<337>Never within living memory had there been such competition for seats in the House of Commons. Never had the members chosen June 28.Numerous attendance at the opening of Parliament.attended so numerously on the first day of the session. Something there was doubtless of a desire to welcome the young King, of whom nothing but good was as yet known; something too, it may be, of curiosity to learn the secret of the destination of the ships which were gathering, and of the diplomatic messages wbich had been speeding bacwards and forwards over Europe. Nor is it at all unlikely that many at least were anxious to hear from the King’s lips some explanation of the way in which his promise had been kept to the former Parliament, some assurance, if assurance were possible, that the English Catholics had not benefited by the King’s marriage.
The presence of the members in London was not without risk to themselves. The plague, that scourge of crowded and unclean cities, The Plague in London.had once more settled down upon the capital. In the first week of April twelve deaths from this cause had been recorded. By the middle of June, just as Parliament was meeting, the weekly mortality was one hundred and sixty-five.[583]
Seldom has any sovereign had a harder task before him than that which was before Charles when he stood up to persuade <338>the Commons to vote him unheard-of sums of money in order that he might carry out a policy on which their opinion had never been asked, and of which they were almost Charles opens Parliament.certain to disapprove. Yet it is extremely unlikely that he felt at all embarrassed, or that the idea that any reasonable man in that great assembly could possibly disagree with him even entered into his mind.[584]
The business to be treated of, said the King, needed no eloquence to set it forth. He had nothing new to say. The advice which His speech.the Houses had given to his father had been taken, and he had but to ask for means to carry it still further into execution.
“My Lords and Gentlemen,” he then went on to say, “I hope that you do remember that you were pleased to employ me to advise my father to break both those treaties that were then on foot, so that I cannot say that I come hither a free, unengaged man. It is true that I came into this business willingly, freely, like a young man, and consequently rashly; but it was by your entreaties, your engagements. … I pray you remember that this being my first action, and begun by your advice and entreaty, what a great dishonour it were both to you and me if this action so begun should fail for that assistance you are able to give me.” After a few more words, urging his hearers to haste on account of the plague, and protesting his desire to maintain true religion intact, he left it to the Lord Keeper to signify his further pleasure.[585]
<339>Williams had not much to say,[586] and his hearers were doubtless thinking more of the young King’s first appearance than of Impression made by the speech.the Lord Keeper’s rhetoric. If we can trust to the subsequent recollection of Eliot, the impression made by Charles was pleasing. It was natural that he should not himself go into details, and the House might reasonably expect to hear more, in due course of time, from the Lord Treasurer or from a Secretary of State. Men were tired of the long speeches of the late King, and there was a general disposition to trust to the good intentions of his successor.
There was one point, however, on which the Commons had made up their minds. Whatever Charles or his ministers had yet Feeling about the Catholicsto tell them about the war, they meant to hold him to his promise about the Catholics. Any concession to them they regarded as dangerous to the security of the realm.
When the Speaker, Sir Thomas Crew, was presented to the King, he took the opportunity of expressing the general opinion of expressed by the Speaker.the House on this subject. The King, he trusted, would be able to recover the Palatinate, and also ‘really to execute the laws against the wicked generation of Jesuits, seminary priests, and incendiaries, ever lying wait to blow the coals of contention.’ To this exhortation Williams, by the King’s command, replied vaguely that speedy supplies were urgently needed, and that the House might trust his Majesty to choose the proper means of defending his religion.
On the 21st the Commons proceeded to business. There could be no doubt that precedent as well as ordinary courtesy demanded an explicit statement on the King’s behalf of the amount of the proposed expenditure and of the reasons upon <340>which the demand was founded. With the last Parliament June 21.No definite demand of supply made.James had entered into a direct engagement to take the Commons into his confidence when they next met.[587] Whether, if Charles had told the truth, he would have satisfied the Houses, may well be questioned. He preferred to tell them nothing at all. Not a minister rose in his place in the Lords or Commons to say how much was wanted, or to explain in what way the supply, if it were voted, would be spent. Charles threw the reins about the neck of Parliament, and expected it to follow his call.
Silence under such circumstances, whether the result of a deliberate purpose, or, as is more likely, of mere youthful inexperience and ignorance of human nature, was in itself the worst of policies. Above all things assemblies of men ask to be led; and to this assembly no guidance was offered. Whilst the House was still hesitating what to do, an unexpected motion was brought forward. Adjournment proposed by Mallory and Wentworth.Mallory, the member for Ripon, proposed that the King should be asked to adjourn the session to Michaelmas, on account of the prevailing sickness. The motion was warmly supported by Sir Thomas Wentworth. It is easy to understand why it should have found favour in his eyes. Wentworth’s policy.To him the war with Spain was sheer folly. King and Parliament, he thought, had gone mad together the year before. The duty of England, he considered, was to attend to its own business, to amend its laws and improve the administration of justice, leaving the Continent to settle its troubles in its own way. When he had heard of the prorogation of Parliament in October, he had been beyond measure delighted. “For my part,” he had written to a friend, “I take it well, and conceive the bargain wholesome on our side, that we save three other subsidies and fifteenths.”[588] An adjournment to Michaelmas now, which would save more subsidies still, would, we may readily conjecture, be equally agreeable in his eyes.[589]
<341>That Yorkshire members, coming from a part of England where antagonism with Spain was less pronounced than that in the counties, and above all, in the port towns, of the south, should wish to dispose for three months of the King’s demand for subsidies, is easily intelligible. The adjournment supported by Phelips,It is far more significant that Phelips, to whom Spain was as hateful as the principle of evil itself, should have risen in support of the proposal. There was matter of fear, he said, in every part of the State. Before they thought of giving, they ought to take an account of the supplies which were given in the last Parliament, and as, by reason of the plague, there could not possibly be found time enough then for such an inquiry, they should ask his Majesty that it might be defened to a more convenient opportunity.[590]
How far these words of the impetuous orator expressed the floating opinion of the House, must be left to conjecture; but, and rejected by the House.whatever members might think, they were not prepared to drive the King to extremities, and Mallory’s motion was without difficulty rejected.
Something, however, must be done, if it were only to occupy the time of the House. If the Commons had voted ten or twelve subsidies without asking questions, they would have given June 22.Committee for grievances not appointed.great pleasure to Charles and Buckingham, but they would have pleased no one else. At the next sitting, therefore, after a proposal for the appointment of the usual committee for grievances, came a motion from Alford[591] for a committee ‘to consider of <342>what course we shall take in all business this Parliament.’ To these motions Rudyerd rose. After a studied panegyric on the King, he adjured the House not to be led away into inquiries which might lead to contention so early in the reign. Sir Edward Coke professed himself content that there should be no committee for grievances, on the understanding that an answer should be given to those which had been presented the year before; and Coke’s suggestion was ultimately adopted.
A new turn to the debate was given by Sir Francis Seymour.[592] Their duty to God, he said, Petition on the Recusancy Laws proposed by Seymour.must not be forgotten. Let them ask the King to put in execution the laws against priests and Jesuits. After an animated discussion, in which member after member expressed himself in accordance with Seymour’s proposal, the question was referred to a committee of the whole House.
The most remarkable feature of this debate was the complete silence of the Privy Councillors in the House. It was only Silence of the Privy Councillors.at its close that Heath, the Solicitor-General, promised that an answer should be given to the grievances of 1624. On the general policy of the Government, it would seem, no man was commissioned to say a word.
The next day the House went into committee on religion and supply, ‘wherein religion was to have the first place.’ The key-note of the debate was struck by Eliot. “Religion it is,” June 23.Eliot’s speech on religion.he said, “that keeps the subjects in obedience, as being taught by God to honour his vicegerents. A religando it is called, as the common obligation among men; the tie of all friendship and society; the bond of all office and relation; writing every duty in the conscience, which is the strictest of all laws. Both the excellency and necessity hereof the heathens knew, that knew not true religion; and therefore in their politics they had it always for a maxim. A shame it were for us to be less intelligent than they! And if we truly know it, we cannot but be affectionate in this case. Two things are considerable therein — the purity and the <343>unity thereof; the first respecting only God, the other both God and man. For where there is division in religion, as it does wrong divinity, so it makes distractions among men. It dissolves all ties and obligations, civil and natural, the observation of heaven being more powerful than either policy or blood. For the purity of religion in this place I need not speak, seeing how beautiful the memories of our fathers are therein made by their endeavours. For the unity, I wish posterity might say we had preserved for them that which was left to us.”
