<30>So confident was Charles of the issue that, when the Houses met on January 20,[39] he did not even think it necessary to explain Jan. 20.Opening of the session.what he had done. The Commons, as soon as they proceeded to business on the 22nd, showed that Jan. 22.they looked upon the events of the past months from a point of view of their own. Complaints were at once heard that the speech in which the King at the close of the last session had claimed tonnage and poundage as his due, had been enrolled with the Petition of Right, and that a printed copy of the great statute had been circulated in the country ‘with an answer which never gave any satisfaction,’ that is to say, with the answer which had been rejected as insufficient, in addition to the final answer and the speech by which it had been finally expounded by the King.[40]
<31>Selden then stepped forward with a weightier charge. The Petition of Right, he said, had been actually broken. For Had the Petition of Right been violated?liberties of state, he said, ‘we know of an order made in the Exchequer, that a sheriff was commanded not to execute a replevin, and men’s goods are taken away and must not be restored.’ Further, ‘one had lately lost his ears by a decree of the Star Chamber, by an arbitrary judgment.’ “Next,” he said, “they will take away our arms, and then our legs, and so our lives; let all see we are sensible of this. Customs creep on us; let us make a just representation hereof unto his Majesty.”
The case of Savage, of which Selden spoke so bitterly, had been one of extreme harshness. Either from a foolish love of notoriety Savage’s case.or from actual insanity he had announced that Felton had asked him to join in killing Buckingham.[41] He was sentenced in the Star Chamber to lose his ears.[42] It was well that Selden should raise his voice against the scandal, and that a limit should be set to the swelling jurisdiction of the Star Chamber;[43] but it was absurd to argue <32>that the jurisdiction of that court was in any way affected by the Petition of Right.
Unluckily the question of Tonnage and Poundage, embarrassing enough in itself, was complicated by the fact that John Rolle, Rolle’s case.one of the merchants whose goods had been seized, was a member of the House. “Cast your eyes,” said the impetuous Phelips, “which way you please, and you shall see violations on all sides. Look on the privileges of this House! Let any say if ever he recall or saw the like violations by inferior ministers that ever do their commands. They knew the party was a Parliament man. Nay, they said, ‘if all the Parliament were in you, this we would do and justify.’” Phelips concluded by moving for a committee on the whole question of the levy of tonnage and poundage.[44]
It was hardly possible to dwarf a great question more completely than to convert the mighty struggle against unparliamentary taxation into Question of privilege.a mere dispute about privilege. Yet this was what the House seemed disposed to do. “Let the parties,” said Lyttelton, “be sent for that violated the liberties.” The Commons did not notice that in so doing they were leaving a strong position for a weak one. In resisting the King’s claim to levy duties without consent of Parliament, they were guarding the purse of the subject from encroachments to which no limit could be placed. In resisting his claim to seize the goods of a member of Parliament, they gave a direct advantage to a merchant who happened to be a member of the House over one who was less fortunate. In point of fact, the claim of privilege for goods in the case of legal proceedings is one which has long ago been abandoned by a triumphant Parliament.
The privilege of Parliament had, of late years, been on the <33>increase. Up to the accession of James, only three cases could be shown Privilege of goods from arrest.in which a member had established his claim to freedom for his goods, and in two of these the claim had been expressly limited to such goods as it was necessary for him to have with him during his attendance at Westminster or on his way home.[45] In James’s reign the interference of the House to protect members’ goods in general had become frequent, and was justified on the principle that those who were engaged in the public service ought not to be distracted from their duties by the care of defending their own property; but nothing had been settled as to the exact time before and after each session during which the privilege was to last.[46] It was only indeed by a technicality that Rolle’s case could be brought within the largest limits which had ever been suggested. The seizure of his goods had been effected on October 30, more than four months after the close of one session, and more than two months before the commencement of another; but it so happened that Parliament had been originally prorogued to October 20, and Rolle was therefore supposed, by a legal fiction, to have been hindered in the fulfilment of duties which, as he was perfectly aware at the time, were not to be imposed upon him for many weeks to come.
