<1>So completely were men’s minds occupied with questions of foreign policy in the first weeks of 1621, that if James could only have 1621.January.State of feeling.satisfied the House of Commons that he was in earnest in his intention to support the German Protestants, he might safely have looked forward to the prospect of a peaceful session. Yet there were not wanting complaints of domestic misgovernment, which might easily give rise to considerable agitation, if the Commons met in a discontented mood.
“Indeed,” wrote a calm and dispassionate observer in the course of the past summer, “the world is now much terrified with Monopolies complained of.the Star Chamber, there being not so little an offence against any proclamation but is liable and subject to the censure of that Court; and for proclamations and patents, they are become so ordinary that there is no end, every day bringing forth some new project or other. In truth, the world doth even groan under the burthen of these perpetual patents, which are become so frequent that whereas, at the King’s coming in, there were complaints of some eight or nine monopolies then in being, they are now said to be multiplied by so many scores.”[1]
<2>The history of these monopolies is especially interesting, as the character of no less a man than Bacon is deeply affected by Bacon’s connection with them.the judgment passed upon them. It is puerile to speak of him as if he could be untouched by the result. Many of them passed the Great Seal whilst it was in his hands. Some of them were backed by his recommendation; and the most unpopular of them received his thorough support, at a time when other men were hanging back from fear of the clamour raised against them. If he really thought as badly of them as modern historians have thought of them, Pope’s notorious line would be true to the letter. He must have been, in sober truth, “the meanest of mankind.”
If we wish to know what the views of Bacon and other officers of state really were, the first thing to be done is to consult the original patents. No doubt there is much which will not be learned there. We shall not find any light thrown on the personal motives of those through whose influence they were obtained. But if we find a large number of official declarations spread over a long series of years, and emanating from men who differed from one another in character, in position, and in political opinion, we shall be able to discover whether they contain indications of a settled policy, or are mere makeshifts put forward to cover the greed of unprincipled courtiers.
Of the patents subsequently complained of there were two, the patent for inns and the patent for alehouses, which were specially objected to, partly as encroaching upon the jurisdiction of the justices of the peace, and partly as having been made the excuse for gross injustice and oppression.
The patent for inns had been originally suggested by the notorious Sir Giles Mompesson, a kinsman of Buckingham, 1617.The patent for inns.whose fertile brain teemed with projects by which his own purse was to be replenished and the public benefited at the same time. At first sight, indeed, there was much to be said for his scheme; for he proposed that a commission should be issued for the purpose of granting licences to inns. The innkeepers would thus be brought <3>under control. They would be prevented from charging extravagant prices for the food which they served out to their guests. At this point, however, a legal difficulty arose, as it was plain that the justices of the peace had no power to grant such licences. But it was not certain whether such a power did not reside in the justices of assize, and it was upon their authority that the whole plan was founded. The Commissioners were to make out the licences, and the justices of assize were, by their signature, to give validity to these documents, of the merits of which they were totally unable to judge. The legal question had been brought before Bacon, when he was still Attorney-General. Unwilling to take the responsibility upon himself, he asked that three of the judges might be associated with him in the inquiry. The result was a unanimous report in favour of the plan. The question of its general policy was then submitted to Suffolk, Montague, Winwood, Lake, and Serjeant Finch, and these men, differing from one another in character and in politics, concurred in recommending the adoption of the scheme.[2]
The patent was accordingly drawn up, nominating Mompesson and two other persons as commissioners for the purpose.[3] It was one of those which were brought to the bedside of the dying Ellesmere, and which he, either from dislike of the grant itself, or as is more probable, merely in order to force the King to accept his resignation, refused to pass. The Great Seal was accordingly affixed to it by the King’s special direction, before the new Lord Keeper was appointed.
Bacon’s part in the matter, it will thus be seen, was confined to the opinion which, in common with others, he expressed Bacon’s part in it.upon the legality of the patent. No doubt such an opinion was in direct opposition to that at which the judges arrived seven years afterwards.[4] Yet it does not appear that his view of the case differed much from <4>that which commended itself generally to lawyers at the time,[5] and it is certain that Coke, who, of all men in England, was most likely to have opposed Bacon on a legal question, distinctly stated it to be his opinion that the patent was good in law.[6]
However this may have been, it soon appeared that the scheme was intolerable in practice. Mompesson and his fellow-commissioners Abuses of the commissioners.were responsible to no one. No scale of payments had been settled by the patent, and it was therefore their interest to grant as many licences as possible, and to sell them as dearly as they could. Though it had been arranged that the money collected was to go into the Exchequer, it seems for the most part to have found its way into Mompesson’s pocket. It was not long before men were talking all over England of the ease with which keepers of disorderly houses contrived to obtain licences from the Commissioners, and of the harsh and oppressive treatment of those who refused to conform to their demands.[7]
Whatever arguments might be used in defence of the exercise of a supervision over inns, applied with double force to 1618.The patent for alehouses.the attempt to bring under a strict control the petty alehouses, which might so easily degenerate into haunts of thieves and drunkards. It was a subject which had long attracted the notice of Parliament. By an Act passed in 1552,[8] alehouse-keepers were required to be licensed by the justices of the peace, and this licence they could only obtain by entering upon recognisances for the maintenance of good order. The first Parliament of James had passed no less than three acts for the restraint of drunkenness.[9] The efforts of Parliament had been seconded by the Council. In many parts of the country the justices had been careless of <5>their duties, and had granted licences in profusion. They had accordingly been admonished to be more careful in future.[10] Certain forms were to be observed in the granting of licences, and the proceedings were to be certified to the Council. A small fee was to be charged upon the licences, for the benefit of the Exchequer. Against this latter innovation, the Commons protested in 1610, as an infringement of their rights of taxation; and the order for the fee was at once withdrawn. As, however, no objection was raised to the demand for a certificate to the Council, it is to be inferred that no scruple was felt on that score.[11]
Still, in spite of all that the Council could do, the number of alehouses increased. In 1616, James complained bitterly of the evil.[12] These houses, he said, were the lurking-places of thieves and desperadoes. They even afforded shelter to deer-stealers. At last some one proposed that he should take them under his own supervision. There was, it was true, a legal difficulty in the way, as the right of granting licences was vested by Act of Parliament in the justices of the peace. But, a device was discovered by which the Act could be circumvented. The justices were to continue to grant the licences, and to take the recognisances; but the recognisances, as soon as they were taken, were to be certified into the King’s Bench. Two persons, Dixon and Almon, were nominated by patent to keep an eye upon offenders, and to see that those alehouse-keepers who deserved punishment did not escape through the undue leniency of the justices.
Some arrangement of the kind may possibly have been needed in many parts of the country, but the method adopted conveyed a deadly affront to the country gentlemen, who were held to be incapable of keeping order in their own neighbourhood. Nor was the ill-feeling aroused likely to be allayed when it was known that the forfeitures accruing to the Exchequer from the activity of the patentees were already shared in <6>advance by half-a-dozen courtiers, amongst whom the name of Christopher Villiers was conspicuous.[13]
Patents of this character were objectionable on many grounds. Far greater indignation was, however, directed against those which Monopolies.conferred grants to which the hated name of monopoly could be affixed. Yet a careful examination of these grants will convince us that they were not open to the charges which are habitually brought against them. They <7>were not made with the object of filling the Exchequer. They were not made, primarily, at least, with the object of filling the pockets of the courtiers. They were, it is impossible to doubt, the result of a desire on the part of official persons to encourage commerce, and to promote the welfare of the State, though it cannot be denied that their zeal was often greater than their knowledge, and that their best efforts were not unfrequently tainted by that atmosphere of favouritism and corruption which clung like a dank exhalation to everything that was best at the Court of James.
The general principle almost universally recognised at this time on the subject of monopolies, was much the same as that which has Theories held on them.lain at the root of all subsequent legislation on the subject. As a rule, such grants were held to be illegal, as encroaching upon the rights of the subject to the exercise of his trade. Exceptions might be made whenever anyone either invented or introduced from other countries a new method of manufacture. By such a grant no one, except the purchaser, would be injured; and even he would, in the long run, be compensated for the high price which he would at first be called upon to pay, by the cheapness which would be the eventual result of enterprise and invention.
This rule having once been laid down, it is evident that there would be considerable difference of opinion as to the proper mode of applying it in practice. The great body of purchasers would demand that it should be interpreted as strictly as possible, and that nothing beyond the actual invention should be covered by the guarantee; whilst the official, who had to consider the propriety of making the grant, might either be induced through negligence to encourage a lax interpretation of the rule, or might even, from a mistaken sense of duty, be led to stretch the concession so as to cover manufactures which were not in any sense new inventions, but which it was thought to be in accordance with the public interest to place under a special supervision.
Of the many grants of this nature which are to be found upon the Patent Rolls, there are not a few which never provoked <8>any adverse criticism at all. They were mere protections to new inventions, such as might be granted at the present day. But the features of others were more or less objectionable. In 1616, two men named Bassano and Vandrey asked for a patent on the ground that 1616.Salmon and lobsters.they had invented a method by which fish might be kept alive in boats, thereby enabling them to bring salmon and lobsters from Ireland to the London market. Their petition was supported by the Company of Fishmongers, and they obtained a patent, granting to them the sole right of bringing in fish from such rivers and seas as had not hitherto furnished supplies to the population of London. It was a patent which would not indeed be in accordance with modern practice; for it was always possible that it might prevent some other person from attaining the same result by a different and improved method; but practically no great harm would have been done, if the patentees had kept within the letter of their privilege. They soon found that it was easier to plunder poor fishermen than to establish extensive fisheries in Ireland. Their agents lay in wait for the boatmen at the mouth of the Thames, and ordered them to make over to them the contents of their lobster-pots for a mere pittance, far below the value of the fish, in order that they might themselves sell them at a monopoly price.[14]
Such grievances were widely felt. But they were caused rather by the difficulty of obtaining redress from a patentee than by 1620.the inherent defects of the patents themselves. There were other cases calculated to rouse far deeper indignation; for in these it seemed that the rule, which was generally accepted, had been deliberately broken through. It will be sufficient to mention two instances: that of the patent for the manufacture of glass, and that of the patent for the manufacture of gold and silver thread.
In 1574, an attempt was made by a Venetian, named Versellini, to rival in England the products of the world-famous <9>glass-works of Murano. A patent had been granted to him by Elizabeth, conferring upon him the sole right of making such glass in England. Upon the expiration of the patent it had been re-granted to Sir Jerome Bowes.[15]
The glass thus made had been produced in furnaces heated with wood. In 1611, Sir Edward Zouch and three other persons 1611.obtained a patent for a process which enabled them to use coal.[16] In 1613, Zouch and his partners 1613.applied for an extension of their powers. They had been originally directed not to infringe upon Bowes’s patent, and they had accordingly confined themselves to the manufacture of the commoner kinds of glass. They now stated that their furnaces had been put to the test of experience, and were answering their purpose admirably. They had spent 5,000l. in the process, and they could not expect to recover their expenses unless the whole manufacture were placed in their hands by the overthrow of all existing patents except their own.
As a mere matter of political economy, no demand could be more outrageous. But to the Privy Council it was something more than a mere matter of political economy. For some time the waste of wood in England had attracted attention, and fears were frequently expressed that unless some remedy were provided, it would soon be impossible to find timber for the navy. Bowes was accordingly informed that his patent was injurious to the commonwealth. After some negotiation, a compromise was effected. A new patent was granted to his rivals, by which a rent of 1,000l. a year was reserved to the Crown; and this sum was made over to Bowes <10>in the form of an annual pension from the Exchequer.[17] In 1615, 1615.several fresh names were introduced into the patent,[18] amongst which are to be found those of the Earl of Montgomery and Sir Robert Mansell. It was well understood that the accession of one or two persons possessing influence at Court might easily be worth many thousand pounds to the patentees.