To this lack of unity Eliot now addressed himself. Arguing that those who had fallen away from it were a constant danger to the State, he urged that, if necessary, the recusancy laws should be amended, or, if that could not be, that the existing laws should be put in execution.
Eliot’s speech is the more noteworthy as it announced the complete adhesion of a man who was no Puritan to the Puritan Meaning of the speech.opposition against Rome. In Eliot’s composition there was nothing of the dogmatic orthodoxy of Calvinism, nothing of the painful introspection of the later Puritans. His creed, as it shines clearly out from the work of his prison hours, as death was stealing upon him — The Monarchy of Man — was the old heathen philosophic creed, mellowed and spiritualised by Christianity. Between such a creed and Rome there was a great gulf fixed. Individual culture and the nearest approach to individual perfection for the sake of the State and the Church, formed a common ground on which Eliot could stand with the narrowest Puritan. All superstitious exaltation of the external ordinances of the Church, of human institutions which gave themselves out to be divine, was hateful to both alike. The Calvinist creed Eliot could ennoble to his own uses; the Roman creed he would have nothing to do with. For the sake of the English nation it was to be proscribed and trodden under foot. There must be unity and purity of faith, and that faith must be one which brought man face to face with his Maker.
The result of this debate was a petition drawn up by Pym[593] <344>and Sandys, and altered to some extent in committee. The King was asked to execute the penal laws in all their strictness, and Recusancy petition drawn up.to take other measures to prevent the spread of the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church. Nor did the Commons trust only in coercive measures. They desired that so many of the silenced ministers as would engage not to attack the government of the Church, should again be allowed to preach; that a restraint might be put upon non-residence, pluralities, and other abuses; and that some scheme might be drawn up for increasing the income of the poorer clergy.
If it is easy for us to condemn the readiness with which Eliot and Pym called in the authority of the State to repress a religion Charles not opposed to persecution.of which they disapproved, it is impossible to use their shortcomings as a foil for Charles’s virtues. He, at least, had no more idea than they had of opposing religious error by moral force. But for the disturbing influence of his marriage, he would have been quite as ready as they were to put in execution the laws against the recusants. His difficulty was not that of a man who is asked to do what he thinks wrong, but merely that of a man who is entangled by two contradictory promises, and who sees the time approaching when one, if not both of them, must be broken.
When on June 30 the petition was sent up to the Lords for their approval, it had been still further modified. The request that June 30.The petition sent up.the silenced ministers should be readmitted to their pulpits without exacting any fresh pledges from them had given place to a request that a fresh effort should be made to reduce them to conformity.
It would still be some time before the petition on religion reached the throne. What Charles expected the Commons to do Seymour’s motion for a small supply.as soon as they had relegated their religious grievances to the House of Lords it is impossible to say. Supply stood next in order to be treated of; but though twelve days of the session had passed away, giving him time to reflect on the attitude of the Commons, he had taken no steps to explain to them the real meaning of the vague demands which he had made in his opening speech.
<345>If Charles expected that, when once the petition on religion had been cleared out of the way, the Commons would lay at his feet the vast treasures which he needed, but the amount of which he had not ventured to specify, he was soon bitterly undeceived. Scarcely had the petition left the House when Sir Francis Seymour rose and proposed the grant of one subsidy and one fifteenth, or about 100,000l. Seldom has a motion more simple Importance of the motion.in appearance been more momentous in its consequences. The vote proposed was as nearly as possible one tenth of the sum which Charles required to fulfil his engagements. It therefore implied, under the most courteous form possible, a distinct resolution of the House to give no adequate support to the war in which the King was engaged.
Seymour gave no reasons for his abrupt intervention. As far as he was personally concerned, it is not difficult to find an explanation of Consistency of Seymour.his conduct. He had been one of the most eager in the last Parliament to engage England in a war with Spain, one of the most decided in protesting against any attempt to involve Parliament in extensive military operations on the Continent.[594] He was therefore only consistent with himself in refusing the supply necessary to carry out a policy of which he disapproved.
The Court party was taken by surprise. Many of its members were absent from the House; all of them had been left The Court party taken by surprise.without instructions how such an emergency was to be met. Rudyerd alone, facile speaker as he was, was prepared to say something, and he dwelt at some length upon the recent expenses of the Crown, the sums of money which would be required for the payment of debts incurred in burying King James, for the entertainment of foreign ambassadors, for the approaching coronation, and for the war. The navy was to be got ready; the Dutch, the King of Denmark, Mansfeld, to be assisted. But whatever Rudyerd might say, he had not been empowered to ask for any definite sum <346>of money, and the combined vagueness and magnitude of his demands were not likely to conciliate men who felt themselves drifting into a war the duration and extent of which were beyond calculation. The most dangerous temper in which an assembly can be found is that which arises when it believes that it has not been treated with confidence; and though we have no means of knowing whether the House was in such a temper when Seymour rose, it certainly was not for want of a cause, if no such feeling existed.[595]
The existing dissatisfaction, whatever may have been the extent to which it had spread, found full expression in Phelips. Now, it would seem, Speech by Phelips.he was less isolated than when at the beginning of the session he had risen to support the motion for an immediate adjournment. After a few words which, to Charles at least, must have sounded like bitter irony, in which he described the proposed grant as an expression of the affections of the subject, he went on to complain, in somewhat exaggerated terms, of the state of the kingdom as it had been left by James. Then, coming to the point at issue, he aimed straight at the argument upon which Charles had relied in his opening speech. It was not true, he said, that Parliament was bound by any engagement to the King. “The promises made,” he explained, “were in respect of a war. We know yet of no war, nor of any enemy.” Then, touching on still more delicate ground, he referred to the late disasters. No account had been given of the expenditure of the last subsidies. But even if that were in readiness, “What account is to be given of twenty thousand men, and of many thousand pounds of treasure, which have been expended without any success of honour or profit?”[596] Such failures, he <347>added, had not been usual in the days of Elizabeth. Let them press upon the King the necessity of taking these things to heart, and beg him ‘to proceed in his government by a grave and wise counsel.’ He would vote, however, for rather more than Seymour had proposed. He thought they might give two subsidies without any fifteenths, that is to say, about 140,000l. He hoped no man would press for more. If any man put forward the King’s merit as a reason for a higher grant, he missed the right way. “For other argument,” he ended, “we know what can be said, and hope that at the return of the navy Grant of two subsidies.there will be better inducements.” In the end Phelips’s amendment was carried, and two subsidies were voted.
Charles’s want of confidence in the House was thus met by a vote which was practically a vote of want of confidence in his advisers. How far were the Commons in the right?Phelips’s main position was unassailable. It was not true that, even if the existing Parliament were bound by the vote of the last one, it was under any engagement to the King, except to take into consideration his proposals relating to the war. When he came before the Houses without any definite demands, they could but judge him by the result of his actions, and those actions had been so thoroughly unsuccessful that they furnished no inducement to trust him blindly in the future.
Yet, though the step taken by the House under the guidance of Seymour and Phelips was certainly justifiable, it is impossible not to regret the manner in which the thing was done. An event of such historical importance as a breach between the Crown and the House of Commons should not have been allowed to take place upon a sudden and unexpected motion, followed by a hasty vote. The House, in all probability, would have failed in any case to establish satisfactory relations with Charles; but it would have spared itself much obloquy in the future, and would have conciliated much popular feeling at the time, if it had condescended to put its views and intentions into an address in vindication of its thoroughly legitimate position. That there was no ill intention is probable enough. Men who disliked voting money for questionable objects would be glad <348>enough to escape from the necessity of entering into controversy with their sovereign, and would doubtless flatter themselves that, in voting two subsidies, they had done the King considerable service.[597]
The vote of so inadequate a supply was a bitter pill for Charles to swallow. His first impulse was to remonstrate against Charles thinks of remonstrating.the measure which had been dealt out to him. Instructions were given to one of the ministers to July 4.But promises to end the session.press the House to increase its vote.[598] But the intention was soon abandoned. By the King’s order the Solicitor-General laid before the Commons the answer to the grievances of the last Parliament, and the Lord Keeper at the same time informed them that the King was sorry ‘for the great danger they were in by reason of the sickness, and that’ he was prepared to end the session as soon as they were ready.[599] In these words the Commons naturally <349>discovered an intimation that they were to hear no more of the demand for money. The plague was raging terribly in London. Men were counting up the growing death-rate with perplexed faces. Members go home in crowds.The members, believing that all serious business was at an end, slipped away in crowds to their homes, leaving less than a fourth part of their number to bring the session to a close.