At last Charles discovered that it was unwise to allow the debates to proceed without a word from himself. Summoning the Houses to Whitehall, Jan. 24.The King’s speech.he assured them distinctly that he had had no intention to levy the duties by his ‘hereditary prerogative.’ “It ever was,” he declared, “and still is my meaning, by the gift of my people to enjoy it; and my intention in my speech at the end of the last session was not to challenge tonnage and poundage of right, but for expedience de bene esse, showing you the necessity, not the right, by which I was to take it until you had granted it unto me; assuring myself, according to your general profession, that you wanted time and not good will to give it me.” He had been startled, he added, by some things which had <34>been said amongst them; but he would not complain. “The House’s resolution,” he ended by saying, “not particular men’s speeches, shall make me judge well or ill, not doubting but, according to mine example, you will be deaf to all reports concerning me, until my words and actions speak for themselves, that this session beginning with confidence one towards the other, it may end with a perfect good understanding between us; which God grant.”[47]
Although it would be easy to find fault with the account given by Charles of the language which he had employed at the Moderation of the speech.close of the last session, it was not of the slightest importance whether he had contradicted himself or not. It was enough that he had renounced plainly all claim to levy tonnage and poundage as his right. Accordingly, The impression favourable.the first impression made by the speech was extremely favourable. It was not then the decent custom to listen to announcements from the throne in respectful silence, and the King was many times interrupted by sounds of applause. As the Commons left his presence, one of them observed that it was easy to see that Buckingham was no longer alive. “This speech,” wrote Nethersole, “hath given great satisfaction for the present.” Nethersole was, however, too old a member to be ignorant where the real danger lay. The religious difficulty.“In matter of religion,” he proceeded to say, “they are quiet as yet; for it is early days. But the greatest business is like to be about that, notwithstanding that his Majesty hath called in Montague’s book by a special proclamation. … His Majesty hath also granted his pardon to Montague, Cosin, Manwaring, and Sibthorpe. But that will hardly save some of them. God keep us in good temper.”[48]
On the 26th, when Jan. 26.Bill for tonnage and poundage postponed.Sir John Coke offered to bring in a Bill for granting tonnage and poundage to the King, he was <35>told that it was not the custom of the House to vote on a Bill of supply, except upon resolutions debated in committee. Besides, the question of the impositions must be cleared up before anything could be done.[49]
The question of the impositions had not been taken into account by Charles. Still, it was one on which compromise was possible, and The question of the impositions.it is unlikely that, if the House had proposed to include existing impositions in the new Tonnage and Poundage Bill, in return for an abandonment of the King’s claim to levy further impositions by prerogative, Charles would have offered any decided resistance to an amicable settlement of the long dispute. The fact was that the hearts of the members were elsewhere than in the question of impositions. Rouse’s speech on religion.Scarcely was the mode of procedure on the Tonnage and Poundage Bill settled, when Francis Rouse rose. He lived to be the author of that metrical version of the Psalms which was one day to be the cherished treasure in joy or in affliction of every Scottish household. He lived, too, to be the speaker of that strangest of all English political assemblies which strove in vain to hurry conservative England into the path of social revolution. He now called upon no inattentive hearers to stand firm against the encroachments of Popery, that confused mass of errors which cast down ‘Kings before Popes, the precepts of God before the traditions of men, living and reasonable men before dead and senseless stocks and stones,’ and against the encroachments of Arminianism, ‘an error that makes the grace of God lackey it after the will of man, that makes the sheep to keep the shepherd, and makes a mortal seed of an immortal God.’ Kirton’s explanation.Kirton rose to explain the source of the mischief. The new doctrines, he argued, had been introduced in order to pave the way for the betrayal of Protestantism to Rome. The personal ambition of the clergy was the cause of it all. “The highest dignity,” he said, “they can attain to here in England is an archbishopric, but a Cardinal’s cap is not here to be had. Our endeavour must be to take <36>away the root, and then the branches will decay of themselves. It is not the calling in of the Appeal to Cæsar that will do it; for if they can get bishoprics for writing of such books, we shall have many more that will write books in the same kind.”
So flowed on confusedly and without restraint the pent-up waters of indignation. In the end the whole subject of religion was Committee on religion.referred to a committee; and in spite of a message from the King urging the House to proceed at once with the Tonnage and Poundage Bill, it was resolved that the report of the committee should first be heard.
The reporter, or as we should now say, the chairman of the committee, was Pym, who, indeed, had been the reporter of Jan. 27.Pym’s constitutional views.every committee on religion in the reign. He combined a firm persuasion of the truth and importance of the Calvinistic creed with a knowledge of the world, and with a tact in the management of men, which was hereafter to raise him to the supreme leadership of the Long Parliament.[50] He clearly saw the intimate connection between all the various questions by which the reign had been agitated. He held that the path of safety lay in the combined supremacy of King and Parliament. The time had not yet come when men could venture, even in thought, to separate between the two. All other institutions — ecclesiastical, judicial, military — must work in accordance with rules laid down by King and Parliament together. They must not claim to be independent of the nation itself, revolving in orbs of their own, and careless of the national conscience and the national will.
Such a view of government was alien to the mind of Charles. He was himself, he held, the sun of the constitutional system. Parliament was but one of the many planets revolving round his throne. Report of the committee.Against this view of the case Pym’s report was a decided protest. Parliaments, he ominously said, ‘have enacted laws for the trial of heretics.’ The two Convocations were but Provincial Synods. ‘The <37>High Commission derived its authority from Parliament, and the derivative could not prejudice the original.’ What Pym had said on the religious question was said by Eliot on the temporal question. “I find,” Eliot on Chambers’s petition.he declared upon the reading of a petition from Chambers, “the Judges, the Council, Sheriffs, Customers, the Attorney and all conspire to trample on the liberty of the subjects.” Chambers, however, ought to take a legal course, in order that, if the judges failed to do him justice, they might be made responsible for their dereliction of duty. Eliot, in short, refused to acknowledge that even the judges could be the final arbitrators of the constitution. King and Parliament together were the highest authority; and there can be no doubt that in his own mind he believed that the authority of King and Parliament ought to be exercised in accordance with the decision of the House of Commons.
