<311>Whatever interpretation might still be placed by the King on the concession which he had made, it was undeniable that the June 7.Importance of the petition.House of Commons had gained a great advantage. It might still be doubtful whether, in case of necessity, the King might not break the law, but it could never again be doubtful what the law was.
The Petition of Right has justly been deemed by constitutional historians as second in importance only to the Great Charter itself. Comparison with the Great Charter.It circumscribed the monarchy of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth as the Great Charter circumscribed the monarchy of Henry II. Alike in the twelfth and in the sixteenth century the kingly power had been established on the ruins of an aristocracy bent upon the nullification of government in England. Alike in the thirteenth and in the seventeenth century, the kingly power was called to account as soon as it was used for other than national ends. Like the Great Charter, too, the Petition of Right was the beginning, not the end, of a revolution.
So far as in them lay the Commons had stripped Charles of that supreme authority which he believed himself to hold. Supreme authority in abeyance.Their action had, however, been purely negative. Somewhere or another such authority must exist above all positive law, capable of setting it aside when it comes in conflict with the higher needs of the nation. Charles was right enough in thinking that the Commons were <312>consciously or unconsciously tending to seize upon this authority themselves; but as yet they had not done so. They had cried, as it were, The King is dead! They had not cried, Long live the King! The old order had received a deadly blow, but it had not given place to the new. Many a stormy discussion, many a sturdy blow, would be needed before the Commons seated themselves in the place of the King.
In every nation supreme authority tends to rest in the hands of those who best respond to the national demand for guidance. Would the House of Commons be able to offer such guidance? Could it represent the wishes, the wisdom, the strength, it may be the prejudices, of the nation, as Elizabeth had represented them? At least it could throw into disrepute those theories upon which the King’s claim to stand above the laws was founded, and set forth its policy and its wishes so as June 9.Impeachment of Manwaring.to be understood of all men. On June 9, Pym carried up to the Lords the charges which had been gradually collected against Manwaring, and on the same day the Commons went steadily on with their Remonstrance, as if nothing had happened to divert them from their purpose.
It was certain that Manwaring would find no favour in the House of Lords. More clearly than many others whose theological opinions coincided with his own he had allowed political speculation to follow in the train of doctrinal thought. The notion that the clergy had an independent existence apart from the rest of the community easily led to the conclusion that that community had no rights which it could plead against the King, by whom the clergy were protected. The theory that the King had a divine right to obedience apart from the laws of the realm was one which had failed to find support amongst the lay Peers June 14.Sentence against him.in discussions on the Petition of Right. Manwaring was therefore condemned to imprisonment during the pleasure of the House, to pay a fine of 1,000l., to acknowledge his offence, to submit to suspension from preaching at Court for the remainder of his life, and from preaching elsewhere for three years. He was further forbidden to hold any ecclesiastical or civil office, and the King was to be <313>asked to issue a proclamation calling in all copies of his book in order that they might be burnt.[559]
That Manwaring should be impeached and condemned was a matter of course. His offence and his punishment are of little interest to us now; but it is of great interest to know what answer his challenge provoked, what political principle was advocated by the House of Commons in reply to the political principle which it condemned.
The accusation had been entrusted to Pym, and by Pym’s mouth the Commons spoke. “The best form of government,” he said, “is Pym’s reply to Manwaring’s declaration of principle.that which doth actuate and dispose every part and member of a State to the common good; and as those parts give strength and ornament to the whole, so they receive from it again strength and protection in their several stations and degrees. If this mutual relation and intercourse be broken, the whole frame will quickly be dissolved and fall in pieces; and instead of this concord and interchange of support, whilst one part seeks to uphold the old form of government, and the other part to introduce a new, they will miserably consume and devour one another. Histories are full of the calamities of whole states and nations in such cases. It is true that time must needs bring about some alterations, and every alteration is a step and degree towards a dissolution. Those things only are eternal which are constant and uniform. Therefore it is observed by the best writers on this subject, that those commonwealths have been most durable and perpetual which have often reformed and recomposed themselves according to their first institution and ordinance, for by this means they repair the breaches and counterwork the ordinary and natural effects of time.”[560]
What then was the first institution and ordinance of the <314>laws of England? Pym’s answer was ready. “There are plain footsteps,” he said, “of those laws in the government of the Saxons. They were of that vigour and force as to overlive the Conquest; nay, to give bounds and limits to the Conqueror. … It is true they have been often broken, but they have been often confirmed by charters of Kings and by Acts of Parliaments. But the petitions of the subjects upon which those charters and Acts were founded, were ever Petitions of Right, demanding their ancient and due liberties, not suing for any new.”
A far nobler view this than Manwaring’s. In the historical past of the English people lay the justification of its action in the present. Superiority of his view.Beyond the precedents of the lawyer and the conclusions of the divine, the eye of the statesman rested on the continuity of responsibility in the nation for the mode in which it was governed. It may be that many things seem otherwise to us than they seemed to Pym, and that we should condemn actions which to him appeared worthy of all praise; but our sympathies are nevertheless with Pym and not with Manwaring. If there were faults in the House of Commons, if there was a danger of the establishment of a self-seeking aristocracy in the place of a national government, it was not from Charles that the remedy was likely to come. Whatever justification might be put forth, Charles’s assumption of power had been clearly revolutionary. To conduct war and to extort money in defiance of the nation was an act which had nothing in common with those acts which had been done by former sovereigns with the tacit assent of the nation. The root of the old constitution was the responsibility of the Crown to the nation, a responsibility which, it is true, was often enforced by violence and rebellion. Yet a view of the constitution which takes no account of those acts of violence is like a view of geology which takes no account of earthquakes and volcanoes. There was indeed a certain amount of unconscious insincerity in the legal arguments adduced on either side, which, though dealing with the compacts which sanctioned the results of force, yet shrank from the acknowledgment that the force itself, the steady determination that a king who <315>spoke for himself and acted for himself should not be permitted to reign, was part of that mass of custom and opinion which, varying in detail from age to age, but animated in every age by the same spirit, is, for brevity’s sake, called the English constitution. To the spirit of this constitution the Tudor princes had, even in their most arbitrary moods, sedulously conformed. No rulers have ever been so careful to watch the temper of the nation as were Henry VIII. and Elizabeth. That the King was established by God Himself to think and act in opposition to the thoughts and acts which the nation deliberately chose to think best, was a new thing in England, and even when the King was right and the nation was wrong, it was a change for the worse.