Already, in spite of the preoccupation of the House with other matters, a question had been decided of some interest in itself, and June.Wentworth’s election.of still greater interest as bringing into collision two men who more than any others were to personify the opposing views of the parties in the approaching quarrel, and who were both to die as martyrs for the causes which they respectively espoused. At the beginning of the session Sir Thomas Wentworth took his seat as member for Yorkshire. His rival, Sir John Savile, accused the sheriff of the county of having conducted the election so irregularly that a fresh appeal to the electors was a matter of necessity. According to Savile, the sheriff, being a friend of Wentworth, interrupted the polling when he saw that it was likely to go against the candidate whom he favoured. The sheriff, having been summoned to give an account of his proceedings, explained that when the poll was demanded it was past eleven in the morning, and that he had doubted whether it could legally be commenced at so late an hour. He had, however, given way on this point, but he believed that no one who had not been present when the writ was read had a right to vote, and consequently when some of Savile’s men broke open the doors in order to force their way to the poll, he had put a stop to the voting and had declared Wentworth to be duly elected.
In the discussions which followed in the House, not only were the facts of the case disputed, but there was considerable difference of opinion as to the proper procedure at elections. <350>Wentworth bore himself as haughtily as usual. Not only did he state his case proudly and defiantly, but, in opposition to the rules of the House, he omitted to withdraw when it was Wentworth’s advocacy of his own case.under investigation, and rose again to answer the arguments which had been urged against him. Eliot at once rose to denounce the offender, comparing him to a Catiline who had come into the senate in order to ruin it. Before this invective Wentworth was compelled to leave the House, though he was afterwards permitted to return and to state his case once more.[600]
It was no mere personal rivalry, no casual difference, which divided Wentworth and Eliot. With Wentworth good government was the sole object in view. Everything else was mere machinery. Conscious of his own powers, he was longing for an opportunity of exercising them for the good of his fellow-countrymen; but, excepting so far as they could serve his ends, he cared nothing for those constitutional forms which counted for so much in the eyes of other men. The law of election existed, one may suppose him to think if not to say, for the purpose of sending Sir Thomas Wentworth to Parliament. He was himself arrogant and overbearing to all who disputed his will. In private he expressed the utmost contempt for his fellow-members,[601] and it is not likely that he had any higher respect for his constituents. He was an outspoken representative of that large class of July 4.politicians who hold that ability is the chief requisite for government, and who look with ill-concealed contempt upon the view which bases government upon the popular will.
Eliot stood at the opposite pole of political thought. To <351>him the attempt to convert Parliamentary elections into a sham was Eliot’s reproof.utterly abhorrent. In them he saw the voice of the nation speaking its mind clearly, as he saw in the representatives of the nation once chosen the embodiment of the majesty of England. Out of the fulness of his heart he reproved the man who held both the House and its constituents in contempt.
The majority sided with Eliot. Glanville, whose authority was great on all questions of this nature, produced precedents to July 5.The election declared void.show that a poll when demanded must be granted, whether it was after eleven or before, and that electors had a right to vote even if they had not heard the writ read. Wentworth’s election was declared void, and the doors of the constitution were opened more widely than they had been before.[602]
Few as were the members remaining at Westminster during the last days of the session, they had still matters of unusual importance to discuss. 1622.Montague at Stanford Rivers.Some three years before, Richard Montague, the rector of Stanford Rivers, in Essex, found in the hands of some of his parishioners a paper drawn up by a Roman Catholic missionary, containing the usual arguments against those Calvinistic tenets which, at the close of the preceding century, had been the accepted doctrines of the great majority of the clergy, and attacking the popular theology as if it was the accepted doctrine of the English Church. Montague, who belonged to a different school, and who found support for his opinions in those formularies of his Church which reflected the belief of an earlier generation, determined to frame a reply which should base its repudiation of the Roman doctrine upon grounds very different from those which were popular amongst the clergy and laity. He was not unversed in controversy, having already entered the lists against Selden himself, whose History of Tithes he had unsparingly condemned.
The result of Montague’s meditations was that The Gag for the new Gospel — such was the quaint name of the paper <352>which had aroused his indignation — received a reply under the 1624.A New Gag for an Old Goose.equally quaint name of A New Gag for an Old Goose. It is unnecessary to say that it was deformed with that scurrility from which few controversies in that age were free. But, as far as the matter of the volume is concerned, an impartial judgment will probably consider it as a temperate exposition of the reasons which were leading an increasing body of scholars to reject the doctrines of Rome and of Geneva alike. To the Calvinistic doctrine of predestination Montague entertained an insuperable objection. He refused to speak of the Roman Church as indubitably Antichrist, or of the Pope as the man of sin.[603] Those who remained under the Pope’s authority formed a part of the Church of Christ, corrupt and unsound in the highest degree, but not utterly apostate. Of the more peculiar doctrines sanctioned by Papal authority he spoke in a way very different from that in which the majority of Protestant Englishmen were accustomed to express themselves. He denied the right of the clergy to enforce upon the people the practice of compulsory auricular confession;[604] but he held that in cases where the mind was perplexed or the conscience burthened with sin, the person so troubled might be invited, or even exhorted, to come voluntarily to the Christian minister, and to seek for advice and consolation, and for the declaration of divine pardon to the repentant offender. He denied that the bread and wine in the Lord’s Supper underwent any substantial change; but he asserted that Christ was therein present to the faithful receiver in some mysterious way which he did not venture to define.[605] Pictures and images, he <353>said, might not be made the object of worship or even of veneration; but there was no reason why they should not be used, even in churches, to bring the persons and actions of holy men of old before the minds of the ignorant, and thus to excite devotion in those upon whose ears the most eloquent sermon would fall flat. Montague, in short, proposed that they should be used much in the same way as the pictures in illustrated Bibles, or in painted church windows, are used in our own time.[606] He finally argued that prayers to the saints were to be rejected, not because he doubted that the holy dead retained a loving sympathy with those who were yet living, but because he was unconvinced that there was any way of reaching their ears so as to excite their pity, and further, because ‘we may well be blamed of folly for going about, when we may go direct; unto them, when we may go to God.’[607]
Such opinions were not likely to pass long unchallenged. Two clergymen, Yates and Ward, complained to a committee of the Commons The Commons refer the book to Abbot.in the last Parliament of James, and, as the session was drawing to a close, the Commons referred their complaint to the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Although Abbot warmly sympathised with the objections taken to the New Gag, he did not much like the responsibility Abbot’s proeeedings.thrust upon him by the House of Commons. If the idea, prevalent with modern writers, that he was still under disgrace in consequence of the accidental homicide committed by him in Lord Zouch’s park, finds little countenance from contemporary evidence, it is certain that James far preferred the chatty, secular-minded Williams to the Calvinistic, clerical Archbishop. Abbot therefore thought it best, as soon as he had read the book, to ask James what he had better do, and was recommended to send for the author.
<354>Abbot took the hint. “Mr. Montague,” he said, “you profess you hate Popery, and no way incline to Arminianism. He remonstrates with Montague.You see what disturbance is grown in the Church and the Parliament House by the book by you lately put forth. Be occasion of no scandal or offence; and therefore this is my advice unto you. Go home, review over your book. It may be divers things have slipped you, which, upon better advice, you will reform. If anything be said too much, take it away; if anything be too little, add unto it; if anything be obscure, explain it; but do not wed yourself to your own opinion, and remember we must give an account of our ministry unto Christ.”