In spite of renewed protests from Secretary Coke, the House went into committee on Pym’s report. Jan. 29.Eliot’s speech on religion.The tone of the whole debate was given by a great speech from Eliot.[51] He began by warning the House of the danger of turning its debates into a theological conference. “I presume, Sir,” he said, “Truth to be maintained.it is not the intention we now have to dispute the religion we profess. After so long a radiance and sunshine of the Gospel, it is not for us to draw it into question. The Gospel is that truth which from all antiquity is derived, that pure truth which admits no mixture or corruption, that truth in which this kingdom has been happy through a long and rare prosperity. This ground, therefore, let us lay for the foundation of our building that that truth, not with words but with actions, we will maintain. Sir, the sense in which our Church still receives that truth is contained in the Articles. There shall we find that which the <38>Acts of Parliament have established against all the practice of our adversaries. Not that it is the truth because confirmed by Parliament, but confirmed by Parliament because it is the truth.”
Then, aiming not, like Kirton, at imaginary ambitions, he pointed fearlessly to the root of the mischief: “Among the many The King’s Declaration.causes of the envy we have contracted,” he said, “there is none comes with a fuller face of danger to my thoughts than the late Declaration that was published in the name and title of his Majesty.” It could not, he continued, have really proceeded from the King, or it must have been won from him by misinformation. “I will so believe it,” he cried, “of this Declaration — by which more danger is portended than in all that has been before. For by the rest, in all other particulars of our fears concerning Popery or Arminianism, we are endangered by degrees; the evils approaching by gradation, one seeming as a preparation to another; but in this, like an inundation, they break on us with such impetuous violence that, leaving art and circumstance, they threaten at once to overwhelm us by plain force. For, I beseech you, mark it. The Articles contain the grounds of our religion; but the letter of those Articles, as the Declaration doth confess, implies a doubtful sense, of which the application makes the difference between us and our adversaries; and now the interpretation is referred to the judgment of the prelates who have, by this Declaration, the concession of a power to do anything for the maintenance or overthrow of the truth. The truth, as I said, being contained in the Articles, and they having a double sense, upon which the differences arise, it is in the prelates now to order it which way they please, and so, for aught I know, to bring in Popery or Arminianism, to which we are told, we must submit. Is it a light thing to have canons of religion rest in the discretion of these men? Should the rules and principles of our faith be squared by their affections?” Some of the bishops, it was true, might be ‘fathers to all ages.’ “But,” continued the orator, “they are not all such, I fear. Witness those two, complained of in the last Remonstrance we exhibited, Doctors Laud and Neile; and you know what place they have! Witness, likewise Montague, so newly now <39>preferred! I reverence the order, though I honour not the man. Others may be named too, of the same bark and leaven, to whose judgments if our religion were committed, it might easily be discerned what resolutions they would give; whereof even the procuring of this reference, this manifesto, to be made, is a perfect demonstration.”
Eliot had singled out the true rock of offence. Between the controversialists, whom Charles had hoped to silence, there was Meaning of the difference between Eliot and his opponents.a difference not to be measured by words or terms. It was a difference reaching deep down into the moral and spiritual basis upon which all conceptions of theology rest, a difference of habit of mind and religious instinct. To Eliot and to such as Eliot, the helps and assistances to faith upon which Cosin dwelt so lovingly only served to distract the mind from the contemplation of the great Taskmaster, even if they did not threaten to occupy His place. To them even the hard Calvinistic dogmatism, so repulsive in the pages of Prynne, was full of a precious and tender reality. Through it they entered into the sweet contemplation of a ruling Personality, who had raised them from the dust, and who guarded them from the sin which so easily beset them. To the harder, sterner features of that creed they closed their eyes.
Where then was the remedy? It is easy for us to say that it was to be found in liberty, in the permission to each new thought Where was the remedy?to develop itself as best it might; but the very notion of religious liberty was as yet unheard of, and even if it had been as familiar as it is now, its bare proclamation would have been of little avail. Bishops, it seemed, of the stamp of Laud and Montague were to rule the Church, and to exercise the enormous powers of the Episcopate and the High Commission to depress one mode of thought and to elevate another. All the patronage of the Court, all the patronage of the bishops, would flow in one direction. The ideas of a minority of religious men would prevail by other means than their own persuasiveness. The religion dear to the gentlemen of England was thus thrown on the defensive, and the House of Commons was not inclined to abandon it without a struggle.
