[479] they were only left there in prison and galleys, and these, through their miseries, very weak and sick. One of them, called Ralph Boord, was twice tormented, and had given him a hundred bastinadoes to enforce him to confess, and for not saying as they would have him, was committed to a wet vault, where he saw no light, and lay upon the moist earth, feasted with bread and water, for eight days, and being then demanded if he would not confess otherwise than before, he replied he had already told them the <351>truth, and would not say otherwise; whereupon they took from him his allowance of bread, and for seven days gave him no sustenance at all, so that he was constrained to eat orange-peels which other prisoners had left there, which stunk, and were like dirt, and at seven days’ end could have eaten his own flesh; and the fifteenth day the gaoler came unto him and not finding him dead, said he would fetch him wine and bread to comfort him, and so gave him some wine and two loaves of bread, which he did eat, and within a little while after, all his hair fell off his head; and, the day after, a malefactor for clipping of money was put into the same vault, who, seeing what case his fellow-prisoner was in, gave him some of his oil he had for his candle to drink, by which means … his life was preserved.’
At last the four who were left alive acknowledged that they had robbed the French ship of the piece of ordnance and the other articles, which had in reality belonged to the ship when she sailed from England.
The indignation felt by the House of Commons at such a tale as this may easily be conceived. They The commons forward the petition to the Lords.took the matter up warmly. This case of the ‘Trial’ was only one out of many others. The ‘Vineyard’ had been seized under pretence that she was carrying ammunition to the Turks. It was said that, besides the hardships inflicted upon the crews, English merchants had been unfairly deprived of no less a sum than 200,000l.[480] But it was more easy to feel irritation at such proceedings than to devise a remedy. Even the merchants themselves did not dare to advise an immediate declaration of war. Merchant vessels went far more at their own risk in those days than they do now. That the nation should engage in war for the sake of a few traders was not to be thought of. The Government did its part if it remonstrated by means of its ambassadors, and used all its influence to obtain justice.
Still the merchants were not content that the matter should rest here. They had discovered an old statute authorising the <352>issue of letters of marque, upon the receipt of which the aggrieved persons might make reprisals upon the goods of the nation which had inflicted the wrong. They requested that such letters might now be issued, and their request was forwarded by the Commons to the Lords.
On June 15[481] a conference was held between the two Houses. Salisbury told the Commons that peace and war Salisbury advises delay,must be determined by the general necessities of the kingdom. He reminded them that it was at their request that the late Spanish Company had been abolished, and that the merchants were now suffering from the loss of the protection which they had derived from it. It was notorious that it was difficult to obtain justice in Spain, and those who traded there must not expect to fare better than the inhabitants of the country. In reviewing the particulars of their petition, he told them that each merchant must carry on trade with the Indies at his own risk. With respect to the other complaints, the Spanish Government had given assurance that justice should be done; he therefore thought it better to wait a little longer before taking any decided step. He was able, without difficulty, to point out the extreme inconveniences of the issue of letters of marque. It would be immediately followed by a confiscation of all English property in Spain, the value of which would far exceed that of the few Spanish prizes which the merchants could hope to seize.
He then turned to argue another question with the Commons. He maintained that the determination of war and peace was and argues that questions of war and peace are to be determined by the Crown.a prerogative of the Crown, with which the Lower House was not entitled to meddle. This assertion he supported by a long series of precedents[482] from the times of the Plantagenets. It had often happened that the Commons, from anxiety to escape a demand for subsidies, had excused themselves from giving an opinion on the advisability of beginning or continuing a war. He argued that when the opinion of Parliament had really <353>been given, it was ‘when the King and Council conceived that either it was material to have some declaration of the zeal and affection of the people, or else when the King needed to demand moneys and aids for the charge of the wars.’ His strongest argument was derived from the difficulty which the House must feel in doing justice upon such matters. After all they could only hear one side of the question. The Commons had themselves felt the difficulty. ‘For their part,’ they had said a few days before,[483] ‘they can make no perfect judgment of the matter because they have no power to call the other party, and that therefore they think it more proper for their Lordships, and do refer it to them.’ In fact, negotiations with foreign powers must always be left in the hands of the Government, or of some other select body of men. The remedy for the evil, which was plainly felt, lay rather in the general control of Parliament over the Government than in any direct interference with it in the execution of its proper functions. Salisbury concluded by assuring the Commons that no stone should be left unturned to obtain redress, and by a declaration that if, contrary to his expectation, that redress were still refused, the King would be ready ‘upon just provocation to enter into an honourable war.’