Such advice, which might perhaps have been of some avail with a young man whose opinions were as yet unformed, was of course thrown away upon a practised writer who was simply asked to cast the whole treasure of his intellect in a new mould. Montague too went to the King, and found in James a sympathising auditor. “If that is to be a Papist,” said James, “so am I a Papist.” By the King’s permission he prepared Appello Cæsarem.a second book, entitled Appello Cæsarem, in which he vindicated more fiercely than before his claim to be the true exponent of the doctrine of the Church; and this book, having been referred by James to Dr. White, Dean of Carlisle, was by him declared to contain nothing but what was agreeable to the public faith, doctrine, and discipline of the Church of England, and was accordingly licensed for the press. Before it was ready for publication, James died, and it was issued with a dedication to his successor.
Montague’s opinions were not likely to be popular. On July 1, as soon as the question of supply had been settled, the Commons 1625.July 1.The Commons apply to Abbot.sent a deputation to Abbot, to know what steps he had taken. The deputation found him much vexed. After telling them all that had happened, he complained that he had not even been informed of the intended publication of the second book till it was actually in the press. As, however, he had no legal jurisdiction over Montague on the mere complaint of the House of Commons, all that he could say was that he would gladly give his <355>judgment upon the Appello Cæsarem whenever he should be ‘orderly directed to it.’
The attempt of the Commons to obtain the unofficial support of the Archbishop having thus The books referred to a committee.fairly broken down, they referred the whole subject to the committee by which the Petition on Recusancy had been prepared.
That the report of the committee would be adverse to Montague was clearly to be foreseen. His opinions had made but little way amongst the lawyers and country gentlemen — the two most conservative classes in the nation — of whom the House was mainly composed. Nor indeed was it to be expected that English Calvinism.the prevailing Calvinism would surrender its ground without a struggle. It had done great things for Europe. At a time when the individual tendencies of Protestantism threatened to run riot, it had given to men a consistent creed and an unbending moral discipline, which was yet Protestant to the core, as being built upon the idea of the Divine choice resting upon the individual soul, without the intervention of any priest or ecclesiastical society. Wherever the struggle with Rome was the deadliest, it was under the banner of Calvinism that the battle had been waged. Wherever in quiet villages, or in the lanes of great cities, anyone woke up to the consciousness that a harder battle with sin was to be waged in his heart, it was in the strength of the Calvinistic creed that he had equipped himself for the contest. Alone with his God, the repentant struggling sinner entered the valley of the shadow of death. Alone with his God he stepped forth triumphantly to hold out a hand to those who had passed through the like experience with himself.
The strength of the English Calvinists lay mainly in the humble peaceable men who found in their creed a safeguard against a life of sin. Story of Baxter.Such a one was the father of Richard Baxter. Around his Shropshire home, in the last ten years of James’s reign, there was but little preaching at all. In one village there were ‘four readers successively in six years’ time,’ ignorant men, and two of them immoral in their lives! In another ‘there was a reader of about eighty years of <356>age that never preached.’ He said the Common Prayer by heart, and got a day-labourer or a stage-player to read the psalms and lessons. These were succeeded by others, one of whom obtained a living in Staffordshire, and, after preaching for twelve or sixteen years, was turned out on the discovery that his orders were forged. Then came an attorney’s clerk who was a drunkard, and who took orders, or pretended to have done so, because he could not make his living in any other way. On Sundays and holidays these men read prayers, ‘and taught school and tippled on the week days,’ often getting drunk and whipping the boys. The villagers did not prosper under such shepherds. As soon as the hasty service was over on Sunday morning, they gathered round the maypole on the green and spent the rest of the day in dancing and jollity. To take no share in these riotous amusements was to incur the mockery of the little community, and to earn the nickname of Puritan, a word which then carried the deadliest reproach. Not that the elder Baxter had any wish to separate himself from the Church. He ‘never scrupled Common Prayers or ceremonies, nor spoke against Bishops, nor ever so much as prayed but by a book or form, being not ever acquainted then with any that did otherwise; but only for reading Scripture when the rest were dancing on the Lord’s Day, and for praying — by a form out of the end of the Common Prayer Book — in his house, and for reproving drunkards and swearers, and for talking sometimes a few words of Scripture and the life to come, he was reviled commonly by the name of Puritan, Precisian, and hypocrite.’[608]
For most of those who took part in the conflict with Rome and the conflict within themselves, there was no disposition to shake off the Calvinistic doctrine. They felt it as a support rather than an incumbrance. They had no wish to probe it to its depths or to search out its weak points. Its moral strength was enough for them.
This could not last for ever. There was sure to come a time in every land when this feeling that religion was a conflict would die away, at least with some; when those who grew up strengthened by the surrounding influences of habitual piety <357>would look to their religion rather as an intellectual framework to Reaction against Calvinism.the quiet morality of their lives than as a struggle or an effort. In England it came when men like Laud and Montague set themselves free from the bonds of Calvinistic dogmatism. They claimed to think for themselves in cases in which no decision had been pronounced, and to search for goodness and truth on every side. They were offended not merely by this or that doctrine of Calvinism, bnt with its presumption in repelling half the Christian Church of the present, and almost all the Christian Church of the past, from participation in the Divine favour. They were offended with its dogmatism, with its pretensions to classify and arrange men’s notions of mysteries which eye hath not seen nor ear heard, and they claimed the right to say that there were things on which the popular religion had pronounced clearly, which were nevertheless beyond the domain of human knowledge.
Even if, like the Arminians of the Netherlands, the rebellion against Calvinistic dogmatism had taken a merely doctrinal form, Not a popular movement.the supporters of that rebellion would have had but little chance of taking hold of the popular mind. The objections which they felt were only likely to occur to men of culture and education. It was alike their weakness and their strength that the movement was emphatically a learned movement — a movement originating with those who had outgrown the leading strings which were still necessary to guide the steps of others, and who could look without shrinking at the fact that religion was a subject upon which human reason could, to a very limited extent, exercise its powers. They were intellectually the Liberal Churchmen of the age. They stood between two infallibilities — the infallibility of Calvinism and the infallibility of Rome — not indeed casting off entirely the authority of the past, but, at least in a considerable sphere of thought, asking for evidence and argument at each step which they took, and daring to remain in uncertainty when reason was not satisfied.[609]
<358>Evidently such a standing-point was not likely to be received with popular applause; and the difficulty before these men was Necessity of system to the party.considerably increased by the fact that they did not content themselves with merely doctrinal differences. It is a necessity of human nature that for every plunge which it makes forward into the untried sea of free thought, it must attach itself all the more closely in some other direction to the firm ground of orderly systematic belief. Luther, as he struck boldly out from the Church institutions of his day, saved his creation from falling into chaos by clinging with almost convulsive grasp to the institutions of the State. Calvin, in fixing his eyes upon the individual salvation of the man predestined to glory, took care to surround the future saint with the strictest discipline and with the iron bonds of a theology which was for him to be ever unquestioned. In our day those who trust most to their own powers of reason are the loudest in proclaiming the forces of universal law, and in expounding the necessity of acknowledging a fixed order in the universe.
For men like Montague and Laud the order of Rome and the order of Calvinism were alike impossible. Never again Position taken by it.would they bend their necks under either yoke. It was by looking back to the earlier days of the English Reformation, when Calvinism was but stealing in, that they found what they needed. The theology of Cranmer, fixing itself upon the principle that all practices were to be maintained, all doctrines held, which could not be proved false by the authority of Scripture and the custom of the early Church, suited them exactly. It gave them a rational ground on which to stand. It gave employment to minds to which the history, especially the ecclesiastical history, of the past was an attractive <359>study. It appealed to the poetic and artistic instincts which were almost smothered under the superincumbent weight of dogmatic theology. It fenced them in with memories of the past, and ceremonial forms in the present. Their life was more sympathetic, more receptive of a higher culture than that of others, but at the same time weaker, and less able to fit them to take the lead in any crisis through which the nation might be called upon to pass, all the more because their ideas were not originally arrived at by independent thought, but partook to a great extent in the weakness which attends the revival of the system of an earlier age. That which in Cranmer was the forward movement of the present, became in Laud a looking back to the dry bones of the past.