<40>Eliot refused to allow that his faith was a matter for argument. “Some of our adversaries, you know,” he said, “are Religion to be defended by Parliament.masters of forms and ceremonies. Well, I would grant to their honour even the admission at our worship of some of those great idols which they worship. There is a ceremony used in the Eastern Churches of standing at the repetition of the Creed to testify their purpose to maintain it, and as some had it, not only with their bodies upright, but with their swords drawn. Give me leave to call that a custom very commendable. It signified the constancy and readiness of their resolution to live and die in that profession; and that resolution I hope we have with as much constancy assumed, and on all occasions shall as faithfully discharge, not valuing our lives where the adventure may be necessary for the defence of our Sovereign, for the defence of our country, for the defence of our religion.”
“I desire,” said Eliot, in conclusion, “that we may avoid confusion and distraction; that we may go presently to the Eliot’s conclusion.grounds of our religion, and lay that down as a rule. Then, when that is done, it will be time to take into consideration the breakers and offenders against this rule, and before we have done that, our work will be in vain. Therefore, first lay down the profession wherein we differ from the Arminians, and in that I shall be ready to deliver my opinion.”
It was the inevitable consequence of the failure of Charles to stand forth as the representative of the nation, that the Position taken by the House.House of Commons should thrust itself into a position which it could not with credit occupy. Because Charles treated the religion of the nation as a matter with which the nation had no concern whatever, therefore the Commons attempted to define the doctrine of the nation and to inflict penalties upon those who refused to accept it. Eliot and Pym said in effect, “We will not allow the religion of England to be changed.” To carry out their purpose they were forced, much against their will, to convert the House of Commons into a school of theology one day, as they would have to convert it into a school of law on the next. At one time the bishops, at another time the judges, would be called <41>to account before a body which had never studied profoundly the subjects with which bishops and judges were respectively conversant.
The House shrank from the uncongenial path upon which Resolution of the Commons.it was invited to enter. It was not till after many suggestions had been made, that the following Resolution was finally adopted:—
“We the Commons now in Parliament assembled do claim, profess, and avow for truth the sense of the Articles of Religion which were established in Parliament in the reign of our late Queen Elizabeth, which by public acts of the Church of England, and by the general and concurrent exposition of the writers of our Church, have been delivered to us, and we do reject the sense of the Jesuits and Arminians.”
Like many other celebrated Parliamentary documents, this famous Resolution was by no means a model of precision. The clause about the Parliamentary title of the Articles, which had been suggested by Selden, was evidently intended to deny the claim of Convocation to legislate even on religious matters; but nothing of the kind was said, and the rest of the document was still more indefinite. Jan. 31.Its meaning acknowledged to be doubtful.When the Committee met two days afterwards, even friendly criticism professed that it was impossible to understand what was really meant by the Resolution.[52] What, for instance, were the public acts of the Church to which it appealed? According to Sir Nathaniel Rich, they were the Catechisms, the Lambeth Articles, the Irish Articles, the Acts of the Synod of Dort which had been approved by King James, the readings of professors in the Universities, the Homilies, and all other books of divines printed by authority. To this portentous list the lawyers demurred. Nothing, said Selden, could be called a public act of the Church which had not received the assent of Convocation. Serjeant Hoskins refused to give the title even to acts of Convocation. “That only,” he argued, “is said to be a public act which is considered of, debated, disputed, and resolved on by the King and all the State.”
<42>Was Convocation or Parliament to lay down the rule of faith for England? Practically the bishops were supreme in Convocation, and, as everyone knew, the bishops owed their appointment to the King. Feb. 2.The Commons feel it necessary to explain their conduct.However much the Commons might shrink from avowing it, they had to ask themselves whether their religion was safe in Charles’s hands. The House at least felt it necessary to explain their conduct in interrupting the progress of the Tonnage and Poundage Bill. Charles restrained his vexation, Feb. 3.The King’s reply.but not without showing signs of irritation beneath his friendly words. He was thankful to the House, he said, for their confidence in his good intentions, but they must think that he either wanted power, which could not be, or that he was very ill counselled, if religion was in such danger as they affirmed. Eliot, at least, was not afraid of drawing the inference. “If these things be thus as we see,” he said, “then he is not rightly counselled.”
As soon as Pym had once more taken the chair in the Committee on Religion, Eliot rose again. The result of the last meeting Eliot proposes to take the aggressive.had not been satisfactory. The committee had been unable to discover with certainty what were those public acts to which so solemn an appeal had been made. Eliot now proposed to drop the investigation. Whether the Lambeth Articles had been formally accepted by the Church or not, they all believed them to be true. Let them, therefore, boldly rely upon that. “Are there Arminians? — for so are they properly called — Look to those: see to what a degree they creep; let us observe their books and sermons; let us strike at them, and make our charge at them, and vindicate our truth that yet seems obscure, and if any justify themselves in their new opinions, let us deal with them, and these testimonies will be needful. Our truth is clear, our proofs will be manifest, and if these parties will dare to defend themselves, then seek for proofs.”[53]
It is impossible to deny that Eliot’s proposal could only be <43>justified by the arguments which may be used to justify a revolution. Character of Eliot’s proposal.The mere assent of the House of Commons to certain doctrinal propositions which had never been legally binding upon anyone was to be made the touchstone of orthodoxy. Unpopular theologians were to be summoned to give account of their actions and opinions before a tribunal which recognised no fixed legal procedure, and which would decide according to the popular instinct rather than according to any certain rule of law. It was perhaps inevitable that it should be so. The King’s claim to rule as seemed right in his own eyes without taking the national conscience into account was met by the claim of the House of Commons to rule as seemed right in its own eyes without taking the rights of individual conscience into account. The time would come when it would be understood that liberty of speech and action is all that either a majority or a minority can fairly claim. But that time had not yet arrived. The declaration on Religion nominally imposed silence on both parties alike. Practically it imposed silence on those to whom the Calvinistic doctrines were precious, not upon those who cared far more about other doctrines on which they were at liberty to talk as much as they pleased. The restraint upon freedom which the Declaration undoubtedly was, was therefore answered by an attack upon the men from whom the restraint proceeded.