Salisbury was followed by Northampton, in a speech which hardly any other man in England would have allowed himself to utter. In him was combined the superciliousness of a courtier with the haughtiness of a member of the old nobility. He treated the Commons as if they were the dust beneath his feet. He told them that their members were only intended to express the wants of the counties and boroughs for which they sat, and that thus having ‘only a private and local wisdom,’ they were ‘not fit to examine or determine secrets of State.’ The King alone could decide upon such questions, and it was more likely that he would grant their desires if they refrained from petitioning him, as he would prefer that he should be acknowledged to be the fountain from which all acceptable actions arose. After advising them to <354>imitate Joab, ‘who, lying at the siege of Rabbah, and finding it could not hold out, writ to David to come and take the honour of taking the town,’ he concluded by assuring them that the Government would not be forgetful of the cause of the merchants.
However insulting these remarks of Northampton were, the Commons had nothing to do but to give way before Salisbury’s cooler and more courteous reasoning. The Commons give way.They had no feasible plan to propose on their own part and it was certainly advisable to attempt all means of obtaining redress before engaging in a war of such difficulty and danger. At Madrid, Cornwallis did what he could. He frequently succeeded in obtaining the freedom of men who were unjustly imprisoned,[484] but the difficulties and delays of Spanish courts were almost insuperable. In cases where there was a direct breach of treaty, a threat of war would probably have expedited their proceedings; but there was an evident disinclination on the part of the English Government to engage in a hazardous contest for the sake of merchants. It was some time before English statesmen were able to recognise the value of the interests involved in commerce, or were entrusted with a force sufficient to give it that protection which it deserves.
On July 4, after a long session, Parliament was prorogued to November 10. The members of the Lower House would thus be able to July 4.Prorogation of Parliament.consider at their leisure the proposed Bills which were intended to complete the original scheme of the Commissioners for the Union. Of James’s real inclination to do what was best for both countries, there can be no doubt whatever. In another difficulty which had recently shown itself in England, his care to do justice had significantly asserted itself.
Before the prorogation took place he had been called upon to deal with one of those tumults caused by the Disturbances about enclosures.conversion of arable land into pasture, which had been the root of so much trouble during the whole of the preceding century. In the greater part of England the <355>inevitable change had been already accomplished. But in Leicestershire and the adjoining counties special circumstances still caused misery amongst the agriculturists. In addition to the sheep farms, which were still extending their limits, several gentlemen had been enclosing large parks for the preservation of deer. An insurrection broke out, the violence of which was principally directed against park pales and fences of every description. It was easily suppressed, and some of the ringleaders were executed. But the King gave special orders to a Commission, issued for the purpose of investigating the cause of the disturbances, to take care that the poor received no injury by the encroachments of their richer neighbours. As no further complaints were heard, it may be supposed that his orders were satisfactorily carried out.[485]
Undoubtedly, however, James’s mind was more fully occupied with the progress of the Union than with the English enclosures. In August, August.The Union to be proceeded with.the Scottish Parliament met and assented to the whole of the King’s scheme, with the proviso that it should not be put in action till similar concessions had been made in England. It is doubtful whether the English Parliament, if it had met in November, would have been inclined to reciprocate these advances. At all events, before the day of meeting arrived, James resolved to avail himself of the known opinions of the judges, to obtain a formal declaration from them of the right of the Post-nati to naturalisation without any Act of Parliament whatever. A further prorogation removed any danger of a protest from the Commons till the decision of the judges was made known.
In the autumn of 1607, therefore, a piece of ground was purchased in the name of Robert Colvill,[486] an infant born at Edinburgh in 1605, and an action was brought in his name against two persons who were supposed to have deprived him of his land. At the same time, a suit was instituted in Chancery <356>against two other persons for detaining papers relating to the ownership of the land. In order June, 1608.The Post-nati admitted to naturalisation by the judges.to decide the case, it was necessary to know whether the child were not an alien, as, if he were, he would be disabled from holding land in England. The question of law was argued in the Exchequer Chamber, before the Chancellor and the twelve judges. Two only of the judges argued that Colvill was an alien; the others, together with the Chancellor, laid down the law as they had previously delivered it in the House of Lords, and declared him to be a natural subject of the King of England.[487]
It is certain that James had no expectation that this decision of the judges would prove a bar to the further consideration of the Union by Parliament. In December, Dec. 1607.The King looks forward to a union of laws.he consulted Hobart, the Attorney-General, on the extent of the divergency between the laws of the two nations. He was agreeably surprised by Hobart’s report. If there was no more difference than this, he said, the Scotch Estates would take no more than three days to bring their law into conformity with that of England.[488]
No doubt, James exaggerated the readiness of the Scotch Estates to change their law. When he had obtained the judgment of the Exchequer Chamber in his favour, 1608.Nothing more done about the Union.he found that it was hopeless to expect that the English Parliament would give way on the Commercial Union. From the first they had been set against it, and it was not likely that they would change their minds after the question of naturalisation had been decided in defiance of their expressed wishes. Parliament was prorogued, and it was some time before it was allowed to meet again.