The Commons did their best to persuade themselves from time to time that every step taken in the wrong direction had been owing to the King’s ministers rather than to himself; but it was growing hard for them to close their eyes much longer to the truth. The King’s part in the issue of Manwaring’s book.A discovery was now made that Manwaring’s sermons had been licensed for printing by the King’s special orders, and that too against Laud’s remonstrances, for even Laud had warned him that many things in the book would be ‘very distasteful to the people.’[561]
In one respect Charles had gained his object by his acceptance of the petition. As soon as Subsidies voted.it was ascertained that it was to be enrolled like any other statute, the Subsidy Bill was pushed on, and on the 16th was sent up to the Lords.
Of the Remonstrance, however, Charles had not heard the last. It is true that Selden’s June 9.The Remonstrance proceeded with.proposal for renewing the impeachment of Buckingham was quietly dropped, but it was certain that the name of Buckingham would appear in the Remonstrance. All that Charles <316>had gained was that the name would appear in a statement made to himself, not in an accusation addressed to the Lords.
The King, in fact, had never understood the reasons which had induced the House, under Eliot’s guidance, to prepare this Remonstrance. He had fancied that it was a mere weapon of offence intended to wrest from him a better answer to the petition, and certain to be let drop as soon as its purpose had been accomplished. He could not perceive how deeply the disasters of the years in which he had ruled England had impressed themselves upon the mind of the nation, and so far as he took account of those disasters at all he argued that they had resulted from the niggardliness of the Commons, not from the incapacity of his own ministers.
On June 11[562] the Remonstrance was finally brought into shape. First came the paragraphs relating to religion, including the June 11.The Remonstrance voted.inevitable demand for the full execution of the penal laws against the Catholics and a special complaint against the commission which had been issued for compounding with recusants in the northern counties, of which Sir John Savile had been the leading member, and which had been warmly attacked by Wentworth. Attack on the Arminians.Still more bitter was the cry against Arminianism. The Calvinistic preachers had not, it is true, been actually persecuted. They had, however, been discountenanced. Books written by their opponents easily found a licenser. Books written by themselves were scanned more strictly. Laud and Neile were in high favour with the King, and those who adopted their opinions were on the sure road to promotion. Before long the high places of the Church would be occupied exclusively by men whose opinions were those of a minority of the clergy and of a still smaller minority of the laity.
It is easy to see that these complaints were not without <317>foundation. It is easy to see, too, that the course of silencing the Arminians, suggested rather than advised by the Commons, would have been of little avail. But for the present the main stress of the petition was directed to another quarter. The whole history of the past three years was unrolled before the King, and, after a warm debate, The Duke blamed.the blame of all the mischief was laid upon the Duke. “The principal cause,” so the House declared, “of which evils and dangers we conceive to be the excessive power of the Duke of Buckingham, and the abuse of that power;[563] and we humbly submit unto your Majesty’s excellent wisdom, whether it be safe for yourself or your kingdoms that so great a power as rests in him by sea and land should be in the hands of any one subject whatsoever. And as it is not safe, so sure we are it cannot be for your service; it being impossible for one man to manage so many and weighty affairs of the kingdom as he hath undertaken besides the ordinary duties of those offices which he holds; some of which, well performed, would require the time and industry of the ablest men, both in counsel and action, that your whole kingdom will afford, especially in these times of common danger. And our humble desire is further, that your excellent Majesty will be pleased to take into your princely consideration, whether, in respect the said Duke hath so abused his power, it be safe for your Majesty and your kingdom to continue him either in his great offices, or in his place of nearness and counsel about your sacred person.”[564]
The Commons had thus returned to the position which they had taken up at the close of the last session, as soon as it had become evident that Position taken by the Commons.the impeachment would not be allowed to take its course. They passed what in modern times would be called a vote of want of confidence in Buckingham. They brought no criminal charges. They asked for no punishment. But they demanded that the man under whose authority the things of which they complained <318>had been done, should no longer be in a position to guide all England by his word.
On minor points Charles was willing to gratify the Commons. He allowed his ministers to give out that he was ready to discountenance the Arminians, which he might easily do, as Laud and his friends entirely disclaimed the title. He cancelled the patent by which certain Privy Councillors had been empowered, before the meeting of Parliament, to consider the best Charles will not give up Buckingham.way of raising money by irregular means,[565] and announced that Dulbier should not bring his German horse into England.[566] But he would not give up the Duke. To abandon Buckingham was to abandon himself.