As usual, Charles had studied the letter rather than the spirit of history. It was undoubtedly true that religious changes Position of Charles.had been effected by the authority of kings. It was undoubtedly true that Henry and Elizabeth had made use of the bishops as their instruments in Convocation and out of Convocation, with scant respect for any objections which might reach them from the House of Commons; but in so doing they had allowed it to be plainly seen that they were not wedded to any particular Church party. They took their stand as moderators above all. Charles could not do this. What he believed he believed thoroughly. He had no notion of watching the tides to gain the port which he had in sight. He had honestly believed his Declaration to be a healing measure, and it was <44>perfectly incomprehensible to him how men, except from factious motives, could lash themselves into a fury against it.
The adoption of Eliot’s proposal by the House therefore meant nothing less than a declaration of war against the King. Eliot’s proposal adopted.The House was ready to follow him. It resolved to make inquiry into the pardons lately granted, and more especially to take up once more the charges against Montague. Addresses and remonstrances to the King had come to an end. They were to give place to sharp action against the men who owed to the King’s favour their power to do good or evil.
The appointment of Montague to a bishopric had been one of Charles’s most indiscreet actions. In the House of Commons Feb. 4.Was Montague legally a bishop?it was felt bitterly. What, Seymour had argued in the late debates, was the use of suppressing a book, if its author was made a bishop? The House caught eagerly at a suggestion that, after all, he was not legally a bishop. One Jones, a bookbinder, had declared in a petition that at Montague’s confirmation he had presented objections which had been passed over as irregular in form, and though the Solicitor-General explained that the confirmation nevertheless was perfectly legal, it was resolved that the question should be argued at the bar.
The quarrel of the Commons with Montague was a quarrel about doctrine. Their quarrel with Cosin was a quarrel about ceremonies. Since the publication of his Book of Devotions, Cosin had been involved in charges on which he was hardly likely to receive a fair hearing from the House of Commons. During the last summer the old Norman pile which looked down from The ceremonies at Durham.its green height upon the then limpid waters of the Wear had been the scene of religious strife. Durham Cathedral had remained longer than most other cathedrals in the state in which a Puritan would have wished to see it. It was not so very long ago that the communion-table and the font had stood one on each side of the north door which leads into the choir. Before James I. died the hand of the reformer had come. The font was moved first into the nave, then into the galilee, the Lady Chapel as it had <45>been of old days, the only Lady Chapel in England with the exception of the so-called Chapel of St. Joseph at Glastonbury, which stood at the west end of a church, whither it had been driven, as local legends told, by the persistent refusal of St. Cuthbert to surrender a site which he had already occupied. The communion-table was altogether removed, and a new table of stone, supported on marble pillars and adorned with figures of cherubim, was erected in the place where the altar had originally stood, and where the very same table stands, somewhat mutilated, at the present day. The services assumed a statelier form. The congregation were bidden to stand up at the recital of the Nicene Creed, which was now sung to the music of an organ and of other instruments. Old copes, according to the directions of the Canons of 1604, were sought out and refurbished for the use of the officiating ministers. The custom of bowing towards the east on entering the church, which had been prescribed by the ancient statutes of the Cathedral, was revived, and two large candlesticks appeared upon the communion-table, though the candles do not seem to have been lighted except when it was dark.
Such things could not be done without awakening opposition, and that opposition found a mouthpiece in one of the 1628.July 27.Smart’s sermon.prebendaries of the Cathedral, Peter Smart. For seven years he abstained from preaching in a church which he held to be contaminated by these innovations. His subsequent history shows him to have been an inaccurate, if not a consciously mendacious, reporter of things which had passed before his eyes. On July 27, 1628,[54] he resolved to ascend the Cathedral pulpit to bear testimony against the changes which he disliked. It may be that the Remonstrance of the Commons filled his mind with zeal, as it had filled the disordered mind of Felton. His sermon was a bitter invective against his colleagues. He charged them with attempting to revive and raise up again Jewish types and figures long since dead and buried, in bringing in altars instead of tables, priests instead of ministers, propitiatory sacrifices instead <46>of sacraments. In all this, he added, they had but copied ‘that painted harlot, the Church of Rome.’ In short, they were bent on introducing the Mass into the midst of an English congregation.