There are occasions, which from time to time arise, when progress can only be effected in defiance of a certain amount of popular dissatisfaction, and it may be that this was one of <357>them. But every attempt to move forward in such a way is accompanied by some amount of friction, and there had already been too much friction in the relations between James and the House of Commons. The King wished to act fairly, but he had too little sympathy alike with the best and the worst qualities of the race which he had been called to govern, to work in harmony with his subjects.
[415] In one or two instances the salaries of Scotch officials were paid out of the English Exchequer, but these were of no great amount.
[416] The King to Cranborne, March 14, 1605, Hatfield MSS. 188, fol. 90.
[418] Calderwood, vi. 271.
[419] Forbes’s Records, 384.
[420] This must be the meaning of Spottiswoode’s statement, ‘that the King was informed that ministers intended to call in question all the conclusions taken in former Assemblies for the episcopal government,’ iii. 157. Forbes, 401.
[421] Forbes, 386. Calderwood, vi. 322.
[422] Forbes, 388 396.
[423] Forbes, 401.
[424] The King to Balmerino, July 19. Botfield, Original Letters relating to Ecclesiastical Affairs (Bannatyne Club), i. 355*.
[425] Forbes, 403.
[426] Calderwood, vi. 426. “As for an instance,” James argued, “every burgh royal hath their own times of public mercats allowed unto them by the law, and the King’s privilege, but when the plague happened in any of these towns did not he, by proclamation, discharge the holding of the mercat at that time for fear of infection, and yet thereby did no prejudice to their privileges?”
[427] Calderwood, vi. 342. The portion of the Act of 1592 which bears upon the question, runs as follows:— “It shall be lawful to the Kirk and ministers, every year at the least and oftener, pro re natâ, as occasion and necessity shall require, to hold and keep General Assemblies, providing that the King’s Majesty, or his Commissioners with them to be appointed <310>by His Highness, be present at ilk General Assembly before the dissolving thereof, nominate and appoint time and place when and where the next General Assembly shall be holden; and in case neither His Majesty nor His said Commissioners be present for the time in that town where the said General Assembly is holden, then, and in that case, it shall be lesum to the said General Assembly by themselves to nominate and appoint time and place where the next General Assembly of the Kirk shall be kept and holden, as they have been in use to do these times by-past.” (Acts of Parl. Scotl. iii. 541.) It is evident that this Act is not without ambiguity. The case when, as happened in Aberdeen, the Commissioner was in the town, but refused to name a place and time, is not provided for. But the King took up ground which was plainly untenable when he spoke of the prorogation of 1604 as being one which the ministers were bound to attend to, as if it had been in accordance with the Act of 1592. The answer was, of course, that it had not been declared by the King or Commissioner present in an Assembly. — Forbes, Records, 452.
[428] Forbes, Records, 452.
[429] Sir T. Hamilton to the King, Dalrymple’s Memorials, 1.
[430] Forbes, Records, 455–496.
[431] Botfield, Original Letters, i. 360*; and note to p. 363*.
[432] Acts of the Privy Council, Botfield, Original Letters, i. 368*.
[433] Melville’s Diary, 640. Council to James, July 4, 1606, Melros Papers, (Abbotsford Club), 15.
[434] Acts of Parl. Scotl., iv. 280.
[435] Calderwood, vi. 338.
[436] Ibid., vi. 391–396. The second of the two copies given is probably the authentic one. Compare the notices of it at pp. 477, 571.
“Cur stant clausi Anglis libri duo regiâ in arâ,Lumina cæca duo, pollubra sicca duo?Num sensum cultumque Dei tenet Anglia clausumLumine cæca suo, sorde sepulta suâ?Romano an ritu dum regalem instruit aram,Purpuream pingit religiosa lupam?”
[438] Calderwood, vi. 601.
[439] Sir James Elphinstone (afterwards Lord Balmerino), the Duke of Lennox, the Earl of Mar, Sir George Hume (afterwards Earl of Dunbar), and Lord Kinloss, were naturalised in the first session of the reign.
[440] Opinions of the law officers of the Crown, Nov. 16, 1604. S. P. Dom. x. 75. In this opinion Popham, Fleming, and Coke concurred.
[441] C. J. i. 323. The King to Cranborne, Nov. 24, 1604, S. P. Dom. x. 40. i.
[442] Objections of the Merchants of London, with Answers by Salisbury and the Scottish Merchants, S. P. Dom. xxiv. 3, 4, 5.