One other step remained to be taken. Up to this time, if English glass could only be bought from the patentees, it was still possible, upon payment of a heavy duty, to obtain glass from the Continent. This was no longer to be allowed. On May 15, 1615, a proclamation appeared, forbidding the further importation of foreign glass.[19]
The history of this patent is well worth studying by those who think that the monopolies were solely the work of Buckingham and Bacon. It will be seen that, before Buckingham had risen into favour, and before Bacon had received the Great Seal, a monopoly was granted which placed the entire sale of glass in the hands of a single body of patentees; and that that body consisted in part of idle courtiers, in part of men whose sole claim was that they had discovered a mode of producing glass by which, without special protection, it would be impossible for them ever to make a profit. It was at least alleged that the scale was turned in their favour by considerations of public policy.
Comparatively few objections were raised against the monopoly of glass. In 1624, it was specially exempted from the operation of 1611.Gold and silver thread.the Act against monopolies. Against the patent for the manufacture of gold and silver thread, on the other hand, a storm of indignation was raised which has hardly yet subsided. If all that is said of it be true, Bacon’s character as an honest man is irretrievable. The investigation into the facts of the case, therefore, assumes a special importance.
<11>During the early years of James’s reign, the gold and silver thread used in making lace was imported from the Continent. The first patent.Attempts had been made to introduce the manufacture into England; but they had been conducted on a very small scale, and they do not appear to have given rise to any serious competition with the imported commodity. At last, at Lady Bedford’s request, Burlomachi, the great capitalist of the day, brought over to England a Frenchwoman, named Madame Turatta, who engaged to give lessons in the manufacture;[20] and an application was made, under Lady Bedford’s patronage by four persons, named Dike, Fowle, Phipps, and Dade, to be protected by a patent. They intended, they urged, to introduce the manufacture on a considerable scale, and thereby to give work to Englishmen, which had hitherto been in the hands of Frenchmen and Italians. They engaged to make over a share in the patent, or, according to other accounts, a sum of 1,000l. to Lady Bedford, as a reward for the part which she had taken in bringing Madame Turatta into the kingdom. Their application was successful; and in 1611 the patent for which they asked was granted.
It was not long before attempts were made to infringe upon this patent. In 1613 and 1614 we find Sir Henry Montague, at that time Recorder of London, imprisoning offenders and taking away their tools. The attention of the Council was accordingly drawn to the question. Both sides were heard, and a long and 1616.The second patent.anxious deliberation ensued. For no less than seventeen months Ellesmere refused to affix the Great Seal to a new patent which had been drawn up. At last he gave way, satisfied, it would seem, that the manufacture was practically a new one, and that in it lay the only chance of competing with the Continent.
The new patent was made out in the names of Dike, <12>Fowle, and Dorrington. They were to have, for twenty-one years, the sole right of making gold and silver thread as it was made in France and Italy. In return, they were to engage to import bullion to the yearly amount of 5,000l., and to pay to the King a rent equal to the sum which he obtained from the duty upon importation, which might now be expected to fall off in consequence of the growth of the domestic manufacture. The Privy Council, it was said in explanation, had examined the truth of the allegation that the thread in question had been made by others before the grant of the first patent, and had come to the conclusion that, though the manufacture ‘had been formerly in handling and endeavoured to be settled within this kingdom,’ it had ‘never been established and perfected within this realm, nor constantly or openly used before the granting of the said letters patent.’
The patentees knew as well as the patentees for the monopoly of glass the value of Court favour, and Share taken by Sir E. Villiers.they gladly welcomed the accession of Sir Edward Villiers, the half-brother of the rising favourite, who consented to invest 4,000l. in the undertaking.
From some cause or other the business did not prosper. The goldsmiths, who had been heard at the council-table 1617.Resistance to the patent.previously to the grant of the second patent, persisted in maintaining its illegality, and in refusing to abandon the manufacture. In April, 1617, Sir Edward Villiers brought the complaints of the patentees before his brother and the King. On April 16, Buckingham wrote to Yelverton requesting him to support the patent. About the same time the affair was commended by the King to the consideration of the Council; and on the 25th Yelverton was instructed to lay an information in the Court of Exchequer against the offenders.
Proceedings were accordingly commenced, but the attempt to obtain a legal decision was speedily abandoned. Scarcely had the bill been filed in the Exchequer, when Villiers and Fowle brought Yelverton a letter written by the King, who was at that time in Scotland, ordering him to commit the offenders to prison, in what capacity does not appear. This <13>letter, he afterwards stated, ‘he kept by him, thinking the King not well informed.’
In due course of time James returned to England. A project was adopted which, it was hoped, would inspire offenders with greater terror. 1618.The monopoly taken into the King’s hands.The manufacture was to be taken altogether into the King’s hands. Fowle became the agent of the Crown. The profits were to be the King’s, and out of these a pension of 500l. a-year was to be allowed to Sir Edward Villiers, who had sunk 4,000l. in the scheme; and another pension of 800l. a-year to Christopher Villiers, for no reason at all.
A proclamation, authorising this arrangement, was issued on March 22, 1618. Its substitution for the patent of 1616 was a virtual acknowledgment that the case of the Government was legally untenable, and that the Court of Exchequer could not be depended upon to support its claims. Yet the act, unjustifiable as it seems to us, was undoubtedly in great measure Bacon’s own.[21] He was now, for the first time, consulted in the business. Part taken by Bacon.With the grant of the monopoly itself, Bacon had nothing to do. In 1616, as in 1611, the Great Seal had been in Ellesmere’s hands. But the step now taken went so far beyond the mere grant of a monopoly, that it becomes important to inquire what Bacon’s motives were.
It is true that a sentence has frequently been quoted from Bacon’s writings which is supposed to preclude the necessity of any further inquiry. In 1619 or 1620 he drew up, perhaps only for his own use, an enlarged copy of the paper of advice which he had presented to Buckingham in 1615, when he was no more than a rising favourite. In its new shape the paper His opinions on monopolies.contains a warning that ‘monopolies, which are the cankers of all trading, be not admitted under specious colours of public good.’ Even if it be admitted, as is probably the case, that the insertion of this sentence implies some suspicion that under Buckingham’s protection a system was growing up which threatened to develop a positive injury to trade, it does not necessarily imply a condemnation <14>of all that had already been done with Bacon’s sanction, and even in some cases with his warm support. Sweeping expressions of this kind, by whomsoever put forth, are certain to be mentally accompanied by limitations which are forgotten by later generations. In truth, it would be as reasonable to charge with inconsistency any one amongst the numerous agitators who, within our own times, declaimed against the Corn Laws as a monopoly, because he took out a patent for a newly invented machine, as it is to speak of Bacon as necessarily contradicting his own principles by his conduct on this occasion. In 1621, Yelverton declared before a hostile audience his belief that this patent was no monopoly;[22] and, though no similar expression from Bacon’s lips has reached us, there happens to be a curious piece of evidence which indirectly shows what his opinion was. In 1619 a declaration which had, many years before, been issued for the guidance of suitors, was reprinted. It contained information as to the classes of suits which the King bound himself to reject, and at the very head of these classes occurs the word “monopolies.” Is it conceivable that this declaration could have been published without Bacon’s knowledge? And if he had believed that the grants in question were monopolies in the objectionable sense of the word, would he not have obtained the suppression of the condemnatory document?
Already in the House of Commons, in 1601, Bacon had declared his opinion on the subject. He had there spoken of patents as commendable in cases in which ‘any man out of his own industry or endeavour finds anything beneficial for the commonwealth, or brings in any new invention,’ meaning, it would seem, introduces it from a foreign country.
Nor is this concession of an equality of privilege to original inventors and to Patents for manufactures introduced from abroad.persons who merely introduce an invention from a foreign country peculiar to Bacon. Its principle was taken for granted by both sides in the conflict which ensued. It was left <15>untouched by the statute of monopolies in 1624, and it is to this day held by lawyers to be in accordance with the law of England.[23]
Accordingly the objection raised in the following session against the patents of 1611 and 1616 was not that they conferred a monopoly upon a manufacture introduced from abroad, but that, in point of fact, the manufacture was not introduced by the patentees at all. To do them justice, those who spoke on behalf of the Government always acknowledged that, according to the strict letter of the law, this was true. Gold thread, they said, had been manufactured in England before. Stripped of its technicalities, their language amounts to this:— Though the patentees were not the first to make the thread in England, they were the first to set up a manufacture on a sufficient scale to compete with the importation from the Continent. The object of the grant had not been primarily to reward the patentees, but to benefit the nation; and, if it had been shown that, owing to the efforts of the patentees, the manufacture could be introduced on a large scale into England, the Government had been justified in overriding the claims of those whose labours, whatever they were, had failed in bringing the manufacture into English hands.
Such ideas, which had justified the monopoly in the eyes of Ellesmere, were likely to have their full weight with Bacon. Yet it must be acknowledged that, in refusing to submit his case to the Court of Exchequer, he could hardly fail to have been led by stronger reasoning. Nor is it difficult to discover what that reasoning was. To him and to his contemporaries a trade in gold and silver stood upon a peculiar footing. To us a dealer in the precious metals is no more than a dealer in cotton or iron. To the men of the seventeenth century he was a dealer <16>in the very wealth of the country. To allow gold and silver to be tampered with by artisans who were under no supervision, was to authorise the most unblushing robbery of the commonwealth. The patentees had offered to meet the difficulty. They had engaged to import 5,000l. worth of bullion every year, and the King’s agents would of course inherit the engagements of the patentees. If wealth were to be frittered away in adorning the dress of fine ladies and fine gentlemen, it should be the wealth of Spaniards and Frenchmen, and not the wealth of Englishmen. Such arguments sound strange enough to us, but we cannot hope to arrive at truth if we do not take them into consideration.
In an Act of the reign of Henry VII., Bacon found the weapon that he needed. The goldsmiths had urged that they had The Act of Henry VII.made gold thread before Dike and Fowle. The reply of the Government was that, if this was the case, they had broken the law; for the law expressly forbade any goldsmith to melt or sell gold and silver except for certain special objects, amongst which the manufacture of gold or silver lace was not to be found. The action in the Court of Exchequer had therefore become irrelevant, and as no one else had a right to make the thread, the King might properly take the manufacture into his own hands.
That in pursuance of a great public object Bacon should have thought himself justified in raking up an obsolete statute is easily conceivable. The first commission.But it must have required all his belief in the prerogative to bring him to consent to set aside entirely the jurisdiction of the ordinary law courts by the issue of a commission for the discovery and punishment of offenders against the proclamation.
It was not long before the new Commissioners, the most active of whom was Sir Francis Michell, were hard at work. Imprisonment of workmen.Instruments were seized and artificers imprisoned on every side. Yet even these stringent measures were insufficient to suppress competition. The King was again appealed to, and, upon the advice of Bacon, Montague, and Yelverton, a fresh commission was issued in October, increasing the powers of the members and authorising <17>the prosecution of offenders in the Star Chamber. Several Second commission.new names were added to the list of Commissioners, amongst others, that of the notorious Mompesson, whose unscrupulous energy in carrying out the patent for inns marked him out as a person who would render good service in hunting down the opponents of the monopoly of gold and silver thread.
A prosecution was accordingly commenced in the Star Chamber; but, for some reason or another, it was not proceeded with. 1619.Renewed imprisonment.On the other hand the Commissioners were more active than ever. In the spring of 1619 there were fresh imprisonments; houses were broken into, and tools and engines seized.