Smart was at once convened before the Ecclesiastical Commissioners for the Province of York. He appealed to the secular courts. July 27.Proceedings against Smart.At the summer assizes he preferred an indictment against the principal prebendaries for their conduct relating to the communion-table, standing at the Nicene Creed, and other ceremonies of the Church. Though Whitelocke, the judge on circuit, had taken care, in the new chapel at his own house at Fawley, to place the communion-table by the side of the pulpit,[55] he seems to have thought, as many others thought, that a cathedral was not to be bound by the regulations which were fitted for a parish church. He allowed himself to be conducted over the Cathedral, expressed his approval of all that he saw, and refused Smart’s application. Sept. 20.Upon this the Dean and Chapter sequestered Smart’s prebend for an offence ‘against good manners, Christian charity, and the statutes of the Church of Durham.’ 1629.Jan. 29.In the following January he was transmitted to the High Commission Court of the Province of Canterbury, where his judges would at least be so far impartial that they would not feel personally aggrieved by his sermon.[56]
Amongst the Durham prebendaries Cosin was the most active and influential. In the preceding spring he had been present 1628.April.Cosin’s conversation about the Royal Supremacy.at a conversation which turned upon the right of excommunication. Cosin maintained that the clergy held it directly from Christ. A certain Mr. Pleasance, who was present, was of a different opinion. “You have it,” he said, “from the King. He can excommunicate as well as you.” “The exercise of it indeed,” replied Cosin, “is under the King. But the power is derived from Christ and by virtue of holy orders.” The discourse then <47>took a wider turn. “How,” said Pleasance, “can the King be said to be Head of the Church?” “Who says it now?” was Cosin’s reply. The title, he explained, though capable of innocent interpretation, was liable to be misunderstood. It had been dropped by Queen Elizabeth,[57] and had ceased to be binding upon anyone. It was enough to say that the King was ‘supreme governor of Church and State,’ and that he might by his ‘power of supreme dominion command churchmen at any time to do their office, or punish them for neglect of it … External co-action, … whereby men were forced to obey the jurisdiction of the Church was only from the King; but the power of spiritual jurisdiction itself was from Christ, who had given it to his Apostles, and they to their successors by ordination.’
Such a conversation, after passing over the tongues of a few gossiping reporters, was easily converted into an attack upon the Royal Supremacy. November.Charge against Cosin.The attention of the Attorney-General was called to it by one of Smart’s friends.[58] Charles was not likely to pay attention to such a charge against such a man; and 1629.Feb. 4.another of Smart’s friends, thinking that he would obtain a more favourable hearing in the House of Commons, drew up a petition full of charges against Cosin, some of them perhaps true, some of them afterwards proved to be entirely false.
Before any inquiry could be made into the truth of the petition, Phelips, who had been sent to ask the Attorney-General The pardons for Montague and others.by whose authority he had drawn the obnoxious pardons, returned with the answer. Heath explained that he had drawn Montague’s pardon by his Majesty’s express command. The order for preparing the pardons for Sibthorpe, Manwaring, and Cosin had been conveyed to him by Bishop Neile.[59] The House ordered that a sifting inquiry should be instituted into the history of these pardons, and <48>into the reasons why the charges brought against Cosin had been allowed to sleep. Cosin himself was ordered to appear on the 23rd. The House, it seemed, was more jealous of the King’s honour than he was himself.
In one form or another, the vital question, whether Parliament or Convocation was the supreme legislator in religious matters was constantly recurring. Feb. 5.Question about the authority of the Church.It was suggested that the Articles as usually printed differed in one important clause from the Articles as mentioned in the Act of Parliament of 1571, from which, Clause alleged to have been foisted upon the Articles.according to the contention of the House of Commons, they derived their binding force. The twentieth Article now contained a clause asserting that “The Church hath power to decree rites and ceremonies, and authority in controversies of faith.” Such a clause might easily be quoted in support of the pretensions of Convocation. It had been absent from the printed book acknowledged by Parliament in 1571. “By adding these two lines,” it was said of the existing addition, “it gives power to alter religion.”[60]
In all probability the clause in question had been added by Elizabeth herself after the Articles passed through Convocation in 1562, though History of the clause in dispute.the alteration had been tacitly accepted by the clergy. For some time editions of the Articles accepted or omitted the clause at pleasure. In the edition acknowledged by Parliament in 1571 it was not to be found. In the same year it was adopted by Convocation; and though for a few years longer the practice of the printers continued to vary, it had found a place in every edition subsequent to 1581. Till the question arose between Parliament and Convocation in 1629, no practical importance had attached itself either to its adoption or to its omission.[61]
The question of authority reached too far to be settled without a struggle. Unhappily, Feb. 6.Attack upon Heath.its existence jaundiced the minds of those who felt strongly on one side of the conflict. The simple question of Cosin’s very innocent conversation about the Royal Supremacy <49>assumed portentous dimensions in Eliot’s eyes. It was always a satisfaction to the men who were opposing the King’s claims to persuade themselves that they were in reality on his side, and Eliot accused Heath of stifling a charge which amounted to little less than high treason. Yet Feb. 9.Heath’s account given to the House must have been accepted as satisfactory, as no further proceedings were taken in the matter. In the course of the defence, however, he mentioned the name of the person who had communicated to him the King’s directions that he should drop the prosecution, and Charles took offence at this revelation of his secrets. It was only after making very humble apologies indeed that Heath was restored to favour.[62]
The attempt to prove that Montague was not a bishop failed as completely as the attempt to prove that Cosin was a traitor. The question of Montague’s confirmation.Counsel was heard in support of the objection which had been taken; but an argument of Sir Henry Marten satisfied the House that it could not be sustained.