Before the Remonstrance was presented to the King an event occurred which must have served to harden Charles in Dr. Lambe and Buckingham.the belief that the movement against Buckingham was nothing more than a decent veil for an outbreak of popular anarchy which if it were not checked might sweep away his throne and all else that he held sacred. Dr. Lambe, an astrologer and quack doctor, a man too, if rumour is to be believed, of infamous life, had been consulted by Buckingham, and was popularly regarded as the instigator of his nefarious designs. Things had now come to such a pass that nothing was too bad to be believed of the Duke. Men declared without hesitation that Buckingham had caused the Wild stories told of the Duke.failure of Denbigh’s expedition to Rochelle, out of fear lest, if the town were relieved, a peace might follow.[567] His luxury, his immoralities, his bragging incompetence, once the theme of Eliot’s rhetoric, were now sung in ballads passed from hand to hand. In these verses it was told how he had poisoned Hamilton, Southampton, Oxford, Lennox, and even King James himself; how he had sat in a boat out of the way of danger, whilst his men were being slaughtered in the Isle of Rhé; how he was indifferent to the <319>ravages of the Dunkirkers and to the ruin of the country,[568] whilst he employed Dr. Lambe to corrupt by his love-charms the chastest women in England. Even at Cambridge the judicious Meade found himself treated with contempt for venturing to suggest that the Duke’s faults arose from incapacity rather than from any settled purpose to betray the kingdom.[569]
Whilst such thoughts were abroad, Dr. Lambe stepped forth one evening from the Fortune Theatre. A crowd of London apprentices, ever June 13.Murder of Dr. Lambe.ready for amusement or violence, gathered round him, hooting at him as the Duke’s devil. Fearing the worst, he paid some sailors to guard him to a tavern in Moorgate Street, where he supped. When he came out he found some of the lads still standing round the door, and imprudently threatened them, telling them ‘he would make them dance naked.’ As he walked they followed his steps, the crowd growing denser every minute. In the Old Jewry he turned upon them with his sailors, and drove them off. The provocation thus given was too much for the cruel instinct of the mob. A rush was made at him, and he was driven for refuge into the Windmill Tavern. Stones began to fly, and the howling crowd demanded its victim. In vain the landlord disguised him before he sent him out. There was another scamper through the streets, another attempt to find refuge. The master of the second house satisfied his conscience by dismissing him with four constables to guard him. Such aid was of little avail. The helpless protectors were dashed aside. The object of popular hatred was thrown bleeding on the ground. Blows from sticks and stones and pieces of board snatched up for the occasion fell like rain upon his quivering flesh. After he could no longer speak to plead for mercy, one of his eyes was beaten out of its socket. No man would open his door to receive the all but lifeless body of the detested necromancer. He was at last carried to the Compter prison, where he died on the following morning.
<320>Charles, when he heard the news, was greatly affected. The murderers had been heard to say that if the Duke had been there they would have June 16.The King’s displeasure.handled him worse. They would have minced his flesh, and have had everyone a bit of him. He summoned before him the Lord Mayor and Aldermen, bidding them to discover the offenders,[570] and he subsequently imposed a heavy fine upon the City for their failure to detect the guilty persons.
The King’s heart was hardened against the assailants of the Duke. To sift the statements of the Remonstrance, or to promise an inquiry into the cause of the late disasters, would be beneath his dignity. He determined to meet the charges of the Commons as a mere personal attack upon innocence.
The 17th was the day fixed by Charles for the reception of the Remonstrance. The day before, he sent to the Star Chamber Orders the proceedings in the Star Chamber against the Duke to be taken from the file.an order that all documents connected with the sham prosecution of Buckingham which had followed the last dissolution, should be removed from the file; ‘that no memory thereof remain of the record against him which may tend to his disgrace.’[571]
When the reading of the Remonstrance was ended, Charles answered curtly. He did not expect, he said, such a remonstrance from them June 17.Answers the Remonstrance.after he had so graciously granted them their Petition of Right. They complained of grievances in Church and State, ‘wherein he perceived they understood not what belonged to either so well as he had thought they had done. As for their grievances, he would consider of them as they should deserve.’ When he had finished, Buckingham threw himself on his knees, asking permission to answer for himself. Charles would not allow him to do so, giving him his hand to kiss in the presence of his accusers.[572]
If it had not been too late for anything to have availed <321>Buckingham, it might be thought that he had judged better for himself Contrast between Buckingham and Charles.than his master had done. His way was to meet charges boldly and defiantly. Charles’s way was relapse into silence, to fall back upon his insulted dignity, and to demand the submission to his mere word which argument could alone have secured for him. His own notions were to him so absolutely true that they needed no explanation.
So far as Buckingham was able, he sought to meet the charges against him. It had been rumoured in the House of Commons that the Duke had said, “Tush! it makes no matter what the Commons or Parliament doth; for without my leave and authority they shall not be able to touch the hair of a dog.” In vain Buckingham denies a slanderous story.Buckingham protested that the slander was absolutely untrue.[573] The accusation was repeated in verses drawn up to suit the popular taste, in which the Duke was made to declare his entire independence of the popular feeling. “Meddle,” he is made to say to his opponents —
“Meddle with common matters, common wrongs,To the House of Commons common things belongs.They are extra sphæram that you treat of now,And ruin to yourselves will bring, I vow,Except you do desist, and learn to bearWhat wisdom ought to teach you, or your fear.Leave him the oar that best knows how to row,And State to him that best the State doth know.⋮Though Lambe be dead, I’ll stand, and you shall see,I’ll smile at them that can but bark at me.”[574]
Though in reality these words applied far more correctly to the King than to Buckingham, so long as Buckingham was in favour no man would believe how great a part Charles had in his own calamities. “Who rules the kingdom?” were the words of a pasquinade found nailed to a post in Coleman <322>Street. “The King. Who rules the King? The Duke. Who rules the Duke? The devil. Let the Duke look to it.”[575]
Under the influence of the feeling provoked by the rejection of the Remonstrance the Commons went into committee on the Bill for June 14.Tonnage and poundage.the grant of tonnage and poundage which had been brought in at the beginning of the session, but had been postponed on account of the pressure of other business. With the exception of the merest fragment, no record of the debates in this committee has reached us; but we learn from a contemporary letter[576] that the Commons, whilst making a liberal grant, equal to the whole of the customs and imposts put together, wished to alter the incidence of some of the rates, partly because they considered them too heavy on certain articles, partly for the preservation of their own right to make the grant.
As soon as it appeared that the work to which the Commons had set themselves would take two or three months, they proposed to pass Dissatisfaction of the King.a temporary Bill to save the rights which they claimed, leaving all further discussion till the next session. When the King refused to assent to this proposal, they expressed a wish that they might have an adjournment instead of a prorogation. In this way the Act, when finally passed at their next meeting, would take effect from the beginning of the session in the past winter, and the illegality, as they held it, of the actual levy would be covered by it.