It was at this time that a new plan was suggested to James by Bacon and Montague.[24] The goldsmiths and silkmen, they thought, Bonds forced upon the goldsmiths and silkmen.might be required to enter into bonds not to sell their wares to unlicensed persons. The King accepted the proposal, and wrote a letter recommending it to the Commissioners.[25] Mompesson and Michell at once hastened to carry the scheme into execution. Five silk-mercers were brought before the commission. Mompesson told them that if they refused to seal the bonds ‘all the prisons in London should be filled, and thousands should rot in prison.’ Those, however, who were interested in the monopoly were anxious to secure higher authority on their side than Mompesson and Michell. Yelverton was one of the Commissioners, and his support would be worth having; but it was known that, frightened at the irritation aroused, he was growing cold in the affair. Sir Edward Villiers accordingly visited him, hoping to spur him on to action. The business, he said, lay a bleeding, and if he did not help him all would be lost. Yelverton hardly knew what to do. He was afraid of giving offence to Buckingham, and he was no less afraid of giving offence to everybody else. At last he decided upon a middle course. He committed the silk-mercers to the Fleet, but at the same time threw the whole burden of the responsibility upon <18>Bacon. If the Lord Chancellor, he said, did not confirm the commitment, he would instantly release them. Bacon, who never shrank from responsibility, had the men brought before him, heard what they had to say, and sent them back to prison.
The whole City was in an uproar. Four aldermen offered to stand bail for the prisoners in 100,000l. A deputation was sent to the King, who, after listening to the objections against the proceedings of the Commissioners, answered that he would not govern his subjects by bond, and ordered the men to be set at liberty.[26]
Such, at least, is the story in the only form in which it has come down to us. It rests upon Yelverton’s evidence, which Bacon never had an opportunity of correcting. It is of course possible that Bacon, with his high ideas of the prerogative, might have felt it right to commit the prisoners simply for contempt and that he may have cheerfully acquiesced in the appearance of the King upon the scene, to smooth down the asperities which had been the result of the conduct of the Commissioners.[27] However this may have been, the concession thus made Second proclamation.was not the commencement of any change of policy. On October 10, a fresh proclamation was issued, authorising the continuance of the system.
“Whereas,” such was the preamble of the proclamation, “the art or mystery of making gold and silver thread (a commodity of continual use in this our kingdom of England) hath formerly been used and made by strangers in foreign parts only, and from thence transported into this our realm, but of late hath been practised by some of our loving subjects, who <19>by their great charge and industry have so well profited therein, and attained to such perfection in that art that they equal the strangers in the skilful making thereof, and are able by the labours of our own people to make such store as shall be sufficient to furnish the expense of this whole kingdom:— And whereas we, esteeming it a principal part of our office as a king and sovereign prince to cherish and encourage the knowledge and invention of good and profitable arts and mysteries, and to make them frequent amongst our own people, especially such wherein our people may employ their labours comfortably and profitably, and many thereby may be kept from idleness, hereby to preserve and increase the honour and wealth of our State and people:— And finding that the exercising of this art or mystery (considering the continual use of bullion to be spent in the manufacture thereof) is a matter of great importance, and therefore fitter for our own immediate care than to be trusted into the hands of any private persons, for that the consumption or preservation of bullion, whereof our coins, the sinews and strength of our state, are made, is a matter of so high consequence as it is only proper for ourself to take care and account of:— We have heretofore, to the good liking of the inventors thereof, taken the said manufacture of gold and silver thread into our hands, and so purpose to retain and continue it, to be exercised only by agents for ourselves, who shall from time to time be accountable to us for the same.”
These words may fairly be taken as Bacon’s defence of himself. It is impossible for any candid person to read them without Bacon’s policy.coming to the conclusion that he was contending for a great public policy. That his policy was erroneous there can be no doubt whatever. It was not really of the slightest importance that bullion should be kept within the realm by artificial means. It was of the very highest importance that questions arising from royal grants should not be withdrawn from the jurisdiction of the ordinary courts, to be placed in the hands of a Royal Commission. But in justice to Bacon it must be remembered that his constitutional theory was never fairly carried out. He would have assigned large powers to the Crown, but he would have kept those powers <20>from being used abusively, by providing that the King should be constantly enlightened by frequent Parliaments. According to him the constitutional relation between the Crown and the representatives of the people was very similar to that which prevailed in France under the Second Empire. That such a relation is in the long run untenable, it is impossible to doubt. In England it never had a fair chance. James took one half of Bacon’s policy, and rejected the other.
The system thus formally authorised was rigorously carried out. Unlicensed packets of thread were seized in every direction. Failure of the monopoly.Bonds were forced upon the unwilling silkmen. In spite of all that was done, the manufacture did not pay. The bullion which was to have been imported was not imported. The coin of the realm was melted down. The City was in a state of increasing exasperation, and no result had been obtained.[28]
Such was the state of feeling on the subject, when Bacon, in common with the two Chief Justices, was called upon to 1620.November.Bacon’s advice to withdraw some of the patents.consider the course to be adopted in meeting the expected Parliament.[29] He saw how unpopular many of the patents had become, and in accordance with his wise principle that the strength of the Government depended on its capacity for leading the country, he recommended that the patents should be examined by the Privy Council, and that those of them against which just exception could be taken should be called in.[30] In a private note written at the same time to Buckingham, he pointed out that his brother Christopher and some of his followers were interested in the most obnoxious patents, and urged him to ‘put off the envy of these things.’ In themselves they bore ‘no great fruit,’ and it would be better to <21>‘take the thanks for ceasing them, than the note for maintaining them.’[31] Buckingham, it would seem, refused to be convinced. December.His advice rejected.The question was discussed in the Council, and was decided against Bacon. The patents were to be left to Parliament, to deal with as it pleased. In other words, the King, in domestic matters as well as in foreign affairs, was to abdicate the highest functions of government, and to present himself to the Houses without a policy.
“The King,” wrote Bacon to the favourite, “did wisely put it upon a consult, whether the patents were at this time to be removed by Act of Council before Parliament. I opined (but yet somewhat like Ovid’s mistress, that strove, but yet as one that would be overcome), that Yes.”[32] The words were characteristic of the writer. Of open relinquishment of his own opinions, or of deliberate action in contradiction to them, he may fairly be acquitted. There can be as little doubt that he regarded the patents as in the main good things in themselves, as that he held it to be unwise to persevere in the face of the opposition which they had provoked. Bacon’s policy had chiefly been Profits of the courtiers.brought into discredit by the profit which accrued from them to the King and to the courtiers. As far as the public feeling was concerned, it was of little importance that this profit was not great. From the whole number of them the Exchequer was not the richer by so much as the modest sum of 900l. a year.[33] It cannot be shown that a single penny found its way into Buckingham’s pocket. Sir Edward Villiers, indeed, received a guarantee of a pension out of the patent for gold and silver thread; but this pension was nothing more than a fair dividend upon the money which he had actually invested. Whether it was paid or not, we do not know, but we do know that, though a pension of 800l. a year was secured <22>upon the same patent to Christopher Villiers, the whole affair turned out so badly, that in reality he received no more than 150l. during the whole existence of the monopoly.[34] An uncertain sum was also reserved to Christopher Villiers out of the patent for alehouses. Lord Purbeck, the remaining brother, received nothing. It was amongst the courtiers of the second and third rank — the royal cupbearers and the gentlemen of the bedchamber — that the booty, such as it was, was for the most part divided.
Small as was the sum brought by the monopolies into the pockets of Buckingham’s followers, it was still enough to make him take Disgrace of Yelverton.a personal interest in their maintenance, infinitely more vehement than the political interest which was felt by Bacon. Already it was known that to be lukewarm in the defence of the monopolies, was to offer a direct insult to Buckingham. The weight of his indignation now fell heavily upon Yelverton. No one, it might be thought, was less open than the Attorney-General to a charge of slackness in defence of the prerogative. He was no hunter after popularity. In 1610 he had spoken warmly in defence of the Impositions. In 1616, he was standing at Bacon’s side in opposition to Coke. He had lately assented to the patent for gold and silver thread. But, if his opinions were courtly, his nature was rugged and independent. He had owed his advancement to the favour of the Howards, and he had submitted with impatience to the yoke of Buckingham. Against the patents themselves he had raised no objection when an objection would have availed; but his indignation was roused by the interference of Buckingham’s brothers, and of Buckingham’s dependents. The course which he adopted was the worst possible for himself. He disgusted the nation by lending his name to everything; he disgusted the Court by the reluctant and perfunctory manner in which he carried out the bidding of the favourite.
As usual, Buckingham looked upon all opposition as a personal insult to himself. No revenge was beneath his dignity. He took care that the lucrative business which was looked <23>upon as the perquisite of the Attorney-General should find its way into other channels. His sentence in the Star Chamber.An opportunity soon presented itself for striking a heavier blow. In drawing up a new charter for the City of London, Yelverton inserted clauses for which he was unable to produce a warrant. The worst that could be said was that he had, through inadvertence, misunderstood the verbal directions of the King. Although no imputation of corruption was brought against him, he was suspended from his office and prosecuted in the Star Chamber. He was there sentenced to dismissal from his post, to a fine of 4,000l., and to imprisonment during the Royal pleasure.[35]
In regular succession the place vacated by Yelverton was occupied by Coventry. Heath became Solicitor-General; and this time Legal promotionsthe City was forced to accept Shute as its Recorder, in the place of Heath. It was soon whispered that something more than mere favouritism had led to these last appointments. Heath and Shute, it was said, had agreed to relinquish to Buckingham the pensions which were paid to them as the price for the use of their names in that office in the King’s Bench which had practically been granted to himself.[36] Fortunately for the citizens, they were soon set free, by Shute’s death, from their disreputable Recorder, and in Heneage Finch they obtained a successor of a very different character.
For two years Montague had been grasping at promotion of another kind. He had never December.Montague becomes Lord Treasurer.felt himself thoroughly at home in Coke’s seat, and soon after the dismissal of Suffolk, he had not scrupled to offer 10,000l. to the favourite for the Treasurer’s staff.[37] At the time his offer was rejected, as the King wished that the state of the finances should undergo a thorough investigation before a new <24>appointment was made. The reasons for delay had now lost their force, and hints were allowed to reach Montague’s ears, that the Treasurership was within his reach, whilst at the same time it was intimated to him that the King would accept a liberal present. After some haggling a bargain was struck at 20,000l., and Montague became Viscount Mandeville, and Lord High Treasurer of England. As he was starting for Newmarket, to receive at the King’s hands the white staff, which was the symbol of his office, Bacon met him. “Take care, my lord,” he drily remarked, “wood is dearer at Newmarket than in any other place in England.”[38]
Mandeville’s successor on the Bench was Sir James Ley. Four years before he had offered 10,000l. in vain for the Attorney-Generalship. Sir James Ley Chief Justice.He now declared himself ready, at the age of sixty-eight, to marry Elizabeth Butler, a young girl who had the good fortune — if good fortune it was — of being Buckingham’s niece. The jesters had their laugh at the ill-assorted match. The Countess of Buckingham, it was said, deserved high praise for taking such care of her relations. It was a special work of charity. There were already six or seven more young women hurrying up to London to look for husbands with her help.[39] Other <25>promotions of less importance followed. The King’s old favourite Haddington, the Ramsay who had stood manfully by him at the time of the Gowry conspiracy, became Earl of Holderness in the English peerage. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Fulk Greville, obtained a seat in the House of Lords by the title of Lord Brooke.
The position which the new House of Commons would take up on the question of the monopolies was likely to depend upon the policy which James was able to announce with respect to the troubles of the Continent. On account of the pressure of business, caused by the reception of Cadenet’s embassy, 1621.Jan. 30.Opening of Parliament.the opening of the session had been postponed from January 16 to the 30th. On that day, after listening to a sermon from Andrewes, bristling with Greek and Hebrew, James passed, seemingly in high spirits, to the House of Lords.
The Commons were summoned to the bar, and the King began his speech with an exposition of those constitutional theories which, The King’s speech.however they may grate upon our ears at the present day, would not, at that time, have been formally repelled by any of his hearers. A Parliament, he said, was an assembly forming part of a monarchy, and acting under a monarch. Without a monarch there might, indeed, be Councils, but not a Parliament. It was summoned by the King to give him advice, and it was able to give that advice, because it represented the wishes and the wants of the various classes of his subjects. The King was thus enabled to make good laws for the benefit of the whole commonwealth. The House of Commons, in particular, had special functions to perform. It was by its means that cases of maladministration or default of justice could reach the ears of the King; and it was the peculiar duty of that House to supply the King’s necessities, as it was his duty to afford them justice and mercy in return.