It was natural that the outward ceremonialism of the men should attract more notice than that principle of intellectual liberalism which, though yet in its germ in their minds, brings them into connection with modern thought. It was natural, too, that they should be accused of inclining towards Rome. How far it inclined towards Rome.They attached weight to external acts and ceremonies, which they venerated in common with the Roman Church. Their whole way of regarding the spiritual life of man was, if not Roman, distinctly not Protestant. Luther and Calvin, differing in much, had agreed in this, that the relation between the individual soul and God came first, and that all Church arrangements were secondary matters. The new school of English Churchmen brought the subject of Church arrangements into fresh prominence. Uniformity was to be maintained as the surest preservative of unity. From the cradle to the grave man’s life was to be surrounded with a succession of ecclesiastical acts influencing his soul through the gates of the senses. The individual was cared for by the Church. He stepped from the first to the second place.
It is impossible to deny that even the modified permission to men to think as they pleased on matters on which the Church had not pronounced her decision arose rather from a feebleness of speculative energy than from any broad view of the necessity of liberty of thought to the searcher after truth. When they repudiated, as most of them did, the epithet of Arminian which was hurled in their faces by their opponents, they were <360>guilty of no hypocrisy. They did not much care whether any particular view of predestination were true or false. What they did care for was that men should be honest and virtuous, and live peaceable and orderly lives under the care of the proper authorities in Church and State. If it is true that this view of life deserved to be held in due regard, it is also true that without the stern moral earnestness which was the characteristic of the opposite party, life tends to become like a stagnant pool, breeding all manner of foulness and corruption.
Such a system might be regarded as holding a middle place between Rome and Calvinism; but it might also be regarded as a mere feeble copy of Rome. Those who valued the independent reasoning and the freedom of inquiry upon which it was based would take the more favourable view. Those to whom freedom of inquiry was an object of terror, would have nothing to say to it. They would desert it for the infallibility of Rome, or they would attack it in the name of Calvinism. Between the negation of individual religion and the assertion of individual religion, a compound of free thought and ceremonial observance was likely to have a hard time before it could establish itself in the world.
As yet, however, the ceremonial part of the controversy had hardly engaged the attention of observers. It was with Montague’s doctrinal positions that the Commons’ committee was principally engaged. However orthodox a committee of the House of Commons might be, it was certain to be influenced by thoughts which would have no weight with a Synod of Dort or a Scottish General Assembly. July 7.Report of the committee.Those who drew up its report did their best to conceal from themselves the fact that they were advising the proscription of certain theological opinions. They said that ‘though there be tenets in that first book contrary to the Articles of Religion established by Act of Parliament, yet they think fit for the present to forbear till some more seasonable time to desire a conference with the Lords that course may be taken to repair the breaches of the Church and to prevent the like boldness of private men hereafter.’ All direct action against the opinions contained in the book, therefore, was to be postponed for the <361>time. The author was not to be allowed to escape so easily. It might be doubted whether the House was acting within its powers in dealing with theological belief. Its right to interfere in matters of State could not be doubted. Montague was accordingly accused of dishonouring the late king, of disturbing Church and State, and of treating the rights and privileges of Parliament with contempt.
Of these three charges the first was absolutely ludicrous. To accuse a man of treating James with disrespect by publishing Montague accused of differing with King James.a book of which the late King had expressed his approbation, simply because certain opinions were controverted in it which James had advocated in early life, was not only absurd in itself, but would have led to conclusions which the Commons would have been the first to repudiate. For if a man was to be prosecuted for disagreeing with James on a point of theology, why might he not much more be prosecuted for disagreeing with Charles?
The real weight of the accusation, however, fell upon the second head. The unity of religion which Eliot had so Of sowing dissension.enthusiastically praised had its advantages. Statesmen as well as theologians might look with apprehension on the day when Protestantism was to embark upon the raging waves of internal controversy, and when, as it might be feared, the Jesuits would be enabled to sing triumphant songs of victory whilst their antagonists were fleshing their swords in mutual slaughter. Even if such was not to be the case, the entrance of religious strife would open a sad and dreary perspective of bitterness and wrangling, of seared consciences, and of polemical ability rearing itself aloft in the place which should have been occupied by moral suasion; for it must be acknowledged that, if Montague was far less scurrilous than Milton was a few years later, his tone was by no means calm. He had used expressions which might occasionally give offence. Above all, he had spoken of his adversaries as Puritans, a term which is now generally applied to the whole Calvinistic party, but was then looked upon as a disgraceful epithet, only applicable to those who refused conformity to the Prayer Book.
<362>The third charge carried the question into the region of law and privilege. Montague had Of treating the House of Commons with contempt.presumed to print his second book before the Commons had concluded their examination of the first, and had attacked Yates and Ward, who, as complainants, were under the protection of the House.
As soon as the report of the committee had been read, a debate arose in which the charge of differing from King James Debate in the House.seems to have been treated with silent contempt. The second charge found more ready acceptance. A small minority indeed argued that Montague’s opinions had never been condemned by the Church of England. Even amongst those who scouted this view of the case there appears to have been a feeling that there was no wisdom in approaching so nearly to a theological discussion. Coke, however, had no such hesitation. To him the Common Law was all in all, and he quoted Fleta to prove ‘that the civil courts ought to have a care of the peace of the Church.’ Others again argued that the complaint was not made ‘directly for the doctrine, but for the sedition;’ that the meaning of the Articles was plain, and that they only asked that the law should be put in execution. In the end it was resolved that a committee should be appointed to examine Montague’s books, and that when Parliament next met the whole subject should be brought before the Lords. There remained the question of privilege. Sandys indeed, with the support of Sir Humphrey May, took the common-sense view, that there had been no contempt of the House. All that had been done in the former Parliament, they said, had been to refer the case to the Archbishop. As the Archbishop had not thought proper to treat Montague as a delinquent, he had not put him upon his trial, and it was well known that a man not upon his trial was not precluded from replying to his opponents. The House seems to have been divided between its respect for these arguments and its wish not to allow Montague to escape altogether. He was committed to the custody of the serjeant-at-arms, but a hint was given him that he would be allowed to go at liberty upon giving a <363>bond to the serjeant for his reappearance when the Commons met again.[610]
A breathing time was thus afforded to Charles to consider what part he would take in the controversy. The importance of What was the King to do?the question before him was more momentous even than that of the direction of the war. Whatever might be the opinion of the Commons, it was clearly to the advantage of the nation that the men who thought with Montague should not be condemned to silence, and that there should be room found outside the pale of Rome for those who had revolted against the dogmatic tyranny supported by the House of Commons. For a great statesman like Barneveld the work would have had its attractions, though he would have known that he was treading on dangerous ground, in which a slip might be fatal to himself, even if his cause was certain of ultimate success. Difficult as the task of finding room for differences of opinion was, its difficulty was immeasurably increased by the tone of Montague and his friends. They did not ask for liberty of speech or for equal rights with others. They and they alone were the true Church of England. Their teaching was legal and orthodox, whilst the opinions of their opponents had been cast upon the Church ‘like bastards upon the parish where they were born, or vagabonds on the town where they last dwelt.’
Charles made no attempt to save these men from their own exaggerations. His sympathies were entirely with those who resembled himself in their love of art, in their observance of ceremonial order, and in their reverence for the arrangements of Church and State. He listened to Laud as his father never had listened to him. That pushing, bustling divine was convinced, even more clearly than Montague, that his system was the only true system for all men and for all times. Scarcely had Charles ascended the throne when he applied to Laud to draw up a list of the principal clergy, distinguishing those who <364>were suitable from those who were unsuitable for promotion. Laud’s O. and P. list.A long catalogue was soon handed in, duly marked with O. and P., the Orthodox as fit for reward, the Puritan to be treated with neglect. It was the beginning of a fatal course. Calvinism had too much vitality in England, and was too thoroughly identified with the struggle against Rome and Spain, to be borne down by a partial distribution of Court patronage. The power of the Crown counted still for much, but its strength had rarely been tried as Charles would try it, if he attempted to impose his own religious opinions upon an unwilling nation.