It may be that the Commons did not at the time mean more than they said, and had no fixed intention of using their claim to be the sole originators of the right to levy customs’ duties in order to compel the King to attend to their political grievances. It may very well have seemed to Charles that the case was otherwise; and the more persistent they were in asserting their right, the more determined he was not to give way on a point where concession would make it impossible for him to govern the kingdom except in accordance with their views. If the Commons saw fit at their next meeting to vote him less than the old tonnage and poundage and the new <323>impositions put together, he would be landed in a perpetual deficit, even if a treaty of peace could be signed at once with France and Spain. For Charles a perpetual deficit meant the expulsion of Buckingham from his counsels and the domination of Puritanism in the Church; in other words, it meant his own surrender of that Royal authority which had been handed down to him from his predecessors — a surrender far more complete than he had contemplated in giving his assent to the Petition of Right.
Accordingly, on the 23rd Charles sent a message once more declaring that he had June 23.The prorogation determined on.fixed a date for the prorogation. The Houses might sit till the 26th, but they should sit no longer.
The Commons at once proceeded to draw up another Remonstrance. They would not have complained, they asserted, if an adjournment and not a prorogation had been offered. In that case the matter would have been taken up when they met again, and the Act when passed would have given a retrospective sanction to all duties levied under it since the commencement of the session. The Commons then proceeded to declare that no imposition ought to be laid upon the goods of merchants, exported or imported, without common consent by Act of Parliament; which, they said to the King, ‘is the right and inheritance of your subjects, founded not only upon the most ancient and original constitutions of this kingdom, but often confirmed and declared in divers statute laws.’ They had hoped that a Bill might have been passed to satisfy the King in the present session. “But not being now able,” they concluded by saying, “to accomplish this their desire, there is no course left unto them, without manifest breach of their duty both to your Majesty and their country, save only to make this June 25.Remonstrance on tonnage and poundage.humble declaration: That the receiving of tonnage and poundage and other impositions not granted by Parliament, is a breach of the fundamental liberties of this kingdom, and contrary to your Majesty’s Royal answer to their late Petition of Right; and therefore they do most humbly beseech your Majesty to forbear any further receiving the same; and not to take it in ill part from those of <324>your Majesty’s loving subjects who shall refuse to make payment of any such charges without warrant of law demanded. And as, by this forbearance, your most excellent Majesty shall manifest unto the world your Royal justice in the observation of your laws, so they doubt not but hereafter, at the time appointed for their coming together again, they shall have occasion to express their great desire to advance your Majesty’s honour and profit.”[577]
Rather than listen to such words as these, Charles determined to hasten the end of the session by a few hours. Hurriedly, and without taking time to put on the usual robes, he entered the House of Lords early the next morning, almost as soon as the Peers had met.
“My Lords and Gentlemen,” he said, when the Commons had been summoned, “it may seem strange that I come so suddenly June 26.The King’s speech.to end this session; wherefore, before I give my assent to the Bills, I will tell you the cause; though I must avow that I owe an account of my actions but to God alone. It is known to everyone that a while ago the House of Commons gave me a Remonstrance, how acceptable every man may judge; and for the merit of it I will not call that in question, for I am sure no wise man can justify it.
“Now, since I am certainly informed that a second Remonstrance is preparing for me, to take away my chief profit of tonnage and poundage — one of the chief maintenances of the Crown — by alleging that I have given away my right thereof by my answer to your petition; this is so prejudicial unto me that I am forced to end this session some few hours before I meant it, being willing not to receive any more Remonstrances to which I must give a harsh answer.
“And since I see that even the House of Commons begins already to make false constructions of what I granted in your petition, lest it might be worse interpreted in the country I will now make a declaration concerning the true meaning thereof:—
“The profession of both Houses, in time of hammering <325>this petition, was no ways to entrench upon my prerogative, saying they had neither intention nor power to hurt it: therefore it must needs be conceived I granted no new, but only confirmed the ancient liberties of my subjects; yet, to show the clearness of my intentions, that I neither repent nor mean to recede from anything I have promised you, I do here declare that those things which have been done whereby men had some cause to suspect the liberty of the subjects to be trenched upon — which indeed was the first and true ground of the petition — shall not hereafter be drawn into example for your prejudice; and in time to come, on the word of a King, you shall not have the like cause to complain.
“But as for tonnage and poundage, it is a thing I cannot want, and was never intended by you to ask — never meant, I am sure, by me to grant.
“To conclude, I command you all that are here to take notice of what I have spoken at this time to be the true intent and meaning of what I granted you in your petition, but especially you, my Lords the Judges — for to you only, under me, belongs the interpretation of laws; for none of the House of Commons, joint or separate — what new doctrine soever may be raised — have any power either to make or declare a law without my consent.”[578]
After the Royal assent had been given to a few Bills the session was formally brought to an end by prorogation to October 20. It was Parliament prorogued.the first time in his reign that Charles had ended a session otherwise than by a dissolution. Yet Breach between the King and the Commons.the crisis was more serious, the breach more complete and hopeless, than ever before. In 1625 the King had been asked by the Commons to take counsel with persons upon whom dependence could be placed. In 1626 he had been asked to dismiss one unpopular minister from his service. In 1628 his whole policy was to be changed at home and abroad, his whole personal feeling was to be sacrificed by the condemnation of Laud and Neile as well as of the great Duke himself. Statesmen and divines who were <326>pleasing to the Commons were to be promoted: statesmen and divines who were displeasing to them were to be discouraged and silenced. The will of the Lower House was to be the rule by which all that was taught and all that was done in England was from henceforward to be gauged; and this claim to sovereignty — for it was nothing less — was backed by the ominous claim to relieve individual persons from the duty of paying to the Crown dues which, though they had been declared illegal by a resolution of the House of Commons, had been Charles formally in the right.declared to be legal by the judges. It would have taxed the Commons to the utmost, if the opportunity had been afforded them, to answer the King within the lines of existing constitutional practice. That the judges, and not the King, were to decide questions affecting the liberty of the subject had been the point pressed most firmly by the Commons in the debates on the Petition of Right. Yet now they proceeded to ignore entirely the fact that the unreversed decision of the judges in the case of impositions was clearly on the King’s side. If the Commons were to suspend the payment of these duties by their own resolution in the face of a judicial decision, why might they not suspend the operation of any law whatever against which they entertained objections? And, unless new checks were provided, what would government by the resolutions of a single House lead to but the tyranny which enabled Cromwell to turn the key on the expelled Long Parliament, and which in the following century roused the thinking part of the nation to take up the defence of a man so unworthy as Wilkes?