James then turned to a subject upon which the House took a far deeper interest than on any question of constitutional politics. Religion, he said, was to be maintained in the first place by persuasion, and it was only when that failed that recourse was to be had to compulsion. It had been rumoured <26>that the marriage treaty with Spain would be followed by a grant of toleration to the Catholics. He would, however, have his hearers to understand, that he would do nothing dishonourable or contrary to the interests of religion.
After this brief and enigmatical declaration, James quickly passed to what was, to him, the far more important subject of his own wants. For ten years, he said, he had not received a penny from Parliament. The time when they might reasonably have objected to grant a supply was now past. His treasure was no longer squandered. During the last two years a strict economy had been practised. Large sums had been saved by the reform of the household. With the help of the young Lord Admiral, who was standing by his side, he had effected a considerable saving by the reforms of the navy. If they would give him money now, he would answer for it that it should no longer fall into a bottomless purse.
The next cause for which he had summoned them was the miserable state of Christendom. He had done all that was in his power to put an end to the war in Bohemia. In the hope of saving the Palatinate, he had spent thousands of pounds upon embassies. He had borrowed money from the King of Denmark. He had authorised the collection of voluntary contributions. “And I am now,” he said, “to take care of a worse danger against the next summer. I will leave no travail untried to obtain a happy peace. But I have thought it good to be armed against a worse turn, it being best to treat of peace with a sword in my hand. Now I shall labour to preserve the rest; wherein I declare that, if by fair means I cannot get it, my crown, my blood, and all shall be spent, with my son’s blood also, but I will get it for him. And this is the cause of all, that the cause of religion is involved in it; for they will alter religion where they conquer, and so perhaps my grandchild also may suffer, who hath committed no fault at all.” Let them, therefore, make haste to grant a supply. This Parliament had been of great expectation. At his first Parliament he had been ignorant of the customs of the land. At his second Parliament a strange kind of beast called undertakers had come between him and his subjects. The present <27>Parliament had been called of his own free motion. It would be his greatest happiness if it could be shown that he had acquired the love and reverence of his people. “Then,” he ended by saying, “I shall be even honoured of my neighbour princes, and peradventure my government made an example for posterity to follow.”[40]
By a critical audience this speech would have been coolly received. James had spoken first about himself, and last about the Palatinate. Temper of the House of Commons.But the House of Commons was not disposed to be critical. Its members had come up to Westminster eager to co-operate with the King. The old constitutional disputes and the old constitutional suspicions were forgotten. No one thought for a moment of reviving the quarrel about the Impositions. This time, at least, James would not have to complain of factious opposition. If he would only be a king in reality as well as in name — if he would reform abuses at home, and defend Protestantism abroad, the representatives of the nation were prepared to follow him with almost unquestioning fidelity.
How little James was in accord with the prevailing feeling is evident from the conversation which he held with Gondomar Feb. 2.James’s conversation with Gondomar.three days after the meeting of Parliament. He began by talking about the speech with which he had opened the session, softening down the words he had used in speaking of religious matters. He was ready, he said, to live and die in friendship with the King of Spain. As for the Puritans, they were the common enemies of both. After some further talk about his son-in-law, he described his own reception by the clergy in Westminster Abbey. The whole of the service, he said, had been chanted in Latin. So far, at least, he had conformed to the usage of the Catholic Church. Upon this hint, Gondomar spoke out. He hoped, he said, to see him restored to the Church, and to the obedience of the Pope. “If,” replied James, “these things could be treated without passion, it is certain that we could come to an agreement.” A few minutes more brought him to acknowledge his <28>readiness to recognise the Pope as the head of the Church in matters spiritual, and to allow appeals to lie to him from the English bishops, provided that he would refrain from meddling with temporal jurisdiction in his kingdoms, and would renounce his claim to depose kings at pleasure. If in his writings he had spoken of the Pope as Antichrist, it was because of his usurped power over kings, not because he called himself head of the Church. Gondomar, upon this, asked James to give him his hand in token that he meant what he was saying. The King at once held out his hand, and told the ambassador to write an account of the conversation to his master.
No one knew better than the Spanish ambassador that all this meant nothing. If he had just landed in England, he wrote, he might perhaps have considered the information of importance. All he could say now was that nothing was impossible to God. As to the Palatinate, James still expected Spain to assist him in his mediatory efforts. His son-in-law, he thought, should solemnly renounce all pretensions to Bohemia. Upon that Philip might withdraw his troops from the Palatinate, and see that the Catholic powers in Germany abstained from pushing their successes further.[41]
If James could have supported his argument by any evidence that force was at his disposal, it is possible that his representations might not have been without effect. Whether he could do this or not, however, depended on the understanding to which he was able to come with the Commons.
On February 5, the House of Commons met for business. The first debate was somewhat desultory. The strong Protestant Feb. 5.The first debate.feeling of the members found a mouthpiece in Sir James Perrot, the son of the Lord Deputy of Ireland who had been harshly treated by Elizabeth, and who was, unless rumour spoke falsely, an illegitimate son of Henry VIII. Perrot now moved that the House should receive the communion at St. Margaret’s, for the detection of recusants.[42]
<29>Perrot’s motion was the signal for the pouring out of a flood of abuse against the Catholics. Sir Robert Phelips, the son of the Speaker of the first Parliament of the reign — a busy, active man, whose undoubted powers were not always under the control of prudence — on this day commenced his brilliant career as a Parliamentary orator. The Catholics, he said, had lit bonfires in their halls at the news of the defeat in Bohemia. They were gathering in great numbers to London, and were perhaps even now meditating a repetition of the Gunpowder Plot.
Another subject next engaged the attention of the House. Since the last Parliament, members had been imprisoned for words spoken in their places. It was suggested that the King might now be asked for an acknowledgment of their right to liberty of speech. Calvert, on the other hand, whose conciliatory temper would, in happier times, have gained him the respect of the House, then rose and pressed for an immediate supply. It was finally resolved that the various questions which had been raised should be referred to a committee of the whole House.
The first difficulty of the Commons arose from an unexpected quarter. They had entrusted the sermon at St. Margaret’s to Usher, Usher’s sermon.whose abilities had recently procured for him, young as he was, the bishopric of Meath. The appointment was regarded by the Chapter of <30>Westminster, now under the guidance of Williams, as an infringement of its rights. The House was accordingly told that it had exceeded its powers. If the members would come to the Abbey one of the canons should preach to them, and no attempt would be made to force upon them the wafer-bread which was ordinarily used there. But Williams, in his hot-headed jealousy for his new dignity, had miscalculated the temper of those with whom he had to deal. His offer was contemptuously rejected by the Commons. If they could not hear Usher preach in St. Margaret’s, they would hear him in the Temple church. Williams, however, was not allowed to push matters to these extremities. James himself interfered, and the Chapter at once withdrew their opposition to the original plan.[43]
If the Commons could have listened to the King’s conversation with Usher, they would hardly have thanked him for his mediation. “You have got,” he said, “an unruly flock to look to next Sunday.” He then asked him how it was possible for the members to be in charity with one another, and ended by begging him to urge his audience to pass a vote of supply as soon as possible.[44]
In the meanwhile the Commons were busily considering the case of the Petition against the recusants.obnoxious recusants, and in drawing up a petition for the enforcement of the penal laws, in which the Lords expressed their willingness to join.[45]
On February 15, the Committee brought up its report upon liberty of speech. It recommended an appeal to the King, and Feb. 15.the introduction of a Bill by which the imprisonment of members for words uttered in their places might be rendered impossible for the future.[46] At this suggestion Calvert rose. The King, he said, had directed him <31>to tell the House that he marvelled that they troubled themselves so much about the matter. Had he not already assented to their Speaker’s petition for such freedom of speech as had been anciently granted? His Majesty therefore hoped that no one would ‘so far transgress the bounds of duty as to give any cause to be questioned for speaking that which becomes him not.’ If any such offence should be given, he was sure that the House would be more ready to censure him than his Majesty to require it.[47]
So eager were the Commons to avoid any semblance of altercation with the King, that even this vague message was accepted not only without remonstrance but even with gratitude. Ten months later they had reason to regret that the reply had not been more explicit.
For the moment James’s course was an easy one. The Commons formally returned him thanks for his gracious assurance, and Supply.on that very afternoon the question of supply was for the first time seriously taken up in committee.[48]
On the 13th the Council of War had delivered its report. The members of the Council were too experienced soldiers not to know that The report of the Council of War laid before the House.to appear in the field at once with an army which could bear down all opposition was in the end the surest way to avoid expense. To levy a force worthy of England a sum of 250,000l. would be needed immediately, and the pay and expenses of the army would call for an annual vote of 900,000l. a-year. By this means 30,000 men could be maintained for the defence of the Palatinate.[49]
Such a sum was undoubtedly enormous. No larger grant than 140,000l. had ever yet been made in any one year by Parliament. It was therefore incumbent upon James to reconsider his position, and, after frankly laying before the House the information which he had received, to prepare the nation for the sacrifices which would be needed if its wishes were to be carried <32>out. A very different course commended itself to James. It was at all events a good opportunity for getting a vote of money, and the adequacy of the supplies was a matter of very little moment. Calvert was accordingly directed to state that 30,000 men would be needed, and that at least 500,000l. would be required for their support.
The expense of the troops was absurdly under-estimated. But this was not the only, or even the worst, fault of the speech in which Effect of Calvert’s speech.Calvert brought the question forward. Of the policy which the King intended to pursue he had not a word to say. The Commons were informed what the cost of an army would be. They were not told how it would be used. Over the state of the negotiations, and the chances of peace and war, an impenetrable veil was thrown. Such treatment was enough to chill the temper of the most loyal. It would be time enough, it was felt, to vote a supply on the large scale demanded when the King should condescend to tell them what he meant to do with it. Yet they shrank from leaving the appeal of their Sovereign altogether without response. In spite of the dearth of the precious metals caused by the debasement of the coinage on the Continent; in spite too of the constitutional scruples which forbade the grant of money at so early a period in the session, the Commons unanimously Grant of two subsidies.agreed to a resolution for the levying of two subsidies, a sum equivalent to about 160,000l.[50] The money, however, was not to be regarded as a contribution towards the expenses of the war, for which it would have been utterly inadequate, but simply as a testimony of their devotion to a king who, as they still hoped almost against hope, was at last <33>preparing to stand forward as the leader of the nation over which he ruled.