Great as was the eagerness of the Commons to listen to charges against the men whom they disliked, they had not ceased Feb. 7.Charges against Neile.to be amenable to reason. At last it was hoped that an unanswerable case had been found. Sherfield, the member for Salisbury, whose name was a few years later to blaze forth into notoriety in a Star Chamber prosecution, reported to the Committee on Religion that Neile had caused words to be inserted in the pardons to Montague and the others, the effect of which was to free them from the penalties for erroneous, unorthodox, and false opinions.[63] These words had doubtlessly been simply intended to guard against accusations founded upon the utterance of opinions which might be alleged by Parliament to be erroneous, unorthodox, or false, but they looked like a premeditated attempt to encourage the promulgation of heretical doctrine. Sir Daniel Norton followed by a still more telling accusation. Neile, he said, had <50>sent for Dr. Moore, one of the prebendaries of his cathedral at Winchester, and told him ‘that he had oftentimes heard him preach before King James, and that he had used to preach against Popery.’ “This,” the Bishop was alleged to have said, “was well liked of then, but now you must not do so.” “If occasion serves,” Moore had replied, “I will not spare to do the like again.” “The times,” rejoined Neile, “are not the same, and therefore you must not do so.”
What Neile in all probability had intended to say was, that the King disapproved of the violent polemical objurgations which too often Neile to be sent for.took the place of moral or religious instruction which ought to form the staple of a preacher’s work; but no such explanation in favour of the bishop who had been so busy in obtaining the pardons was likely to gain a hearing. “In this Lord,”[64] said Eliot, “is contracted all the danger we fear; for he that procured those pardons, may be the author of these new opinions; and I doubt not but his Majesty, being informed thereof, will leave him to the justice of the House, and I hope their exhalations will not raise jealousies between his Majesty and us. Let the Doctor be sent for, to justify it.”
The power to silence opponents was the real object in dispute. Hitherto the Commons had shown themselves far more inquisitorial than the Bishops. Feb. 11.Selden’s position.Yet there was one voice amongst them which was raised in favour of liberty. Selden’s unenthusiastic nature and wide learning had made him utterly indifferent to the theological disputes with which the air resounded, and he thought it very hard that anyone should suffer because he held one view or another on a speculative question. He was no more born to be a martyr of liberty than a martyr of orthodoxy. In his chambers in the Temple he loved to pose his friends with sudden questions, revealing his indifference to the issues which seemed so momentous. On the whole, he attached himself to the popular party. But his object was not to seize upon power in order that it might be turned against those who held it. <51>Power itself, he held, needed to be diminished. His friends had, therefore, to resign themselves to listen to arguments which must have appeared to them to be the merest quixotry, and which made it certain that if ever, by some unexpected turn of the wheel of fortune, they found themselves in the possession of authority, they might count on Selden’s opposition. In the last session, he had startled the House by an opinion, that no Englishman could legally be pressed into military service. At the opening of this session he had declared, with more applause, that the Star Chamber had no legal right to cut off ears. He now threw out His opinion on the liberty of printing.a far more startling suggestion. Certain printers presented a petition, complaining that Laud’s chaplain had refused to license books which they described as orthodox, whilst he had licensed books which they described as ‘holding opinions of Arminianism and Popery,’ and that the printers who had acted in defiance of this decision had been punished by the High Commission. To this Selden rose. “There is no law,” he said, “to prevent the printing of any book in England, but only a decree in the Star Chamber. Therefore that a man should be fined, imprisoned, and his goods taken from him, is a great invasion of the liberty of the subject; and, therefore, I desire that a law may be made on this.” Selden was before his time. The question was referred to a select committee, and no more was heard of it. If the Commons had taken any step at all in the matter it would only have been to wrest from their adversaries a power which they would gladly have exercised themselves.
The debate which followed upon Neile’s share in procuring the pardons is memorable for Neile and the pardons again.the first public appearance of a man who was one day to have something to say upon liberty of conscience far more determinately than Selden.