Nor was it only in his resolution to leave the interpretation of the laws to the judges that Charles took ground which was Was tonnage and poundage included in the Petition of Right?at least formally defensible. That the words of the Petition of Right, praying that ‘no man hereafter be compelled to make or yield any gift, loan, benevolence, tax, or such like charge, without common consent by Act of Parliament,’ ought to have covered the case of customs’ duties is a proposition from which few would now be inclined to dissent. Yet amongst the words used, only ‘tax’ was sufficiently general to be supposed for a moment to <327>cover the case of duties upon imports and exports, and even that word, though often used loosely to apply to payments of every kind, had the specific meaning of direct payments, and in this sense would not be at all applicable to the dues which were levied at the ports.[579] When, therefore, Charles said that in granting the petition he had never intended to yield on this point, he undoubtedly said nothing less than the truth. He might have said even more than he did. It is as certain as anything can well be that, either because they did not wish to enhance the difficulty of obtaining a satisfactory answer from the King, or because they expected to gain their object in another way, the Commons never had any intention to include the question of tonnage and poundage in the Petition of Right. The Tonnage and Poundage Bill had been brought in early in the session. From time to time it had been mentioned, but, except a few words from Phelips, nothing had been said to give to it any sort of prominence. What would have been easier than, by the addition of one or two expressions to the petition, to include the levy of these duties amongst the grievances of the House? Yet nothing of the kind was done, though the words of the petition, as was known to every lawyer, if not to every member of the House, were such as would not be acknowledged by the King to cover the case of tonnage and poundage. What was still more important was that the Petition of Right, like every other statute, was subject to the interpretation of the judges, and that it was well known that the judges were in the habit of deciding every doubtful point in favour of the Crown. It was therefore with full knowledge that the ambiguous word ‘tax’ would not carry with it the consequences which they now wished to derive from it, that the framers of the petition, themselves being lawyers of the highest eminence, had abstained from strengthening their work with other words which would have put an end to all doubt. For these reasons, the insertion of the appeal to the Petition of Right in the final Remonstrance can only be regarded as a daring attempt to take up new ground <328>which would place the right of the House above that decision given in the last reign by the Court of Exchequer, which they had hitherto contested in vain.[580]
It by no means follows, however, that the Commons, if formally in the wrong, may not have been materially in the right. The case for the Commons.Legal decisions cannot bind a nation for ever, and the power of saying the last word, with all the terrible responsibilities which weigh upon those who pronounce it, must be with those by whom the nation is most fully represented. The Commons had at least shown that they had confidence in the English people. In every petition which had come before them relating to the exercise of the franchise, they had always decided in favour of the most extended right of voting which it was in their power to acknowledge. Great as was the influence of wealthy landowners in returning members to the House, those members had no wish to be anything else than the representatives of the nation.[581] With the nation their conservatism placed them at a great advantage as the defenders of what to that generation was the old religion and the old law. In his resistance to Calvinistic dogmatism, in his desire to make the forces of the nation more easily available for what he conceived to be national objects, Charles was the advocate of change and innovation. His weakness lay in his utter ignorance of men, in his incapacity to subordinate that which was only desirable to that which was possible, and above all, in his habitual disregard of that primary axiom of government, that men may be led though they cannot be driven. He looked upon the whole world through a distorting lens. If <329>Buckingham was far from being the scoundrel which popular opinion imagined him to be, his failures could not be ascribed, as Charles thought fit to ascribe them, to mere accident. If Calvinistic orthodoxy must, sooner or later, be struck down in England, it was not from Laudian uniformity that the blow could come. In Charles blindness, narrow-mindedness, and obstinacy, combined with an exaggerated sense of the errors of his opponents, were laying the sure foundations of future ruin. Then would come the turn of the Commons, the day when they too would learn that sovereignty is only permanently entrusted to those who can represent the nation with wisdom as well as with sympathy. The secret of the future was with those who could guide England into the sure haven of religious liberty. It was not enough to say that the Commons represented England in 1628 as well as Elizabeth represented England in 1588. Elizabeth at least took care that all manner of complaints should reach her ears, and that no man should be excluded from her Privy Council on account of his opinions. If the preponderance in the constitution was to pass from the King to the House of Commons, many a compensating change would be needed before the great alteration could be safely effected. Above all, opinion must be set free to an extent of which Pym and Coke never dreamed, if it were only that the nation might itself receive that enlightenment which had in old times been thought necessary for the sovereign.
Such considerations, however, were still in the future. Though men were beginning to feel, and sometimes to act, as if some constitutional change was necessary, they had not yet learned to give verbal expression to their thoughts. If Charles was still sovereign of England in the eyes of others, more especially was he sovereign in his own eyes. Unhappily he did not see in past events a reason for acting so as to regain the hearts of his people. Ecclesiastical appointments.Having the opportunity of flinging defiance in the face of the Commons, he chose to place in high positions in the Church the men whom he knew to be most unpopular. Not long ago Neile had been transferred from Durham to Winchester; and now Montaigne, the old, infirm, luxurious Bishop of London, who was <330>at the moment best known as the licenser of Manwaring’s sermons, was promoted June.first to Durham, and then to the Archbishopric of York;[582] whilst July.the See of London, with all its authority over a more than ordinarily Calvinistic clergy and people, was handed over to Laud.[583] Howson, one of Laud’s chief supporters amongst the bishops, was raised to the important See of Durham;[584] Buckeridge, another of his supporters, having been recently translated to Ely.[585] Yet the promotion which gave the greatest offence was undoubtedly that of Richard Montague to the bishopric of Chichester.[586] Whatever Montague’s merits may have been, a wise king would not have chosen such a moment to promote a man so unpopular. The very circumstance which should have told most against him was doubtless that which most recommended him to Charles’s favour. The Puritans must be made to understand that they had no standing ground in the English Church; and how could that be brought more clearly before their eyes than by the promotion of a man who openly declared them to be a usurping faction?