For these explanations James cared little. With the prospect of a grant of money he was beyond measure delighted. He ordered one of the Privy Councillors to inform the Commons that their conduct had made a great impression upon him. They had given reputation to his affairs at home and abroad. For his part, he was ready to meet them half-way in giving satisfaction to their just demands.[51]
The readiness with which the Commons granted these subsidies is the more noticeable, as they had lately met with a rebuff upon Gondomar’s license to export ordnance.a point which they considered to be of no slight importance. At that time ordnance of English manufacture was highly esteemed upon the Continent. Its exportation was strictly forbidden, and the prohibition was only occasionally suspended as a special favour to the representatives of foreign nations. When, therefore, it was known that leave had been given to Gondomar to send a hundred guns out of the kingdom, the Commons were roused to an indignant remonstrance against the impolicy of furnishing arms to the enemies of the German Protestants. They listened with sullen displeasure to Calvert’s explanation. James himself was obliged to come to the support of his secretary. The licence, he said, had been granted two years before, and could not now be revoked. No harm would be done, as Gondomar had engaged that the guns should be sent to Portugal for use against pirates. The House received the information in silence, but it is hardly probable that a single member allowed his convictions to be changed.[52]
There were other subjects on which the Commons felt even more strongly than on the exportation of ordnance. On the 15th Proposed legislation on the Sabbath.there was a debate on a bill for the stricter observance of the Sabbath. A young barrister named Shepherd stood up to oppose the measure. Everybody knew, he said, that Saturday, and not Sunday, was <34>the true Sabbath. The bill was conceived in a spirit of defiance against the King’s Declaration of Sports, for it forbade dancing on Sunday. Did not David praise God in a dance? What right had they to fly in the teeth of both King David and King James? Whoever brought in the bill was a Puritan and a disturber of the peace. Such language was intolerable to his hearers, who, in their antagonism to Spain, were clinging to the stricter Protestantism which their fathers had learned in the midst of the struggle with the Armada. An indignant shout warned him to desist. Expulsion of Shepherd.He was ordered to leave the House. The next day his case was taken into consideration, and, without a dissentient voice, he was declared to have forfeited his seat by his profanity.[53] Yet even here, excited as they were, the Commons evinced their determination to give way at the slightest remonstrance from the King. They replied to a message from James by ordering that whatever clauses might be in contradiction with the Declaration of Sports should at once be expunged from the Bill.[54]
In fact, during the first fortnight of the session, it seemed as if James could do anything he pleased with the Commons. On the 17th Feb. 17.The King’s reply to the petition on recusancy.he gave his promised reply to the petition for increased severities against the recusants, which had been presented to him jointly by the two Houses. There were, he said, laws enough already. It was against his nature to be too rigorous in matters of conscience. He was continually called upon to intercede with other princes on behalf of oppressed Protestants, and he could hardly hope to succeed if he were himself to treat the English Catholics with undue rigour.[55] He was, however, ready to comply with the requests made to him, and to see that the laws were executed. It was reported that with this reply the House was highly discontented, and that there were those who believed that if the resolution for the grant of the subsidies had not been already passed, it would now be in danger of <35>rejection.[56] Whether this account of the matter was true or not, in public, at least, no signs of dissatisfaction appeared.
Evidently beneath the thin crust of reconciliation the fires of discord were smouldering still: yet, since James had Foreign policy of the Commons.summoned his first Parliament to meet him in 1604, no such House, so profoundly loyal, so heartily anxious to sacrifice all claims but those of honour and of duty, had answered to his call. In the great and pressing questions of foreign policy especially its sympathies were true and generous. Composed as it was, to a great extent, of men of substance, who would eventually have to bear the chief burden of war, it had no wish to throw England headlong into that endless Protestant crusade which tickled the imagination of Abbot and the preachers. But there was scarcely a member who did not see that the encroachment of Catholic domination upon Protestant territory was full of immediate danger to the Protestant States of the Continent, and of ultimate danger to England itself. They believed, too, that the power of the Imperialist party in Germany could only be made available for evil by the support of Spain, and that if the torrent of destruction was to be stopped it was to Spain that their demands must be addressed.
The merits of this policy of the Commons were peculiarly their own. The defects were incidental to their position. Depending for information upon rumour, it was impossible that they should gain that acquaintance with the characters and motives of foreign princes, which alone could fitly determine the choice of the method by which the object which they had at heart might best be attained. Black and white were the only colours on their canvas. To them every Protestant was a model of saintly virtue; every Catholic a dark conspirator against the peace and religion of the world. Of the weakness and rashness of Frederick, of the low intrigues by which his election had been preceded, of the anarchical character of the Bohemian aristocracy, they had simply no conception whatever. And as they could see nothing but light on one side, they could see <36>nothing but darkness on the other. In the very centre of the more than Rembrantesque gloom, in which one part of their picture was shrouded, stood the King of Spain, not as he really was, anxious to avoid war, hesitating to spend his money, and shrinking from doing anything which would split up Europe into two hostile camps, but bearing the likeness which his father had borne in the imaginations of Englishmen forty years before — the aspirant, by force or fraud, to universal empire for his own bad purposes — the restless, ambitious, insatiable vicegerent of Satan upon earth.
With such a House, a wise Government would not have found it difficult to deal. Cowardice and sloth, vanity and obtuseness, are The King and the House of Commons.hard to guide, but the ignorance of a high-spirited and loyal people is easily met. A king who would deal frankly with his subjects, who would tell them plainly what his objects were, and how it was possible to accomplish them, who would take the two Houses into his confidence, who would speak as Bacon would have had him speak, and act as Digby would have had him act, might have wielded the strength of England at his pleasure. A wise love of peace would have found no obstacle in those who were crying for war, not for the sake of its excitement and its booty, but because they believed that the miseries of war were outweighed by the mischief which peace was every day bringing nearer to their doors.
As is always the case, such a union of action between the King and his subjects would have been followed by effects reaching far beyond the political question which was actually in hand. It would have resulted, not as Bacon seems to have thought, in the renewal of the attachment of the people to the forms of the Elizabethan constitution, but in softening the asperities of the change which those forms were destined to undergo. It was impossible that a people growing in intelligence and wealth, undistracted by vital differences of opinion, and trained to political action by the discipline of centuries, could long be kept back from taking a far more active part in public affairs than had been possible under the sceptre of Elizabeth. That the doors of the constitution would soon open more <37>widely than before to the House of Commons, was inevitable. The choice which lay before James was whether he would mainly rely on the sense of justice of the Spanish Government, or would call on the representatives of the people to join him in enforcing his just requirements. Freely to associate them with the Crown in the responsibilities of his policy was the surest way both to keep them from a rash and unadvised cry for war, and to overcome their not unnatural reluctance to open the purse of the nation without security for the use of the subsidies which they might grant.
From time to time, when Gondomar had had reason to despair of James, he had taken comfort by reminding himself that the old nobility of England was favourable to a Catholic restoration. He did not perceive that the political influence of that nobility was much less than it had been, partly through changes in the social condition of the country, and partly through the multiplication of new peerages by James himself.
Even at the accession of James, the peerage had lost many of those powers which had filled Elizabeth with anxiety; but The old and new Peers.it was still strong in its social position, and in historical associations. Side by side with the Veres and the Cliffords, whose honours dated from the reigns of the Plantagenets, sat the Riches and the Russells, who had risen to eminence in the course of the Reformation struggle. With rare exceptions, the ancestors of these men had won their titles by services to the State or to the Sovereign, by high family connection, or by strong local influence. All this, it seemed, was now to be at an end. The descendants of Elizabeth’s peers would soon be in a minority in their own House. Of the ninety-one lay peers, no less than forty-two had been either created or elevated to a higher title by James. Amongst these were a few who, like Bacon and Digby, might have risen to eminence under any system; but far too many were known to have purchased their appointment with hard cash, or with the still baser coin of obsequious servility to the favourite.
Nor was it only of the number and the character of their <38>new associates that the lords of ancient lineage complained. A smooth tongue and a supple knee were seldom rewarded with anything less than a viscountcy, and barons whose ancestors had sat for generations in the Upper House were forced to yield precedence to upstarts whose brand-new titles were unrelieved either by wealth or by merit.
It was not long before the smouldering discontent burst out into a flame. Not a month before the meeting of Parliament, Lord Norris was Quarrel between Scrope and Berkshire.created Earl of Berkshire, owing his rise, as was said, to the expectation that he would give his only child, the heiress of his wealth, to Edward Wray, a young gentleman of the bedchamber, who had contrived to secure the patronage of Buckingham.[57] One day, as he was entering the House in full consciousness of his new dignity, he saw Lord Scrope, whose barony dated from the reign of Edward I., walking in front of him. He rushed forward, and thrusting Scrope violently aside, asserted his precedence as an earl. But the House was in no mood to allow the old peerage of England to be insulted with impunity, and Berkshire was committed to the Fleet, from which he was only allowed to emerge upon making an ample apology for his rudeness.[58]
Whatever their feelings might be, it was impossible for the Peers to make any formal complaint against the exercise of the King’s The Scotch and Irish Lords.undoubted prerogative in the new creations, and they therefore chose another point of attack. For some time it had been usual to confer Irish peerages upon Englishmen who had distinguished themselves in that country; but as the officials thus advanced had for the most part remained in Ireland, their titles had given no umbrage to the English nobility. James had now taken a further step in the same direction. He raised Sir Henry Carey, the Comptroller of the Household, to the Scottish peerage, by the title of Viscount Falkland. The whole body of the English lords who were not under the influence of the Court, were at once in arms. They did not dispute the King’s <39>right to make as many Scotch viscounts as he pleased; but The Peers’ petition.they drew up a petition, to which the names of thirty-three peers were appended, begging that no Scotch nobleman might take precedence in England of the lowest member of the English baronage. Then arose a strange and unseemly altercation between the King and the petitioners. Hearing of the existence of the paper which they had signed, James ordered them to deliver it up to the Privy Council. He was told that it was addressed to himself, and to himself alone would it be given. One by one the thirty-three were summoned into the Royal presence, and were asked in whose custody the petition was. Each one, as he passed in, told the same story. If the King wanted to see the petition, he must receive them in a body, and listen to their complaints. James finally agreed to a compromise, by which the petition was placed in the hands of the Prince of Wales.[59]
In themselves, such ebullitions of temper would rightfully be excluded from a place in history; but the personal grievances of the Peers were not without their weight in securing to the popular side the services of many of the nobility in the approaching conflict.
In the Lower House there were no factions. On February 17 the King had declared that if the Commons chose to inquire into grievances, Feb. 17.Grievances discussed in the House of Commons.he would be ready to meet them half-way. They took him at his word, perhaps all the more readily, as their mouths were closed upon the great questions of foreign policy by the coldness with which their overtures had been received. On the 19th, Noy, Feb. 19.Speeches of Noy and Coke.a Cornish lawyer, whose name is now chiefly remembered by the part which he subsequently took in the imposition of ship-money, moved for an inquiry into the monopolies. These grants, of which the nation was now weary, had, he said, always been preceded by a favourable report from a committee, either of lawyers or of statesmen, to which they had been referred. He <40>therefore moved that these referees might be sent for, in order that the House might know upon what grounds they had acted.
Noy’s proposal was seconded by Coke. The old lawyer, now once more after a long lapse of years a member of the House of Commons, Coke’s position in the House.took up at once the foremost position amongst his colleagues. His amazing self-confidence, and the facility with which he drew from the vast stores of his legal knowledge the precise argument most applicable to the occasion, made his services indispensable to an assembly of which the great majority were without much experience in the details of public business. With the feelings and prejudices of the House he was, on his own narrow ground, thoroughly in unison. It is true that in attacking the referees he was attacking Bacon, and that long rivalry, ending as it had in his own final discomfiture, had embittered his feelings towards the Chancellor. But it would be unfair to think of him as merely actuated by personal motives. Of justice in the highest sense of the word he knew nothing. Of the worth of liberty, or of the principles of political economy, he knew as little. But he had high ideas of his own duty to wage war with corruption and maladministration, and the idolatry with which he regarded the system of the Common Law made him intolerant of any attempt to thrust it aside from its supremacy. He was fortunate in the disgrace which had deprived him of the power to oppress, and had converted him into the opponent of oppression. He was, above all, fortunate in the epoch in which he lived. Two hundred years later his name would have gone down to posterity, with Eldon’s, as that of a bigoted adversary of all reform. As it was, his lot was cast in an age in which the defence of the technicalities of law was almost equivalent to a defence of law itself. It is better, in the end, that the popular ideas of right should be enlarged, than that the administration of justice should be improved; and so it came to pass that Coke, in the stand which he made against the arbitrary tribunals, which had of late years been so plentifully introduced, was, in his blind and rugged fashion, paving the way <41>for the advent of a justice which he would himself have been the first to denounce.