If religion was Charles’s main difficulty it was not his only one. At present his want of money touched him more nearly. He saw questions stirred in the Lower House which might seriously impair even his existing revenue. Ever since the days of Henry VI. July 5.Tonnage and poundage.the duties on exports and imports known under the name of tonnage and poundage had been granted by Parliament for the lifetime of each successive sovereign in the first session of his reign. This grant now for the first time met with opposition. The usual formula was that the supply was offered to provide means for guarding the seas. Sir Walter Erle, who, as member for Dorsetshire, would know something of what was passing in the Channel, reminded the House that during the last few weeks English vessels had been captured off the Scilly Isles by rovers from Sallee, and that even the Channel itself was not adequately guarded. Erle had even more to say than this. In James’s reign certain duties had been levied under the name of pretermitted customs, which were alleged by the Crown lawyers to be included in the Parliamentary grant, a view of the case which found no favour in the eyes of those who were called upon to pay them. Proposal to limit the grant to a year.Erle now proposed that in order to give time for the examination of the point, the grant of tonnage and poundage should be limited to one year.
Matters were not likely to rest here. Phelips, who succeeded Erie, carried the debate Question of impositions.into another region. He moved that the Bill ‘might so be passed as not to exclude the question of other impositions.’ The old quarrel <365>which had been smothered in 1621 and 1624, when the Commons were looking forward to co-operation with the Crown in war, was certain to break out afresh when there was no longer any such prospect. Even if there had been no change in this respect, it is hard to see how the question could have been avoided when the beginning of a new reign opened up the whole subject by the introduction of a new Bill for the grant of tonnage and poundage. Phelips took up a position which was logically unassailable. If the King, he said, possessed the right of imposing duties upon merchandise at his own pleasure, why was Parliament asked to grant that which belonged already to the Crown?[611] In spite of Heath’s opposition, the House resolved to grant tonnage and poundage for one year only. There would thus be time to consider the questions which had been raised. The Bill thus drawn was carried up to the House of Lords and was there read once. It is not necessary to suppose The Bill dropped in the House of Lords.a deliberate intention to defeat it, but neither, it would seem, was there any desire to hurry it on; and the Bill was swept away by the tide of events which brought the session to a hurried close.[612]
A few days more, and the members of the House would be dispersed to every part of England. With the plague demanding its victims in London alone at the rate of 370 a week, more than a third of the total death-rate,[613] the Commons could afford to wait for a more convenient opportunity to discuss the issues raised by Montague’s book, or even to settle the vexed question of the impositions. Charles, however, could not afford to wait. The King’s financial difficulties.In the full belief that the Commons would grant him, without hesitation, any sum for which he chose to ask, he had entered into the most extensive engagements with foreign powers. Was he now to acknowledge to <366>the King of France and the King of Denmark that he had promised more than he could perform? Was he to disperse his fleet and send his pressed landsmen to their homes? And yet this, and more than this, must be done, if no more than a beggarly sum of 140,000l. was to find its way into the Exchequer. If on July 4 he had submitted to hard fate, and had consented to end the session, further reflection did not render more endurable the rebuff with which he had been met. Who can wonder if he made one more effort to supply his needs?
The King was at this time at Hampton Court, whither he had fled in hot haste as soon as he learned that the plague had broken out He determines to ask for a further grant.amongst his attendants at Whitehall.[614] Late on the evening of the 7th Buckingham hurried up from York House, assembled his followers, and told them that an additional supply must be asked for the next morning.[615] It is said that on account of the lateness of the hour many of the leading members of the Court party were absent. At all events when Sir Humphrey May heard, on the following morning, what Buckingham’s intentions were, he resolved to keep back the proposed motion till he had remonstrated with the Duke.
For the purpose of conveying this remonstrance May selected Eliot, as one who had stood high in Buckingham’s favour, and who was July 8.May sends Eliot to remonstrate with the Duke.likely to set forth the arguments against the step which the Duke was taking in the most persuasive manner. That Eliot had already seen reasons to distrust his influential patron is likely enough; but there had been nothing approaching to a breach between them, and there is no reason to suppose that, at this time, Eliot was inclined to go farther than May, or that, although he could hardly have thought Buckingham capable of taking the lead in the national councils, he had any <367>wish to bear hardly on him, or to deprive him of the confidence of his sovereign.
What followed may best be told in Eliot’s own words, written with such recollection of the scene as he was able to command after some years had passed.
“Upon this,” he writes, speaking of himself in the third person, “he makes his passage and address, and coming to York House finds the Duke with his lady yet in bed. But, notice being given of his coming, the Duchess rose and withdrew into her cabinet, and so he was forthwith admitted and let in.
“The first thing mentioned was the occasion, and the fear that was contracted from that ground. The next was the honour Eliot argues with Buckingham.of the King and respect unto his safety; from both which were deduced arguments of dissuasion. For the King’s honour was remembered the acceptation that was made of the two subsidies which were passed and the satisfaction then professed, which the now proposition would impeach either in truth or wisdom. Again, the small number of the Commons that remained, the rest being gone upon the confidence of that overture, would render it as an ambuscade and surprise, which at no time could be honourable towards subjects, less in the entrance of the sovereign. The rule for that was noted. According to the success of the commencement, is the reputation afterwards.[616] The necessity likewise of that honour was observed without which no Prince was great, hardly any fortunate. And on these grounds a larger superstructure was imposed, as occasionally the consequence did require. For his own safety many things were said, some more fit for use than for memory and report. The general disopinion was objected which it would work to him not to have opposed it, whose power was known to all men, and that the command coming by himself would render it as his act, of which imputation what the consequence might be nothing but divinity could judge, men that are much in favour being obnoxious to much envy.
“To these answers were returned, though weak, yet such as <368>implied no yielding:— That the acceptation which was made of Buckingham’s answers.the subsidies then granted was but in respect of the affection to the King, not for satisfaction to his business: that the absence of the Commons was their own fault and error, and their neglect must not prejudice the State: that the honour of the King stood upon the expectation of the fleet, whose design would vanish if it were not speedily set forth. Money there was wanting for that work, and therein the King’s honour was engaged, which must outweigh all considerations for himself.”
Evidently the arguments of the two men were moving in different planes. Buckingham believed the Commons to have been wrong in refusing to vote larger supplies. Eliot, whatever he may have thought, was content to avoid the real point at issue, and only attempted to show that it would be inexpedient to ask the House to reverse the decision.
It may have been prudent in Eliot to avoid all mention of the opinion which the members were doubtless passing on Buckingham’s avowal.Buckingham’s qualifications as a war minister. On the other hand, to ask a man so self-confident as Buckingham to withdraw from a course of action merely on the ground of its inexpediency was to court failure. “This resolution being left,” the narrative continues, “was a new way attempted, to try if that might weaken it. And to that end was objected the improbability of success, and if it did succeed, the greater loss might follow it by alienation of the affections of the subjects who, being pleased, were a fountain of supply, without which those streams would soon dry up. But nothing could prevail, there being divers arguments spent in that; yet the proposition must proceed without consideration of success, wherein was lodged this project,— merely to be denied.”
“Merely to be denied.” Whatever words Buckingham may have used — and he was open enough of speech — such was the inference which Eliot’s surprise.Eliot drew from them. And more too, it seems, was behind, “This secret,” Eliot tells us, “that treaty did discover, which drew on others[617] that <369>supported it, of greater weight and moment, shewing a conversion of the tide. For the present it gave that gentleman some wonder and astonishment: who, with the seal of privacy closed up those passages in silence, yet thereon grounded his observations for the future, that no respect of persons made him desert his country.”
What did Buckingham mean when he proposed to press for additional supply, ‘merely to be denied’? That he wished, from What did Buckingham mean?pure gaiety of heart, to engage in a struggle of prerogative against the country itself is an idea which needs only to be mentioned to be dismissed, especially as there is another interpretation of his words which exactly fits the circumstances of the case.[618] If Buckingham really thought, as there is every reason to suppose that he thought, that he had been scandalously ill-treated by the Commons,— that they had, without raising any open charge against him, deserted him in the midst of a war which he had undertaken on their invitation, he may well have believed himself justified in putting the question once more directly to them, with the distinct prevision that if they refused to help him he would stand better with the nation than if he allowed the war to languish for want of speaking a necessary word. Somehow or other the immediate crisis might be tided over, and the military operations on the Continent postponed. Somehow or another the equipment of the fleet might be completed. A great naval success, the capture of the Mexico fleet, or the destruction of some Spanish arsenal, would work wonders. Whatever blot attached to him through past failures — and Buckingham’s failures were always, in his own eyes, the result of accident, his successes the result of forethought — would be wiped away. A second Parliament would gather round Charles of another temper than his first had been. The King who had done great things could ask, without fear of rebuff, for further means to accomplish things greater still.