[443] Report in C. J. i. 332. Carleton to Chamberlain, Dec. 18, 1606, S. P. Dom. xxiv. 23.
[444] C. J. i. 333. Boderie to Puisieux, Feb. 19⁄March 1, 1607. Ambassades, ii. 87.
[445] He had been created a baron without the right of sitting in Parliament, no doubt in order not to prejudice Parliament against the King’s proposals.
[446] Chamberlain to Carleton, Feb. 6, 1607, S. P. Dom. xxvi. 45.
[447] C. J. i. 334.
[448] ‘A Brief Discourse of the happy Union,’ &c. ‘Certain Articles or Considerations touching the Union.’ Letters and Life, iii. 90, 218.
[449] Essay on Counsel.
[450] Bacon’s speech. Letters and Life, iii. 307.
[451] The allusion to Virginia is not in the printed speech, but is to be found in the Journals.
[452] State Trials, ii. 562. C. J. i. 345. Note of the speeches of Popham and Coke, Feb. 26, S. P. Dom. xxvi. 64; calendared as Coke’s speech alone, and dated Feb. 25.
[453] This appears more clearly from the report in the Journals than from that in the Slate Trials.
[454] A paper in the S. P. Dom. xxvi. 69, concerning Scotchmen created Peers in England, is endorsed by Salisbury, “All other laws make them aliens, precedents contrary, reason, nature.” On this point the Lords must have been with the Commons almost to a man.
[455] Cott. MSS. Tit. F. iv. fol. 55. The debate in committee of March 6 on which the proposal was founded, is reported in S. P. Dom. xxvi. 72.
[456] Salisbury to Lake, March 18, S. P. Dom. xxvi. 90.
[457] Letters and Life, iii. 335.
[458] C. J. 357.
[459] Boderie to Puisieux, April 6th⁄16th, 1607, Ambassades, ii. 168.
[460] C. J. i. 377.
[461] Yet, in 1610, they changed their minds, and repealed this clause. The Repealing Act (7 & 8 Jac. I. cap. i), however, was only to be in force till the next Parliament, when it expired, the Parliament of 1614 being dissolved before there had been time to consider the subject.
[462] Notes of proceedings, May 29, S. P. Dom. xxvii. 30.
[463] Collection of arguments in the House of Commons, June 5, S. P. Dom. xxvii. 44.
[464] 4 Jac. I. cap. 1.
[465] Meteren, compared with the papers in Winwood, and in the Holland series in the S. P.
[466] Chamberlain to Winwood, Dec. 18, 1604, Winw. ii. 41. Letters received from Spain by Wilson, Dec. 14 and 17, 1604, S. P. Spain.
[467] Two letters of Cornwallis to Cranborne, May 31, 1605, S. P. Spain.
[468] Memorial presented by Cornwallis, Sept. 14, 1605, S. P. Spain.
[469] Salisbury to Cornwallis, Oct. 24, 1605, Winw. ii. 147; and a series of documents commencing at p. 160.
[470] Salisbury to Winwood, March 15, 1606, S. P. Holland.
[471] Declaration of Captain Newce, July 6, 1606, S. P. Dom. xxii. 34.
[472] Deposition of Leddington, July 6, 1606, S. P. Dom. xxii. 33.
[473] Examinations of Franceschi, July 6 and 12, 1606, S. P. Dom. xxii. 39, 51.
[474] Boderie to Puisieux, Aug. 29⁄Sept. 8, 1607, Ambassades de M. de la Boderie, i. 203. This account agrees with that given in the papers in the S. P., excepting in some of the dates.
[475] Charter of the Spanish Company, May 31, 1605; Salisbury to Popham. Sept. 8, 1605, S. P. Dom. xiv. 21, xv. 54.
[476] Memoranda, April 11, 1606, S. P. Dom. xx. 25.
[477] C. J. i. 340.
[478] i. e. a pirate.
[479] There were eighteen originally.
[480] C. J. i. 373.
[481] The speeches of Salisbury and Northampton are reported in Bacon’s Letters and Life, iii. 347.
[482] Hallam, Middle Ages (1853), iii. 52.
[483] C. J. i. 381.
[484] Winw. ii. 320, 338, 360, 367, 391, 410, 439; iii. 16.
[485] There are several letters amongst the Hatfield MSS. showing the King’s anxiety on behalf of the poor in this affair.
[486] Known as Calvin in the English law books. He was a grandson of Lord Colvill of Culross, whose family name was often written Colvin.
[487] State Trials, ii. 559. There are also notes of the judgments in S. P. Dom. xxx. 40, and xxxiv. 10.
[488] Lake to Salisbury, Dec. 8, Hatfield MSS. 194, 29.