Great was the joy of the House at this accession of a Privy Councillor to the views which the vast majority entertained. “This,” said Alford, The patent for inns.an old member, who had represented Colchester ever since the death of Elizabeth, “is the first Parliament that ever I saw Councillors of State have such care of the State.” The Commons did not indeed adopt Noy’s proposal for an inquiry into the conduct of the referees, but Feb. 20.the next day a Committee of the whole House commenced an investigation into the patent for inns. Mompesson, who was himself a member of the House, was subjected to a rigorous examination. One speaker after another rose to denounce his extortions. At last a letter was produced in which he had threatened a justice of the peace with punishment, unless he desisted from his efforts to shut up an inn which was notoriously a mere haunt of thieves and drunkards. Bad as were Mompesson’s own oppressions, those of his subordinates were worse. One evening, the Committee was informed, an agent of the Commissioners, named Ferrett, knocked at the door of a certain Cooke, an old man of eighty, who kept an alehouse at Brewood in Staffordshire, but who, not having an innkeeper’s licence, was, at least according to Mompesson’s interpretation of the law, liable to a fine if he took in strangers at night. Eager to appropriate a portion of the expected fine, the informer hit upon a mode of proceeding as simple as it was infamous. The night, he said, was coming on, and unless shelter were given him, he was certain to fall into the hands of thieves. Cooke listened to his tale with compassion, left his own bed to make room for him, and turned his cow into the field to provide shelter for the traveller’s horse. Ferrett had got what he wanted. He turned sharply upon his bewildered host. “This is well,” he said. “You are one of those that I look for; you keep an inn, you receive a horse and man.” It is true that the Commissioners did not support their agent in his iniquity; but it was no slight matter that the poor old man should have been compelled to incur the <42>trouble and expense of pleading his cause in London before redress was to be had.[60] So at least the Committee thought. The patent was unanimously condemned, and Coke was chosen to report the decision to the House.[61]
The patent for alehouses came next. It was discovered that behind the names of Dixon and Almon, the nominal patentees, February.The patent for alehouses.were concealed those of Christopher Villiers and other hangers-on of the Court. Instead of seriously setting to work to suppress drunkenness, the patentees had contented themselves with extorting fines from such alehouse-keepers as were ready to purchase permission to break the law with impunity.[62]
In the course of the inquiry the name of Sir Francis Michell had been prominently brought forward as having abused his Sir F. Michell.powers as a magistrate by using them to support the iniquities complained of. He replied by handing in a petition in defence of his conduct. All that he had done, he said, had been approved by the most eminent lawyers. The House refused to listen to his excuse. He was, it was said, one of the first advisers of the patent. He had appropriated a large share of the booty. He had written letters authorising some of the worst extortions. Coke moved that he should be sent to the Tower, and declared to be unfit to remain on the Commission of the Peace. The excitement in the House rose with the prospect of finding a victim. Member after member declared that this would not be enough. Let the wretch be disabled from sitting upon any commission whatever. Let a paper setting forth his offences be fixed upon his hat as he rode to the Tower. Let him for the future be dubbed an Ale-knight. Let him be exempted from the general pardon at the end of the session. At last, however, Coke’s motion was carried without substantial alteration.[63]
<43>Those who declaim against Bacon’s dread of placing the supreme power at once in the hands of the House of Commons, would do well to ponder over these proceedings. Michell was no doubt a knave; but, for the sake of innocent men, it was not well that even knaves should be treated thus. He had not been heard in his own defence. So far from having been brought to a legal trial, he had not been allowed the ordinary formality of a stated charge. Never, in its worst days, was the Star Chamber guilty of a more contemptuous disregard of the barriers which have been thrown up for the preservation of innocence by the laws of England.
Alarmed by Michell’s fate, Mompesson threw himself upon the mercy of the House. He acknowledged that the patent for inns Sir G. Mompesson.had been justly condemned as a grievance, and that he had been to blame for permitting the abuses which had attended its execution. His admission was treated by the House with the silence of contempt. On the 27th, Coke reported that Mompesson had been the original projector of the scheme; that much oppression had been exercised by him as a commissioner; and that no less than 3,320 innkeepers had been vexed with prosecutions for the breach of obsolete statutes. Finally, he added, that it had been proved that out of sixty inns licensed in the single county of Hants, no less than sixteen had been previously closed by the justices as disorderly houses.[64]
In spite of the severity of his language, Coke did not conclude with a motion that Mompesson should share the fortunes of Michell. The jurisdiction of the Commons.He had been reminded, no doubt, that the House had not merely broken through the usual safeguards of justice, but that it had assumed a jurisdiction to which it had no claim whatever. He now spoke as a man who is put upon his defence. With his usual fertility of resource, he acknowledged that the Commons had no jurisdiction over Michell’s original crime; but he had presented an insolent petition, and they had a right <44>to punish him for that, as for an insult to themselves. Having thus covered his retreat, he made no opposition to a proposal that Noy and Hakewill should be sent to search for precedents amongst the records in the Tower.
A very short time sufficed for the investigation. As every lawyer knew, no precedent was in existence by which the jurisdiction assumed in the case of Michell could be justified for an instant. Coke accordingly turned round with the stream, and poured forth a flood of precedents in condemnation of a claim which had been put forward at his own motion a few days before. The House at once followed him in his retractation, and acknowledged by its vote that it had no right to inflict punishment for any general grievance without the concurrence of the House of Lords. It declared that if Mompesson had been committed to the custody of the Serjeant-at-Arms, it was merely as a measure of precaution, till the Lords had decided upon his fate.
The Commons accordingly asked for a conference. Every day charges were accumulating against Mompesson. The part which Mompesson’s escape.he had played in carrying out the patent for gold and silver thread, and another patent for the discovery of Crown estates which had improperly found their way into the hands of private owners, was not forgotten. Before the last-named patent, it was said, no man’s property would be safe. A century of quiet possession would not suffice, if the slightest flaw could be discovered in his title. Coke immediately brought in a bill to bar the claim of the Crown after sixty years’ possession. But it was evident, from the language used, that the House would not be satisfied with providing for the future. Mompesson was thoroughly alarmed. When the officers were sent to arrest him, he asked leave to step for an instant into another room, jumped out of a window, and fled for his life. As soon as his escape was known, the ports were stopped; and at the request of the two Houses a proclamation was issued for his apprehension. It was too late, as he had already succeeded in crossing the Channel; and the Commons were forced to content themselves with the <45>expulsion of the fugitive from the seat in their House which he was hardly likely to re-occupy.[65]
The feeling that the Commons were in earnest spread rapidly. Even Buckingham, insolent as he usually was in the Buckingham’s alarm.face of opposition, partook of the alarm. He knew that his declared enemies could muster a considerable party amongst the Lords, and that the petition against the Scotch and Irish Peers had been, in reality, a demonstration against himself.[66] If the Commons chose to turn upon him as the real author of the obnoxious patents, was he certain of finding an impartial tribunal in the Upper House? The base metal which lay concealed beneath the splendid tinsel of his arrogance stood revealed at the touch of danger. He chose a moment when March 3.His attack upon the referees.Coke happened to be present at the bar, to tell the Lords that he had always believed that the patents were for the good of the country. If it were not so, the blame lay with the referees, who had reported in their favour.[67]
Even if Buckingham had refrained from this ungenerous attack, it was hardly possible that the burning question of the referees could be avoided much longer. How could security be obtained for the future, unless the circumstances were investigated under which Mompesson’s abuses had received the countenance of these great officers of state. If Bacon were right in his interpretation of the law, it was the law that must be altered. If he were wrong, the true interpretation of the law must be placed beyond doubt. It was a further question whether, if the law had been broken, it had been broken with the interested connivance of its highest guardians, the Lord Chancellor and the Lord Chief Justice. Had there been no higher motive at work, it would have been both unjust and impolitic in the Commons to turn their vengeance upon the subordinate ministers of iniquity, whilst they closed their eyes to the sanction given in high places to the evil work.
<46>In spite of the weight of these considerations, so anxious was the House to remain on good terms with the King, that February.Cranfield demands investigation.during the fortnight which had elapsed since Noy and Coke had opened the attack upon the referees, only a single voice had been raised in support of their proposal. That voice was Cranfield’s, and Cranfield regarded Bacon with that supercilious contempt which a man who has risen in the world by a thorough knowledge of the details of business is too frequently accustomed to feel for the more polished intellect of a philosophic statesman. Nor was Cranfield inclined to measure his words in speaking of those whom he disliked. His language was rough and uncourteous. If, for the time being, he stooped to flatter Buckingham, he made amends by barking at everybody else. It was from no enlarged views of political economy that he opposed the patents. He would have found it difficult to give any reason against them which would have squared with his ideas on the general course of trade. But just as Coke regarded them from the point of view of a common-law judge, so Cranfield looked upon them from the point of view of a City tradesman. Why they were injudicious he would have found it hard to say. But he saw that their immediate effect was to disarrange the course of trade. It is thus that the experience of practical men corrects the mistaken theories of the learned, and that Coke and Cranfield, inconsistent as they were with themselves, were able to raise a warning voice against the splendid mischief which Bacon, consistent in his errors, had conceived.
Cranfield’s hostility to Bacon was, no doubt, rendered more acute by a dispute which had arisen on a point of jurisdiction between the Court of Wards and the Court of Chancery. When, early in the session, complaints had been brought against his own Court, he had cleverly placed himself at the head of the movement, and had ostentatiously courted inquiry.[68] Strong in the popularity which he had thus acquired, he was not long in assuming the offensive. On February 24, he asked <47>that, to clear the honour of the King, the referees should be Feb. 27.subjected to an examination. On the 27th he repeated his demand. He wished to know why they had presumed to certify the lawfulness of any patent that was a grievance.[69] But the House made no response. Even in the matter of the disputed jurisdiction he found but little support. A committee was appointed to investigate the question, and recommended that counsel should be heard on both sides. Against this remissness Cranfield protested. It was not enough for him to obtain a decision that Bacon’s claim to jurisdiction was unfounded. He wished to have it proclaimed to the world that Bacon’s judgment had been unjust.[70]
Events were fighting on Cranfield’s side. On March 3, the very day on which Buckingham was frightened into his declaration against the referees, March 3.The gold and silver thread.the House of Commons, at the motion of Sir Robert Phelips, turned its attention to the patent for gold and silver thread. A committee was appointed to examine Michell and Yelverton in the Tower,[71] and its report was delivered on the 5th by Phelips. He told the story of the successive patents and proclamations, each one more stringent than the last. Bacon, Mandeville, and Yelverton had certified in favour of the monopoly. The whole business, it appeared, had been utterly mismanaged. The silver and gold had been alloyed with lead. The coin had been melted down. Measures of such doubtful legality that Yelverton shrank from sharing in them, had been employed to maintain the villany. But he had yielded at last to the threats of Sir Edward Villiers, and to fear of the ill consequences of resisting a brother of the favourite.[72]
Phelips’s statement was confirmed by further inquiry. The names of Mompesson and Michell acquired fresh notoriety as the active members of the commission by which the monopoly was enforced. It was since Mompesson’s name had been added to the list that the workmen complained of increased tyranny and harshness.
<48>Every element of opposition in the House was united in disgust at these revelations. The champions of the common law were justly dissatisfied with the creation of an arbitrary tribunal which sent men to prison without the interference of a jury. The advocates, or those who thought themselves the advocates, of liberty of trade were displeased by the restriction placed upon the freedom of labour, whilst those whose great commercial doctrine was the preservation of the precious metals were horrified when they heard of the treatment to which the coin had been subjected. March 8.On March 8, a committee was ordered, not only to lay before the Lords the complaint of the House against Mompesson, but to demand, in set terms, an inquiry into the conduct of the referees.[73]
That afternoon the Lords listened to the long complaint of the Lower House. The grievances of the inns, of the concealed lands, and of The Commons demand inquiry into the conduct of the referees.the gold and silver thread, were recited in order. But not a word was said about the referees. This part of the charge had been entrusted to two lawyers, Sir Heneage Finch and Thomas Crew; and either because they had no definite information on which to found a charge, or for some other reason, they held their peace. But Finch and Crew were not allowed to persist in their prudential silence. They were bidden to go back the next day, and to neglect to deliver their message at their peril.[74]
It was all very well for Buckingham to shift the blame from his own shoulders to those of the referees. But no such course was possible for James. Whatever might be the exact forms assumed by the inquiry into the conduct of Bacon and Mandeville, it was plain that it would be, in effect, a revival of the old parliamentary system of impeachment, which would carry with it a reversal of the whole constitutional policy of the Tudors. Within the memory of living man no minister of the Crown had been practically regarded as responsible to anyone but the Sovereign. For James, therefore, to allow <49>the Lord Chancellor and the Lord Treasurer to be called in question by Parliament would be to sacrifice that claim to sovereignty for which he had always so persistently struggled.