Scarcely less unwise was Charles’s course with Manwaring. It can hardly be wondered that he desired to relieve the unlucky divine from the penalties which had befallen him for advocating a doctrine which in the King’s eyes had only been pushed too far. Charles was indeed careful to mark his dissent from the July 6.Manwaring’s pardon.extreme form which that doctrine had taken. In the pardon which he caused to be drawn up for Manwaring, he stated that the ground on which it was based was his recantation of the most objectionable part of his opinions.[587] But Charles did not stop here. He conferred upon Manwaring the rectory of Stanford Rivers, just vacated by Montague,[588] again confirming the assertion of the Commons, that promotion in the Church was becoming the exclusive property of that section whose opinions were regarded with abhorrence by the majority of the clergy and of the religious laity.
<331>These promotions in the Church had been made in the first swing of indignation against the Puritans, to whom Charles and Buckingham[589] traced all their calamities. Of the two men, Buckingham, though his impetuousness and self-confidence were perpetually leading him astray, was more accessible than Charles to statesmanlike considerations. When Charles was inclined to treat the unpopularity of his government as a matter of no moment, and to regard the objections raised against his proceedings with the cool contempt of silence, Buckingham was Buckingham’s foreign policy.always ready to give a reason for his actions, with the firm assurance that he needed only a fair hearing to set him right with those who disapproved of his conduct. To him, too, the war in which he had engaged was now a matter rather of necessity than of enthusiasm, and he had for some time been seeking to limit its operations. The correspondence Negotiations with Spain.Gerbier continued to carry on with Rubens gave some reason to believe that Spain would still be induced, through jealousy of France, to make peace with England; and, whatever Buckingham may have thought of the matter, the sanguine mind of Charles was not without some hopes of obtaining in this way the restitution of the Palatinate and an acknowledgment of the independence of the Dutch republic.[590] Circumstances, too, had occurred in Italy which made it not impossible that Spain might be brought to make unusual concessions. The succession of Mantua.In December the Duke of Mantua had died, leaving as the undoubted heir to his possessions a distant kinsman, the Duke of Nevers, whose family had long been settled in France. Against this extension of French influence in Italy the Emperor interfered, claiming the right, as King of Italy, to dispose of vacant fiefs, a right which he was inclined to exercise, as far as Mantua was concerned, in favour of another candidate who would have been entirely <332>under the influence of Spain. At the same time the Duke of Savoy, who had lately been swinging round in his political alliances, proposed to divide with Spain the territory of Montferrat, which had formed part of the dominions of the deceased Duke.
Charles was still anxious to push on the war in all directions. Though it was a point of honour with him to succour Rochelle at all risks, April.Carlisle’s embassy.he would gladly have saved the King of Denmark and the German Protestants as well, if he had only known how to do it. Carlisle was therefore sent in April on a special mission to Savoy. He was to visit the Duke of Lorraine on his way, in order to stir him up against France; and when he reached Turin he was to take advantage of the disturbances in Italy to embitter the rising quarrel between France and Spain, and thus to leave room for the freer action of England at Rochelle and in the North of Germany.[591]
Whatever might come of these various negotiations, the idea of a forced retirement from Continental affairs was not entertained either in the Court or the Council of Charles. As soon as June.Warlike projects.the acceptance of the Petition of Right had given assurance that the subsidies would be really voted, the Privy Council began to discuss the best mode of sending a force to assist the King of Denmark to maintain himself in Glückstadt and Krempe, which were still holding out. Morgan’s men who had surrendered at Stade were to be employed for the purpose; and Dulbier’s horse, which could not now be landed in England, were to be kept in Germany or the Netherlands, in order that they might be used in defence of the North German Protestants as soon as Rochelle had been either captured or relieved.[592] The belief, in fact, was rapidly gaining ground that the war with France <333>would not be of long continuance. It was hardly thought possible that July.Prospects of peace with Francethe great expedition now preparing could fail to relieve Rochelle; and if Rochelle were once relieved, whether peace were formally concluded with France or not, there would be no further need for any great exertions in that quarter. If, on the other hand, the attempt ended in failure, Rochelle must of necessity submit, and the same result would ensue. In either case, Charles would be at liberty to turn his attention to Germany.
The only question therefore was whether the opening of negotiations with Spain should be encouraged. Buckingham had now and with Spain.veered round to his earlier policy of 1622, and was hoping everything from the friendliness of Spain. “Let us make peace with Spain, and settle the affairs of the Palatinate,” he said to the Savoyard ambassador, the Abbot of Scaglia, “and then the Dutch will do as we please.” At all events, he assured the Abbot, there should be no peace with France till an answer had been received to the offer about to be addressed to Spain.[593] It was finally arranged that Endymion Porter, once the messenger who had made arrangements for Charles’s journey to Madrid, should make his way to Spain in order to come to an understanding with Olivares, and to assure him that, if it were thought necessary, Buckingham would come in person to carry on the negotiation for peace.[594] The hope entertained in England seems to have been that the Spaniards would throw their whole strength into Italy, thus leaving Germany free.