If this was Buckingham’s intention — and his subsequent <370>conduct goes far to show that it was his intention — it is easy to understand how Eliot would have been shocked by the language which he had heard. Viewing, as he did, the House of Commons with almost superstitious reverence, and probably His overtures distasteful to Eliot.already inclined to doubt Buckingham’s qualifications for rule, he must have regarded with extreme dislike both the attempt to deal disingenuously with the House, and the vaunting language in which Buckingham’s confidences were doubtless conveyed.
Whatever the exact truth may have been about this conference with Eliot, Buckingham’s immediate difficulty was to find Buckingham badly represented in the House of Commons.a fit exponent of his policy in the House of Commons. Of the Secretaries of State, Conway was in the House of Lords, and Morton was absent on a mission to the Hague. Sir Richard Weston, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, would have been naturally selected to bring forward a financial proposal, but, as he was one of those who had originally objected to the war with Spain, Buckingham may have suspected that, supple as he was, his heart would not be wholly in the matter. May and Heath, whose tact had hitherto been conspicuous in the debates, would evidently be useless as supporters of a proposal of which they were known to disapprove.
The man selected as Buckingham’s mouthpiece was Sir John Coke. Having been from the first a leading member of His demand entrusted to Sir J. Coke.the Navy Commission, Coke had long taken into his hands the control over matters relating to the fleet. He was versed in the details of his office, and would probably in our days have made a very excellent permanent Under-Secretary. As far as he took any interest in politics at all, his principal characteristic was a fixed dislike of everything which savoured of the Papacy.[619] Honourable as he was in all the private relations of life, he had early imbibed <371>the official view that he was to obey orders, not to criticise them, and he was therefore ready to carry out any policy which approved itself to Buckingham and the King.
As soon as it was known to Buckingham’s friends in the House that Eliot’s mission had failed, Coke rose. For the Further supply asked for.hasty grant of two subsidies made before any minister of state had been heard on behalf of the King, he found a convenient excuse in the eagerness of the House to satisfy his Majesty. He now explained the way in which the subsidies granted in the last Parliament had been expended, said what he could in defence of Mansfeld’s failures, and stated that the fleet in preparation would cost 293,000l., or 133,000l. more than the subsidies already voted. Besides this 240,000l. a year would be needed for Mansfeld, and the same sum for the King of Denmark. Even this, though the needs of the fleet and of the King of Denmark were understated, and the expenditure required for the troops in the Netherlands was passed over in silence, was enough to frighten the House; and Coke went on to throw away whatever chance remained to him of persuading the members, by adding that this expenditure ‘could not be supported without more help by Parliament, or else some new way.’ After this last phrase, which was sure to grate upon the ears of his hearers, he made an appeal to the magnanimity of the House. “The King,” he said, “when he was Prince, borrowed 20,000l. for these provisions. The Lord Admiral hath engaged his estate. Other ministers have furnished above 50,000l. Shall it be said that these men are left to be undone for their readiness to the public services? Shall we proclaim our own poverty by losing all that is bestowed upon this enterprise, because we cannot go through with it? What shall we say to the honour of the King? But that is not all. Even the establishment of his Majesty in his royal throne, the peace of Christendom, the state of religion, depend upon the fleet.”
Coke’s estimates, underrated as they were, were larger than The Crown at issue with the Commons.the House cared to face. Even now no attempt was made to convince the Commons that it was wise to enter so extensively upon a Continental war. It <372>was taken for granted that Charles and Buckingham had been in the right in entering into engagements with Mansfeld and the King of Denmark, and the House was merely asked to provide the means for the necessary expenditure.
If the sixty members or so who still remained at Westminster to represent the Commons, cared to please the King Nature of Coke’s demand.without bringing any apparent responsibility upon themselves, the way was made easy before them. Coke did not ask them actually to vote the subsidies. They were only to express their affection to the business, and to give assurance, by some public declaration, that when they returned they would be willing to relieve his Majesty. They were, however, not so easily entrapped. The whole display of military preparation flashed thus suddenly before their eyes, It falls flat on the House,created astonishment rather than any other feeling. They did not wish to bind their fellow-members to answer a demand which had been kept in the background as long as the House was full. Neither did they like to enter into a contest with the King. Scarcely a word was spoken for or against the motion. Heath, seeing that the discussion, if it once began, would take an angry turn, did the best he could and is put aside by Heath.for his master by smothering the debate. The House, he said, had already expressed its affection in its previous grant. No man ought to speak but as if the King of Spain were there to hear him. It would be enough if it was made to appear that, whenever the Commons met again, they would bring the hearts of true Englishmen.
In spite of this rebuff Charles kept his temper. To a deputation from the two Houses which carried the petition on religion The King takes up Montague’s case.to Hampton Court, he replied civilly that he would shortly give them an answer. He then called Heath aside and inquired about Montague’s committal. Montague, he said, was now his chaplain, and he had taken the case into his own consideration. “Montague,” replied the Solicitor-General, “did not allege so much for himself. It was hardly known but to very few in the House.” “I believe,” replied the King, “if they had known it, they would not have proceeded in that manner.” He then expressed a <373>hope that the prisoner would be set at liberty, in which case, he said, he would be ready to give them satisfaction. Montague’s committal, Heath said, was not for his opinions, but for his contempt of the House. He then gave an account of all that had taken place. Charles ‘smiled, without any further reply.’[620] The House, on the other hand, when it heard what had passed, determined to maintain its position. The recent July 9.The Commons maintain their position.nomination of Montague to a chaplainship looked very like a Court intrigue to screen his conduct from investigation, and the doctrine that the King’s servants were responsible to the King alone was not likely to find favour amongst the Commons.
On July 11 the Houses were informed that their labours were to come to an end that day, but that they were to meet again shortly July 11.The Houses adjourn to Oxford.to hear more from the King. The Commons then proceeded to the Upper House to hear the Royal assent given to the few Bills which had been passed. The word “shortly” was then explained to them by the Lord Keeper. There was to be an adjournment, Execution of the recusancy laws promised.not a prorogation. They were to meet again at Oxford on August 1. They would then receive a particular answer to their petition on religion, and in the meantime his Majesty, ‘by present execution of the laws, would make a real rather than a verbal answer to their contentment and the contentment of all the kingdom.’[621]
The Lord Keeper had been an unwilling instrument in pronouncing the King’s resolution for the adjournment to Oxford. Williams, with The step taken opposed by Williams.his usual good sense, saw that there was little prospcct of success in an attempt to drive the Commons to vote supplies to which they entertained an apparently insurmountable objection. The day before the adjournment July 10.he had advised that the Houses should meet, not in August, but at Christmas. As Williams did not hope much from the fleet which was preparing for sea, it was natural for him to make the proposal. To Buckingham it looked very like treachery. “Public necessity,” <374>he said, “must sway more than one man’s jealousy.”[622] Charles sided with his favourite, and the prescient Lord Keeper was reduced to silence. The Houses dispersed, hardly thanking Charles in their hearts for the modified promise which had been given them, and full of discontent at the prospect of meeting again, to be asked once more for those subsidies which they were so reluctant to grant.
[583] Salvetti weekly records the numbers. The number last given is from a letter from Meade to Stuteville, June 18, Court and Times, i. 32.
[584] No doubt some will take the view that the speech was deliberately drawn up so as to avoid mention of the difficulties of the case. What I have said above, however, seems to me far more in consonance with Charles’s character.
[585] In addition to the scanty notices in the Journals, we have for this Parliament Eliot’s Negotium Posterorum, which has been edited by Dr. Grosart, and the Fawsley MS. belonging to Sir R. Knightley, which I have edited for the Camden Society. I shall refer to the latter as Fawsley Debates. Unless there is any special necessity for referring to one particular source, it will be understood that what I say in the text is founded on these authorities. The further volume of notes taken by Eliot I shall give as Eliot Notes.