James, therefore, resolved to do his best to stem the tide. On the morning of the day on which Finch and Crew were to Mar. 10.The King resists inquiry.return with the message which they had omitted to deliver, he summoned the Commons to appear before him in the Upper House. He wished to know, he said, upon what they founded their claim to omnipotence? They had no precedents for what they were doing, excepting from times of confusion and anarchy. What had such cases to do with the age in which they were living? The sceptre was now in the hands of a wise and legitimate Sovereign, and it was to him that the honour of directing the government should be left.
“Before Parliament met,” he added, “my subjects, whenever they had any favour to ask, used to come either to me or to Buckingham. But now, as if we had both ceased to exist, they go to the Parliament. All this is most disrespectful. I will, therefore, tell you a fable. In the days when animals could speak, there was a cow burthened with too heavy a tail, and, before the end of the winter, she had it cut off. When the summer came, and the flies began to annoy her, she would gladly have had her tail back again. I and Buckingham are like the cow’s tail, and when the session is over you will be glad to have us back again to defend you from abuses.”
Never was a grave constitutional question argued in a stranger way. The King’s apologue, as may well be imagined, made but Persistence of the Commons.very little impression on his hearers. The first act of the Commons, on returning from the scene, was to send messengers to make fresh arrangements for the conference in the afternoon. The King, who was still within the precincts of the House of Lords, was deeply annoyed. Hurrying back in a passion, he seized upon the first excuse that came to hand as a channel for his dissatisfaction. It happened that the Subsidy Bill, which was to carry out the resolution passed a fortnight before, was to have gone through committee in the Commons on that <50>very afternoon. James chose to believe that by asking for a conference, the Lower House was deliberately postponing the relief of the Exchequer to its own grievances. With an angry face, and a volley of oaths, he told the Peers that they must forbid the Commons from meddling with any business whatever till the Subsidy Bill was passed. The Lords begged to be excused. They had arranged, they said, that the conference was to take place that afternoon, and they could not break their word. If his Majesty wished, he could send the message himself.
James was accordingly driven to send his orders through the Attorney-General. Coventry was received with all due respect by the Commons. The conference, he was told, could not now be abandoned. But as soon as it was over they would return to their own House, and would take good care that the Subsidy Bill should go through committee, if they sat till ten at night.[75]
The Commons had shown that they at least knew how to keep their temper, and James learnt that his resistance had done him no service. Charge brought against the referees.In the afternoon Finch and Crew laid before the Lords their charges against the referees. It was then that a scene occurred which showed how deeply the spirit of opposition had penetrated the Upper House. Bacon and Mandeville attempted to reply to the charges which affected them so deeply. As soon as they had finished, Coke asked whether this reply was to be taken as proceeding from the House. With one accord the Lords who were present answered with a bare negative. Not a voice was March 12.raised on behalf of the King’s theory that the Commons had no right to interfere with the conduct of his ministers. Nor was this all. At the next sitting Bacon and Mandeville were taken sharply to task by Pembroke for speaking at a conference without permission, and were compelled to apologise to the House for their breach of its <51>rules. Even Pembroke’s language was too respectful for the members of his party. He had spoken of the offenders, in the common language of the day, as ‘two great lords.’ At the motion of Lord Spencer, the friend and warm political supporter of Southampton, it was unanimously resolved that ‘no lords of this House are to be named great lords, for they are all peers.’[76]
These signs were not lost upon Buckingham. Though his name had not been mentioned, he knew well that by a large party March.Buckingham’s alarm.in both Houses he was regarded with marked disfavour, and that in the private conversation of the members, his downfall was not unfrequently spoken of as the necessary sequence of the measures which had been taken against the referees.[77] As the readiest mode of escaping the danger, therefore, he began to put forth his influence with the King in favour of a speedy dissolution.
In his distress he turned towards Williams for advice. The worldly-wise Dean of Westminster was shrewd enough to discern Advice of Williams.the risks which attended the course upon which his patron was entering. “Do not quarrel with the Parliament,” he said in effect, “for hunting down delinquents. It is its proper work. Have no fear lest your reputation should suffer. Put yourself at the head of the movement. Swim with the tide, and you cannot be drowned. If, in order to save some cormorants, you assist to break up this Parliament, which is now in pursuit of justice, you will pluck up a sluice which will overwhelm yourself. The King will find it a great disservice before the year is out. The storm will gather again, and your counsel will be remembered against you. Rather let those empty fellows, Mompesson and Michell, be made victims of the public wrath. Cast all monopolies into the Dead Sea after them. I have searched in the signet office, and have collected almost forty. Revoke them all. Hearken <52>not to Rehoboam’s earwigs, who would advise the King to levy money otherwise than by a Parliamentary grant.”[78]
Buckingham was charmed with this advice. He hurried the dean off to James, who received the counsel as if it had been Its acceptance.a revelation from heaven. In appearance it coincided with that which Bacon had given before the meeting of Parliament. That James should lead the Commons rather than contend with them was an easy recommendation. But it was one thing to advise the King to take note of the current of popular opinion, and to anticipate complaint by the correction of abuses. It was another thing to urge him to turn upon the agents of those abuses, and to sacrifice to popular clamour the tools whose misdemeanours might, for the most part, be traced to his own carelessness and inefficiency.[79]
Bacon knew that it was at him that the blow was principally <53>aimed. His old rival, Coke, had been accepted as a leader by the House of Commons, and, as was always the case with him, had thrown himself heart and soul into the part which for the moment he happened to play. It was probably about this time that Bacon appealed to the King in words which, if they were spoken on his own behalf, conveyed his honest opinion on the danger incurred by the Crown in abandoning its counsellors to a Parliamentary inquiry. “Those that will strike at your Chancellor,” he said, “it is much to be feared, will strike at your crown. I wish that as I am the first, I may be the last of sacrifices.” At the same time Bacon applied to Buckingham for his good offices with the King. Buckingham told him that he stood too high in his master’s favour to need any aid from him. “That may be true,” replied Bacon, “but I have always observed that, however bright a fire may be, it burns more brightly if it is blown.”[80]
If James was to shield the referees — and it is hard to see how he could do otherwise, unless he was to abandon his whole position as a king — he must show that he was on the side of those who wished the destruction of the monopolies which the referees had supported. This was precisely what he now made up his mind to do. When he once came to know that Michell and Mompesson The King’s message.had abused their powers, he was just as likely to wish to see them punished as any member of the Commons. On the 12th, he sent a message to the Commons, thanking them for their alacrity in pushing on the Subsidy Bill, and assuring them of his readiness to redress their grievances. In the Upper House, Buckingham played his part with the readiness of an accomplished actor. At a March 13.Buckingham’s declaration against Monopolies.conference which took place on the 13th he stepped forward to speak, though he was not a member of the Committee.[81] Before such a breach of order the fault committed by Bacon and Mandeville shrank into insignificance, and he was at once reduced to silence by Southampton. But Buckingham was not to be restrained so easily. He stepped back into the House, and returned with leave to say what he pleased.
<54>When he came back he spoke with unexpected vehemence. His brother Edward, he said, and his brother Christopher, had been named in the complaints of the Commons. If his father had begotten two sons to be grievances to the commonwealth, he must tell them that the same father had begotten a third son who would help in punishing them. It was the first time that he had known what a Parliament was, and he was ready to do everything in his power to further the welfare of the King and of the nation.
Smarting under the humiliation which he had undergone Buckingham hastened back once more to the House of Lords, to complain of Southampton’s interruption. His quarrel with Southampton.Hot words passed on both sides, and it was said that, but for the interposition of the Prince of Wales, swords would have been drawn. The arrogant favourite was obliged to explain that he had been absent when the censure was passed upon Bacon and Mandeville, and that he was consequently ignorant of the order against which he had offended.
Very different was the bearing of the Lower House when Buckingham’s words were reported to them. The Commons had The Commons profess themselves satisfied.no personal animosities to gratify. In their zeal for the public good they did not care to scrutinise too closely the motives of the magnificent favourite’s conversion. All thought of opposition to him was at once abandoned. On the 14th, the Bill against Monopolies, which had been brought in by Coke three days before, was read a second time. On the 15th, the charge against Mompesson was put into its final shape, and was carried up to the House of Lords. This time not a syllable was breathed against the referees.[82]
The Commons had shown that they were possessed of that political tact which is of more value than any temporary success. It is true that the right of inquiry into the conduct of high officers of state was the keystone of their position. But, for the time, it was of greater importance to define the law <55>than to punish offenders. It was certain that they could not proceed against the referees without alienating the King. If, on the other hand, The Monopoly Bill.they could convert into law the Bill which was before them, it would never again be in the power of any minister, however high in favour, to divert disputes relating to commercial privileges from the ordinary courts.
[1] Chamberlain to Carleton, July 8, S. P. Dom. cxvi. 13.
[2] Bacon to Buckingham, Oct. 18, 1616, Letters and Life, vi. 361. Charge of the Commons against Mompesson, House of Lords MSS.
[3] Commission to Mompesson and others, Patent Rolls, 14 Jac. I. Part 22.
[4] Hutton, Rep. 100.
[5] Bulstrode, Rep. i. 109. Viner’s Abridgment, xix. 437. Article Inns, sec. 9.
[6] Proceedings and Debates, i. 65.
[7] On this subject I have given full particulars in a paper on Bacon’s letters to Christian IV. Archæologia, vol. xli.
[8] 5 & 6 Ed. VI. cap. 25.
[9] 1 Jac. I. cap. 9; 4 Jac. I. cap. 5; and 7 Jac. I. cap. 10.
[10] The King to the Mayor and Justices of Southampton, March 30, 1608, Cott. MSS. Tit. B. iii. fol. 1.
[11] Cott. MSS. Tit. B. iii. fol. 2.
[12] Speech in the Star Chamber, King James’s Works, 522.
[13] Grant to Dixon and Almon, March 11, 1618, Patent Rolls, 15 Jac. I. Part 23. Buckingham to Bacon, Jan. 11. Bacon to Buckingham, Jan. 25, 1618, Letters and Life, vi. 289, 294. The following notes show that after the patent was granted the affair was laid before the judges:—
“Conference of the King with the judges at Greenwich, June 28, 1618.
“Then touching alehouses there was a project, as it seems, delivered to the King, which he read; whereupon it was thought fit (because it was said that the Justices of the Peace were to blame, either in not taking or not certifying their recognisances) that therefore no licences should be granted but in open sessions, and that they should be of the sufficienter sort of men.
“But where it was now put in practice that all such recognisances were by certiorari fetched into the King’s Bench, it was holden very inconvenient, for it is said that every recognisance brought in doth cost in fees more than 20s. there. When they are there, they are asleep; for who can come hither to inform the breach? It was used for a favour when a recusant was indicted, to remove the indictment into the King’s Bench; for that made a surcease of proceedings. And when the pretence was that recognisances were not returned, and that this way should discover that abuse:— Nihil minus; for how shall they know what recognisances are wanting, except they be sure of all the alehouses licensed through the several shires, which is impossible for the judges ever to take knowledge of. But in the several counties it is not hard both to know all the faults both in the justices and in the alehouses, and to punish and redress them, and therefore the law left them there to be prosecuted.
“In the end his Majesty left it to the consideration of the judges in point of conveniency touching this new use of recovering the recognisances.” — Tanner MSS. lxxiv. fol. 79.
Unfortunately we have not the final answer of the judges. But it will be seen that no point of law was raised against the patent, and that though the opinion of the judges, so far as it went, was adverse, there was no attempt to override it, but that the question was left to their further consideration.
[14] Grant to Bassano and Vandrey, Jan. 27, 1616, Patent Rolls, 13 Jac. I., Part 16, Proceedings and Debates, i. 295.