Buckingham was far more anxious than Charles for the success of these negotiations. Yet not long after the prorogation, Charles informs the Prince of Orange.Charles sent a message to the Prince of Orange, informing him that, ‘being unable to bear the burden of war against two such great kings,’ he had resolved to listen to the Spanish overtures for a treaty in which the restoration of the Palatinate and the pacification of the <334>Netherlands would be expressly included.[595] The proposal was received with astonishment and indignation at the Hague, where the circumstance that Carlisle, in passing through Brussels, had an audience of the Infanta was considered as enough to indicate the intention of Charles to conclude a separate peace. The Dutch ambassadors in England were accordingly instructed to remonstrate all the more warmly against any such purpose, because it was believed by the States-General that even a peace in which they were themselves included would be most deleterious to their interests, as leaving the Spaniards free to act in aid of the Emperor in Germany. Naturally enough, too, the Dutch found a warm advocate in the Venetian ambassador, to whom Charles’s project of putting an end to the troubles of the North by fanning the flames of war in Italy appeared to be an act of the blackest ingratitude. Neither he nor the Dutch ambassadors were inclined to believe Charles’s assurances that nothing should be done without the knowledge of his allies. Yet there is no reason to doubt Charles’s sincerity. As he had scarcely as yet opened his eyes to the absolute necessity of putting an end to the war on account of the poverty of his exchequer, he was likely enough to flatter himself that it was in his power to continue fighting on his own terms, and to reject any offers from Spain which might be disagreeable to his sense of right.[596]
It is impossible to disconnect these diplomatic efforts from the personal changes which at the same time took place in the Government. Changes in the Government.The anxiety for the future which led Buckingham to attempt to impose a limit upon his military operations abroad, was also shown in his desire to meet Parliament, whan it re-assembled, in something like a conciliatory spirit. Although in the King’s present temper it would be impossible to expect that Charles would consent to give much satisfaction to the Puritans, it might be <335>possible, if once success at Rochelle should have limited the extent of the war, to restore order to the finances, and also to gain the good-will of men whose names would seem to be a guarantee for the strict execution of the Petition of Right, and who would yet be the last to acquiesce in the claim of the House of Commons to direct the external policy of the kingdom.
Such men were to be found in the leaders of the majority of the House of Lords. Bristol and Arundel were therefore Weston, Lord Treasurer.restored to favour, and Weston, who was practically one in policy with them, became Lord Treasurer. Marlborough, old and thoroughly inefficient, found a place as President of the Council, and Manchester became Privy Seal, Worcester having died some months before. It was certain that the influence of these men would be exerted in favour of economy and peace, and that they would give their countenance to an understanding with the House of Commons, if they could attain that object without diminishing that which they regarded as the legitimate authority of the King. A paragraph in a letter written by Weston to the Duke, doubtless expressed the feelings of the others as well. “I long to see you at home again with honour, in a quiet and settled Court, studying his Majesty’s affairs, which require two contrary things to cure them — rest and vigilancy.”[597]
The letter-writers of the day are full of news of these changes at Court, and of others which have less interest in our eyes. On one promotion, which has never ceased to engage the attention of Englishmen, they are entirely silent. Not one of them July 22.Wentworth created a Peer.notices the fact that on July 22 Sir Thomas Wentworth became Lord Wentworth, and was, on Weston’s introduction, received into favour by Charles.
From that time to this no word has been found too hard for the great apostate, the unworthy deserter of the principles of his youth. Was he an apostate?Those who have studied the true records of the session which had just come to an end are aware that he was neither an apostate nor a deserter. The <336>abuses struck at by the Petition of Right he regarded as prejudicial to government as well as injurious to the subject. When they had been swept away he was free to take his own course; and that course must have been greatly determined by the proceedings of the Commons in the last days of the session. With Puritanism he had no sympathy whatever. He had no confidence in the House of Commons as an instrument of government, and must have regarded its claim to strip the Crown of tonnage and poundage, and its declaration that subjects were released from the obligation of paying those dues, as a proclamation inviting to anarchy. If, however, he thought the Lower House unfit to govern England, he was equally of opinion that Buckingham was unfit to govern England. We may well believe, therefore, that he had no anxiety to accept a share in the responsibilities of a Privy Councillor’s place at a time when the duties of a Privy Councillor were reduced to the uncongenial task of echoing the words of the all-powerful minister. Many months were yet to pass before Wentworth would be asked to take his seat at the Council board.[598] The position which he was now called upon to occupy exactly suited his present mood. His peerage removed him from the House of Commons, where he had been isolated ever since the failure of his effort to mediate between the Crown and the nation. In the House of Lords he would find, in the lately formed majority, a body of men with whom he could cordially co-operate. Bristol and Arundel were as opposed as he was to the extravagances by which the policy of the Crown had lately been disfigured, whilst they were of one mind with himself in resenting any attempt of the House of Commons to make itself master of the State.
Although it is likely enough that Wentworth had no immediate wish to gain that admittance to the Council which was <337>denied him by Charles, it is also likely that he aspired, at a not distant future, to a higher post than any which was for the present open to him. No man knew better than he that the war must soon come to an end for want of supplies, and that the policy of abstention from interference with the Continent which he had advocated from the beginning would be forced upon Charles. When peace was restored the hour of Wentworth would come. His expected Presidentship of the North.For the present he was content with the promise that he should before long succeed the Earl of Sunderland as President of the Council of the North. At York he would be far removed from all responsibility for the general government. At York, too, he would be able to carry out those principles which he had professed in the House of Commons. One of the grave complaints made by the Lower House at the close of the session had been against the leniency shown by Sunderland to the recusants, and Wentworth’s voice had been raised as loudly as Pym’s against this leniency. In times of difficulty Charles was always ready to throw the recusants over, and there was now an understanding between him and Wentworth that, in this matter at least, the will of the House of Commons should prevail.
To Wentworth himself this temporary abstraction from all public consideration of national affairs was doubtless extremely grateful. Wentworth as a Parliamentary leader.We are tempted to ask whether it was equally beneficial to the nation. In the last session he alone amongst the leaders of the House had shown anything like powers of constructive statesmanship. Coke and Eliot, Pym and Phelips, had been content with the negation of misgovernment. Their wish was simply that the law and religion of England should remain as it was. Wentworth had not shown himself content with this. An active, wise, and reforming Government was the ideal after which he strove from first to last.
In that session, too, Wentworth had developed powers for which those whose knowledge of him is acquired only from the acts of his later life must have some difficulty in giving him credit. The impetuous haughtiness of his disposition had been curbed before that great assembly which he was learning to <338>lead. There he could be silent and patient, could watch his opportunity till the time arrived when he could express his special thought in harmony with the thoughts of those around him. Whatever mistakes may have been committed in judging Wentworth’s career, those are not wrong who hold that his leadership of the Commons in the early part of the session of 1628 was the brightest, noblest period of his life.