[586] I am unable to discover the enormity of Williams’s suggestion, that if subsidies were too slow in coming in, Parliament might find some other way of hastening their grant, as that could not ‘be unparliamentary which is resolved by Parliament.’ Eliot’s account of this session is so interesting that one is apt to forget that it was written some years after the event, and coloured by the recollection of all that had passed since. I may say at once that I do not believe that there was no feeling against the King till after the second application for supply.
[588] Strafford Letters, i. 24.
[589] Eliot ascribes Wentworth’s support of the motion to his desire to postpone an impending inquiry into the validity of his election. But Eliot could know nothing of Wentworth’s motives; and, even if it were worth <341>Wentworth’s while to put off an investigation which must have taken place whenever the House met again, his was the character to court rather than to shun inquiry.
[590] Fawsley Debates, 7. The omission of all reference in Eliot’s narrative to the part taken by Phelips, is enough to put us on our guard against trusting it too implicitly as a complete authority. Phelips’s speech is mentioned in the Journals, though not in a satisfactory manner, and the Eliot Notes have the following, after Mallory’s motion: ‘Seconded by Sir Ro. Phelips, in consideration of the dangers, either for adjournment to another time or place.’ We have therefore Eliot’s own handwriting in favour of the correctness of the Fawsley Debates on this point.
[591] Doubtless the old member, who again sat for Colchester in this Parliament, though his name is omitted by Willis.
[592] Mr. Forster ascribes this to Pym; bnt Eliot does not give his name, and the Journals and the Fawsley Debates agree on Seymour.
[593] Mr. P. in the Fawsley Debates is surely Pym.
[594] On March 19, 1624, he had said that he had heard ‘wars spoken on and an army; but would be glad to hear where. The Palatinate was the place intended by his Majesty. This we never thought of, nor is it fit for the consideration of the House, in regard of the infinite charge.’
[595] I am sorry to say that I am forced to treat the situation as though the Negotium Posterorum had never been written. Eliot was so little able to place himself back in past days, that he reasons as if the vote passed had been an adequate supply.
[596] The 20,000 men are either a slight oratorical exaggeration, or include the French and Germans who were with Mansfeld. Eliot makes Phelips speak of millions of treasure, which is too absurd, one would think, even for an orator. I have followed the Fawsley Debates.
[597] This view of the case is that which finds a reflection in Eliot’s narrative. As a key to the situation that narrative is quite worthless, but I do not doubt that the view taken in it was not without foundation in the feeling which existed at the time.
[598] I am always loth to challenge any assertion of the late Mr. Bruce; but it is clear to me that the provisional instructions calendared under July 8 (S. P. Dom. iv. 26) must have been written before July 4, as they contain a direction that the person to whom they are addressed should, if the main object failed, urge the House to turn their resolution into a Subsidy Bill, which was what they did on July 4, without pressing.
[599] Eliot says that the message was ‘that his Majesty received great satisfaction and contentment in their gift, both for the form and matter, it coming as an earnest of their love.’ On this Eliot founds an argument, that the King having accepted the gift was precluded from asking for more. We have, however, three separate reports of the message: that of the Lords’ Journals, that in Coke’s statement in the Commons’ Journals, and that in the Fawsley Debates. In none of these do any such words occur. Something of the sort may be implied from the fact that the King did propose to close the session, and Eliot may have taken that which was implied as actually said. The Lord Keeper may, on the other hand, have said something which, as not forming part of his message, may not have been formally reported. At all events, Eliot cannot be relied on for details. He says that the Subsidy Bill ‘being passed the House of Commons, and that intimated to the King, it produced a message.’ As a matter of fact the Bill had not even been read a first time when the message was delivered. Since <349>this note was written, I am able to bring Eliot’s own testimony against the Negotium. The report in the Eliot Notes, in the possession of the Earl of St. Germans, like that in the Fawsley Debates, is silent on any word in the message about accepting the subsidies.
[600] Mr. Forster (Sir J. Eliot, i. 160), after giving Eliot’s speech from the Negotium, proceeds as follows: “‘Yet hear me first,’ cried Wentworth, as with a general feeling unmistakeably against him, he rose to leave. He spoke briefly and without interruption.” This implies that Wentworth succeeded in setting the rules of the House at defiance. The Eliot Notes do not agree with this view of the case. After referring to Eliot’s appeal to the privileges of the House, they say “W. sent out again. After, the motion being renewed upon question, W. admitted to be heard.” Wentworth therefore was specially authorised to speak.
[601] Strafford Letters, i. 24.
[602] Forster, Sir J. Eliot, i. 153; Fawsley Debates, 13, 36, 44.
[603] The passage about the Roman Church is a quotation from Cassander: “Et quamvis præsens hæc ecclesia Romana non parum in morum et disciplinæ sinceritate, ab antiquâ illâ unde orta et derivata est, discesserit, tamen eodem fundamento doctrinæ, adde etiam in doctrinæ sinceritate et sacramentorum a deo institutorum firma semper constitit, et communionem cum antiquâ illâ et indubitatâ Christi Ecclesiâ agnoscit et colit. Quare alia et diversa ab illâ non potest, tametsi multis in rebus dissimilis sit. Manet enim Christi Ecclesia et sponsa, quamvis multis erroribus et vitiis sponsum suum irritaverit, quamdiu a Christo suo sponso non repudietur, tametsi multis flagellis ab eo castigetur.” New Gag, 53.
[604] Ibid. 83.
[605] Ibid. 258.
[606] “Images have three uses assigned by your schools. Stay there, go no further, and we charge you not with idolatry! Institutionem rudium, commonefactionem historiæ, et excitationem devotionis. … Not the making of images is misliked, not the having of images is condemned, but the profaning of them to unlawful uses in worshipping and adoring them.” New Gag, 300, 303.
[607] Ibid. 229.
[608] Baxter’s Life, 1.
[609] There is a passage in the conference held in the following year on Montague’s books, which seems to me to embody the spirit of the movement more than any other which I have seen. The question asked was <358>whether General Councils could err. To this Buckeridge and Cosin replied: “All assemblies of men in sensu divino, and confederated merely as men, may err in the weightiest matters of faith: but all assemblies of men having sufficient ability of learning to judge, and who with prayer and pious affection endeavour to understand heavenly truth by the rule of God’s Word, all such assemblies of men shall not err, because God hath promised the assistance of His Heavenly Spirit to deliver them from fundamental error.” Cosin’s Works, ii. 24.
[610] The bond was to be given to the serjeant, because it was affirmed by Sir Ed. Coke ‘that the House could not take a recognisance.’ Fawsley Debates, 53. Subsequent practice has decided against Coke. Hatsell’s Precedents, iv. 276.
[611] “Kings ever received it as a gift of the subject, and were therewith contented, without charging them with any other way of imposition. For if they had any such power it were altogether unneedful to pass.” Fawsley Debates, 43. The speech is toned down in the Journals.
[612] The speeches in the Fawsley Debates seem to me to warrant the conclusion that far more than a mere adjustment of rates was at issue.
[613] Meade to Stuteville, July 2, Court and Times, i. 39.
[614] Locke to Carleton, July 9, S. P. Dom. iv. 29.
[615] The authority for all this is Eliot’s Negotium Posterorum. I do not see any reason to suppose that things happened in the main otherwise than he tells them, though his view of the position is evidently coloured by the misconception that the Commons had already done all that the King could reasonably ask, even from Charles’s own point of view.
[616] “Ut initia provenient, fama in cæteris est.”
[617] i.e. ‘This conversation discovered this secret, which led the way to the discovery of other secrets.’
[618] It does not follow that he would not have been glad to strengthen the Crown at the expense of the House of Commons, either by increasing its popularity, or by giving it a military force if he had seen his way to do either. See p. 195, note 1.
[619] Thus he was one of the instigators of the complaint against Montague in the Conference at York House in 1626, and he did his best in 1628 to lead the House of Commons astray by an attack upon the Jesuits. In later years he opposed the Spanish alliance advocated by Weston, Cottington, and Windebank.
[620] Fawsley Debates, 62.
[621] Ibid. 67.
[622] Hacket, ii. 14.