[15] Grant to Versellini, Dec. 15, 1574, Patent Rolls, 17 Eliz., Part 13. Grant to Bowes, Oct. 5, 1606, Patent Rolls, 4 Jac. I., Part 21. Its reversion was granted to Hart and Forset, Oct. 8, 1607, Patent Rolls, 5 Jac. I., Part 24. On Feb. 15, 1609, there was a grant to Salter for making certain glass, not mentioned in Bowes’s patent.
[16] Grant to Zouch and others, March 25, 1611, Patent Rolls, 9 Jac. I., Part 29.
[17] Grant to Zouch and others, March 4, 1614, Patent Rolls, 11 Jac. I., Part 16. Suffolk to Lake, Nov. 17, 1613, S. P. Dom. lxxv. 9.
[18] Grant to Montgomery and others, Jan. 19, 1615, Patent Rolls, 12 Jac. I., Part 3.
[19] Proclamation, May 23, 1615, S. P. Dom. clxxxvii. 42.
[20] Lady Bedford’s part has hitherto been enigmatical, and I had supposed in my paper on this subject in the Archæologia, that it was an ordinary case of Court favour. But the difficulty is cleared up by a passage in Yelverton’s Defence, April 30, 1621, as given in Elsing’s Notes (Camden Society), 43.
[21] Yelverton subsequently spoke of him as ‘mending many points therein with his own hand.’
[22] “He never conceived it to be a monopoly, nor doth … He never thought it a monopoly.” Yelverton’s Defence, April 30, 1621, Elsing’s Notes, 43.
[23] By the statute of monopolies patents for fourteen years may be granted for the ‘sole working or making of any manner of new manufactures within this realm.’ The interpretation put upon this is, that ‘a person who first imports an invention publicly known abroad into this country is the first inventor within these realms.’ Chitty, Collection of Statutes, ed. 1853, iii. 445, note b.
[24] Elsing’s Notes, 43.
[25] Ibid.
[26] The fact that the liberation by the King occurred at this stage of the proceedings, which was a matter of inference before, is placed beyond doubt by a passage in Serjeant Crewe’s statement before the House of Lords on April 18, 1621. “The second proclamation came after the commitment and the King’s enlargement.” — Elsing’s Notes, 5. In the printed volume this stands: “The two proclamations,” &c. I have not the MS. to refer to, but I suspect the words as here given are correct. They were taken from the original by myself, and if the other reading is right, Crewe must have said what was obviously untrue.
[27] See Mr. Spedding’s remarks in Bacon’s Letters and Life, vii. 205.
[28] I have printed many of the principal documents on this subject in a paper, “On four letters from Lord Bacon to Christian IV.,” in the 41st volume of the Archæologia, where will be found references to further evidence.
[29] Burton to Carnsew, Nov. 4, S. P. Dom. cxvii. 55.
[30] Bacon, Montague, and Hobart to Buckingham, Nov. 29, Letters and Life, vii. 142.
[31] Bacon to Buckingham, Nov. 29, Letters and Life, vii. 145.
[32] Bacon to Buckingham, Dec. 16, ibid. vii. 151.
[33] In the paper in the Archæologia, I quoted an estimate (S. P. Dom. cx. 35), of 1883l. of which 1000l. came from the glass patent. The latter sum should not, however, have been reckoned, as it was paid out again in the pension to Bowes.
[34] Dike’s examination, Proceedings and Debates, i. 127.
[35] Chamberlain to Carleton, June 28, July 8, Sept. 9, Oct. 28. Speech of Sir H. Yelverton, Oct. 27. Locke to Carleton, Nov. 11. ——— to ———, Nov. 15, S. P. Dom. cxv. 122; cxvi. 13, 92; cxvii. 37, 35, 71, 76. Sir H. Yelverton’s submission. Cabala (1696), 375.
[36] Chamberlain to Carleton, Feb. 3, 1621, S. P. Dom. cxix. 64. See Vol. III. p. 34.
[37] Montague to Buckingham, Jan. 3, 1619, Bacon’s Works, ed. Montagu, xvi. 227.
[38] Bacon’s Apophthegms, Let. and Prof. Works, ii. 181. Buckingham afterwards asserted that the money was only a loan for a year (Rushworth, i. 334, 387). But it would seem, from the letters published by Montagu (Bacon’s Works, xvi. 228), that this was not the case. An unpublished letter of Mandeville’s furnishes a hint of the true explanation. Writing, in 1623, to the King, he says: “I know well the necessity of the time. But my own, occasioned by your service, so presses me, that your Majesty will pardon the presumption and allow me the liberty to remember that your Majesty called me from the place of Chief Justice to be Lord Treasurer, in which place, after I had served you some nine months, I freely rendered up the place into your hands, putting myself upon your Royal promise, secured also by the word of my Lord of Buckingham, which in honour, I doubt not but he will make good.” Mandeville to the King, April 2, 1623. Harl. MSS. 1581, fol. 264. There can hardly, I think, be a doubt that the money was originally a gift to Buckingham, but that afterwards, when Mandeville was dismissed, James promised that it should be treated as a loan to be repaid within a year.
[39] Chamberlain to Carleton, Feb. 3, 1621, S. P. Dom. cxix. 64.
[40] Proceedings and Debates, i. 2.
[41] Gondomar to Philip III., Feb. 8⁄18, Simancas MSS. 2602, fol. 11.
[42] Under the date of February 5, Mrs. Green has calendared the celebrated speech of Sir E. Cecil on the importance of granting an immediate <29>supply to the Palatinate. It may, however, be asked why no trace of it occurs in the full reports which we have, from various hands, of that day’s debate. The fact is, the speech was a forgery. On Dec. 3, 1622, Carleton (S. P. Holland) expresses his suspicions to Chamberlain, and on the 21st Chamberlain replies:— “Upon inquiry, I am fully of your opinion touching Sir Edward Cecil’s speech, that he was not guilty of it; but that one Turner about him was the true father.” — Chamberlain to Carleton, Dec. 21, 1622, S. P. Dom, cxxxiv. 80. There appears to have been some doubt on the matter at the time. On May 15, 1621, Meade speaks of it as “made (as they say) in the beginning of this session.” — Harl. MSS. 389, fol. 67b. Whoever was the author, the speech does him great credit. There is a fine ring in its language from beginning to end. I have been informed by Mr. Graves, of the British Museum, that it is included in a copy of ‘The Works of the Most Famous and Reverend Divine, Mr. Thomas Scot,’ in the possession of Mr. Christie Miller.
[43] Proceedings and Debates, i. 14, 19. Commons’ Journals, i. 517. Chamberlain to Carleton, Feb. 10, S. P. Dom. cxix. 90.
[44] Elrington’s Life of Usher. Works, i. 53.
[45] Lords’ Journals, iii. 18, 19. Woodford to Nethersole, Feb. 17, S. P. Dom. cxix. 102.
[46] Commons’ Journals, i. 522.
[47] Calvert’s Speech, Feb. 15, S. P. Dom. cxix. 97.
[48] Proceedings and Debates, i. 47.
[49] Report of the Council of War, Feb. 12, S. P. Dom. cxix. 93.
[50] Proceedings and Debates, i. 48. It is important to understand the circumstances under which the grant was made, as unfounded inferences have often been drawn from a partial appreciation of the facts. Even Mr. Forster (Life of Pym, 9), who was not usually given to under-estimate the virtues of the House of Commons, said that the grant was ‘so small a sum, in fact, that it only left the King more completely at their feet.’ In his report from the Committee on the 16th, Coke, on the other hand, said distinctly that the money was voted ‘freely, not on any consideration or condition for or concerning the Palatinate.’ Proceedings and Debates, i. 50.
[51] Speech of a Privy Councillor, Feb. 16, S. P. Dom. cxix. 98.
[52] Proceedings and Debates, i. 36.
[53] Proceedings and Debates, i. 45, 51.
[54] Ibid. i. 60.
[55] Chamberlain to Carleton, Feb. 17. Murray to Carleton, Feb. 17, S. P. Dom. cxix. 101, 103.
[56] Salvetti’s News-Letter, Feb. 23.
[57] Chamberlain to Carleton, Jan. 31, S. P. Dom. cxix. 24.
[58] Lords’ Journals, iii. 19, 21, 22.
[59] Mead to Stuteville, Feb. 24, Harl. MSS. 389, fol. 21. Chamberlain to Carleton, Feb. 27, S. P. Dom. cxix. 133. Council Register, Feb. 19. Sir E. Brydges’ Memoirs of the Peers, 128.
[60] The story was adopted by the House and inserted in their charge against Mompesson, from which I have printed extracts in a paper On Four Letters from Lord Bacon, in vol. xli. of the Archæologia.
[61] Proceedings and Debates, i. 63, 69, 73.
[62] Ibid. i. 75, 78.
[63] Ibid. i. 85.
[64] Proceedings and Debates, i. 89, 100, 102.
[65] Proceedings and Debates, i. 103, 108, 112, 114; Commons’ Journals, i. 530–533. Locke to Carleton, March 3, S. P. Dom. cxx. 6.
[66] Despatch of Tillières, March 1⁄11, Raumer, ii. 306.
[67] Commons’ Journals, i. 537.
[68] Proceedings and Debates, i. 44.
[69] Proceedings and Debates, i. 89, 103.
[70] Commons’ Journals, i. 537.
[71] Proceedings and Debates, i. 117.
[72] Ibid. i. 120.
[73] Commons’ Journals, i. 546.
[74] Ibid. i. 547. Woodford to Nethersole, March 15, S. P. Germany.
[75] Woodford to Nethersole, March 15, S. P. Germany. Salvetti’s News-Letter March 16⁄26. Salvetti’s ignorance of the forms of the House has led to some inaccuracies in his account of the affair of the Subsidy Bill. But these mistakes are easily set right, and are not of a nature to throw any doubt over the general correctness of his narrative.
[76] Commons’ Journals, i. 550. Lords’ Journals, iii. 42.
[77] “Il Signor Marchese … cerca di giustificarsi col Parlamento dell’ impressione che hanno di lui. Il quale se saprà con venti tanto contrarii guidare la sua barca non farà poco.” Salvetti’s News-Letter, March 9⁄19. Compare the letter of March 16⁄26.
[78] Hacket’s Life of Williams, 50. In the speech as it there stands, the following often-quoted passage occurs:— “Delay not a day before you give your brother, Sir Edward, a commission for an embassage to some of the Princes of Germany or the Netherlands, and despatch him over the seas before he be missed.” Such is the prevailing ignorance of the details of this reign, that even well-informed writers have allowed themselves to believe that this nonsense is a genuine report of Williams’s words. Of course Williams said nothing of the kind. Villiers left England in January, and returned in April. When he left there was no expectation of any disturbance in Parliament. I suspect Williams said, “Keep your brother from returning,” or something of the kind. Some such plan was in contemplation. Salvetti, writing on the 9⁄19th of March, says, “Villiers non dovrà ritornare cosi presto, o almeno fino che questa assemblea del Parlamento duri.”
The speech is, however, too characteristic to be altogether imaginary, and was perhaps set down from memory, when the exact nature of the advice given about Villiers was forgotten. In the same speech, “Lord Posthumius” is of course a mere printer’s or copyist’s blunder, for L., i.e. Lucius Posthumius, an error which would hardly be worth notice, if it had not been sometimes supposed to be an allusion to Bacon. In the next page Hacket boldly states that ‘Sir E. Villiers was sent abroad and returned not till September following.’ This is an evident confusion arising from a dim recollection of Villiers’s second mission in the autumn.
[79] We are not told what was the date of Williams’s interview. But judging from the change in the King’s tone, I should suppose it to have taken place on the 11th.
[80] Bacon’s Letters and Life, vii. 199.
[81] Proceedings and Debates, i. 143.
[82] Woodford to Nethersole, March 15, S. P. Germany. Meddus to Mead, Harl. MSS. 389, fol. 26b, Proceedings and Debates, i. 150. ii. App. 6.