From all this Wentworth was now cut off, not by his peerage or by the allurements of power, but by the impossibility of finding Causes which estranged him from the House of Commons.a common ground upon which the King and the House of Commons could work together. If Charles had abandoned him, as he was to abandon him again, he was still drawn to Charles by every tendency of his nature. He could persuade himself, as the Commons had persuaded themselves in 1625, that Charles had erred from want of counsel, and he could hope to breathe into his soul a higher, loftier spirit. Even whilst he had played the foremost part amongst the Commons, he had never been one with them in heart. He could make use of their power over the grant of subsidies to put an end to the folly and violence of which he complained; but he could not lift up the standard of Puritanism as Pym or Eliot could lift it up. He could not believe in the capacity for government of a House composed for the most part, as it was of necessity, of men of ordinary abilities. He could not see that in the face of a Government which was hurrying a nation against its will into a path from which it recoiled, the mere conservatism of the Lower House, the simple determination to stand in the old paths and to cling to the old familiar religious and political traditions, might be, for the moment, the highest political virtue.
Wentworth’s acceptance of a peerage marked to a great extent the choice which he had made; but more than thirteen months — His time not yet come.momentous months for England — were to elapse before he took his place in the Privy Council and finally threw in his lot with Charles. As yet Buckingham stood in the way. A Council controlled by a minister so incapable and so headstrong was no place for Wentworth.
[559] Parl. Hist. ii. 388, 410.
[560] Bacon has the same conservatism as Pym, but more appreciation of the need of reform. “It is good also not to try experiments in States, except the necessity be urgent, or the utility evident; and well to beware that it be the reformation that draweth on the change, and not the desire of change that pretendeth the reformation.” — Essay on Innovations.
[561] Lords’ Journals, iii. 856. Manwaring’s absolute appeal to first principles would probably not be agreeable to Laud, who preferred leaving such matters to the schools, and basing his demands upon the authority of established institutions.
[562] The debate in committee is given by Nicholas, and the adoption of the Remonstrance is in the Journals of the same day. Rushworth is clearly wrong in saying the charge against Buckingham was voted on the 13th. We here take leave of Nicholas, who gives nothing later than the 11th.
[563] These words were inserted after a proposal from Phelips that only the Duke’s power, and not the abuse of his power, should be complained of.
[564] Rushworth, i. 619.
[566] Rushworth, i. 623.
[567] Contarini to the Doge, June 5⁄15, Ven. Transcripts, R. O.
[568] Fairholt’s Poems and Songs relating to the Duke of Buckingham, Percy Society.
[569] Meade to Stuteville, July 12, Court and Times, i. 373.
[570] Meade to Stuteville, June 21, June 29, Court and Times, i. 364, 367. Diary, S. P. Dom. cii. 57. Rushworth, i. 618.
[571] Rushworth, i. 626.
[572] Meade to Stuteville, June 21, Court and Times, i. 364.
[573] Lords’ Journals, iii. 897.
[574] Poems on Buckingham, Percy Society, 30.
[575] Meade to Stuteville, June 29, Court and Times, i. 367.
[576] Nethersole to Elizabeth, June 30, S. P. Dom. cviii. 52.
[577] Parl. Hist. ii. 431.
[578] Lords’ Journals, iii. 879. The last clause is corrected from Parl. Hist. ii. 434.
[579] The notes of Montague’s speech in the Parl. Debates in 1610 give: “Tax or tallage only by Parliament. Custom or imposition proceed from a regal power, and matter of inheritance in the King.”
[580] The wording of this clause in the petition is ‘that no man hereafter be compelled to make or yield any gift, loan, benevolence, tax, or such like charge without common consent by Act of Parliament.’ In the Tonnage and Poundage Act of the Long Parliament we hear ‘that no subsidy, custom, impost, or any charge whatsoever ought to be laid or imposed upon any merchandise exported or imported.’ In the debates in 1610 the question was almost entirely debated, especially on the side of the Crown, as if customs’ duties were to be treated apart from other taxation.
[581] For the results of this work in committee I must refer to Mr. Forster. Sir J. Eliot, ii. 119.
[582] Date of congé d’élire, June 5.
[583] July 4.
[584] July 4.
[585] April 8.
[586] Congé d’élire, July 8.
[587] The King to Heath, July 6, S. P. Dom. cix. 42.
[588] Docquet, July 18.
[589] Laud, in his History of the Troubles (Works, iv. 273), says that Montague’s appointment was procured by Buckingham.
[590] The papers translated in Mr. Sainsbury’s Rubens should be compared with Contarini’s despatches, after making allowance for the anti-Spanish feeling of the Venetian, and his consequent tendency to suspect all sorts of treachery in Charles and Buckingham.
[591] Carlisle’s instructions, March 10, Harl. MSS. 1584, fol. 173.
[592] Conway to Carleton, June 7, 10, S. P. Holland. Morgan’s men were to be reduced to one regiment of 1,500 men, and were offered temporarily to the Dutch, to be paid by England and lodged and fed by the States-General. D. Carleton to the States-General, July 6⁄16, Add. MSS. 17,677, M. fol. 256.
[593] Statement enclosed in a letter from the Infanta Isabella to Philip IV., June, Aug. 27⁄Sept. 6, Brussels MSS.
[594] The Infanta Isabella to Philip IV., Oct. 14⁄24, Brussels MSS.
[595] Extract from a despatch of the Prince of Orange in Contarini’s despatch of July 18⁄28.
[596] The Dutch Ambassadors to the States-General, July 22⁄Aug. 1, Add MSS. 17,677, M. fol. 266; Contarini to the Doge, July 18⁄28, July 28⁄Aug. 7, Ven. Transcripts, R.O.
[597] Weston to Buckingham, Aug. 18, S. P. Dom. cxiii. 14.
[598] That he became a Privy Councillor at this time is a mistake. Sir G. Radcliffe (Strafford Letters, ii. App. 430) having put together the two years 1628 and 1629, seems to say that he became a Privy Councillor in Michaelmas term, 1628. The true date, as we learn from the Council Register, is Nov. 10, 1629, a fact of considerable importance in an estimate of Wentworth’s character.