Oliver Cromwell was born at Huntingdon in 1599. His father, Robert, was a younger son of Sir Henry Cromwell, the Oliver Cromwell’s family history.Golden Knight, whose splendour at Hinchinbrook had been the subject of wonder to a past generation. The family, like so many others which rose to historical fame in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, had <52>thriven by the dissolution of the monasteries. The old nunnery at Hinchinbrook had been given by Thomas Cromwell to a young kinsman who took the name of Cromwell, in addition to, or in exchange for, that of Williams which he inherited from his father. Sir Richard Cromwell.Sir Richard Cromwell was fortunate enough to preserve the King’s favour after his patron’s fall. His descendants were not as prudent as himself, and the prodigality of his son and grandson wasted estates which had been suddenly acquired. The Golden Knight, Sir Oliver Cromwell.When James arrived in England, the Golden Knight was dead. His son, Sir Oliver, the uncle of the future Lord Protector, welcomed his new Sovereign with that magnificence and prodigality which was the failing of the family. Such vast expenditure could not be supported for ever, and in 1627, Sir Oliver Cromwell was compelled to sell Hinchinbrook to Sidney Montague, a brother of the Earl of Manchester, and to retire to Ramsey, where he ended his days in such circumstances as his reduced income would allow.
Robert Cromwell settled close by Hinchinbrook, at the little town of Huntingdon. He had Robert Cromwell.a younger brother’s portion, and a younger brother’s encouragement to thrift. His son, Oliver, grew up connected, through his uncle, with Oliver’s childhood.the chief families of the county, and connected, through his place of residence, with the townsmen, amongst whom his father occupied a leading position. Educated at the free grammar-school of the place, under Dr. Beard, and then passing to Cambridge in 1616, he was probably recalled to Huntingdon by his father’s death in the following year, to take charge of the land which Robert Cromwell had owned, and to care with all the strength and tenderness of his nature for his mother and his sisters. Early responsibility developed his sterling qualities. A visit made to London for the purpose of studying law, a study without which, in that age, no gentleman’s education was complete, led, His marriage.when he was only in his twenty-second year, to a marriage with Elizabeth Bourchier, the gentle sharer of his anxieties and greatness, who preserved the whiteness of her simplicity alike in the modest house at Huntingdon <53>and in the stately galleries of Whitehall. It is generally believed that the marriage was arranged by Oliver’s aunt, the mother of John Hampden. Is chosen Member for Huntingdon.In the beginning of 1628, his fellow-townsmen chose him to represent them in the great Parliament which was to claim the Petition of Right. To have been so chosen whilst still in his twenty-ninth year, by those who had the most intimate acquaintance with his daily life, was the best possible testimony to his high character.
Of the wild calumnies repeated of him in after years it is unnecessary to say a word.[65] So far as it is possible to catch a glimpse of His moral character.the human figure which they surround, we see a youth endowed with a vigorous frame and strong animal spirits, not unmindful of his studies, mastering the difficulties of the Latin language, so far at least as to be able to converse in it in later years, though he did not satisfy the requirements of professed scholars. It was the same with his other studies. From mathematics, history, and law he extracted just as much as would be serviceable to him in his battle with the world; and it may perhaps be taken as the residuum of a vast mass of scandal, that he loved his jest, and was fond of outdoor exercise, sometimes allowing his pursuit of amusement to interrupt his severer employments. On the whole, there was in him a balance of the mental, the moral, and the physical powers which must have rendered him a notable example of the sound mind in the sound body, without which but little can be accomplished in the world.
Not one man in a thousand who is possessed of a sound mind and a sound body raises himself from obscurity. Great achievements come Crisis in his life.but to those who have learned to sacrifice themselves to the ideal which flashes before the inner eye of conscience. To some the wakening to higher aims and a nobler life comes gradually and insensibly; to some it comes with a painful struggle: but to none was the sense of change so complete, and the struggle so intensified as to the Puritan of the seventeenth century. It may be that <54>Cromwell’s marriage and return to Huntingdon may have awakened new thoughts in his mind. The pleadings of his young wife may have wound themselves round his heart, and the return to the teaching of his schoolmaster, Dr. Beard, may have influenced him deeply. The struggle was great in proportion to the energy of his character. No mere resolution to improve would satisfy him. He learned to look upon his old life as utterly vile in the sight of God and man. “You know,” he wrote, not many years afterwards, “what my manner of life hath been. Oh! I lived in and loved darkness, and hated light. I was chief, the chief of sinners. This is true, I hated godliness, yet God had mercy on me.”[66] It is not necessary to take these words literally. It is enough to believe that his soul was crushed with a sense of sinfulness. Dr. Beard, it may be suspected, had much to do with strengthening him in this frame of mind. The book of which he was the author, The Theatre of God’s Judgment displayed, is full of instances of immediate temporal penalties inflicted on the breach of God’s laws. The higher spiritual penalty would be that upon which Cromwell’s mind would fix itself; but the feeling of his own inability to meet the requirements of the Judge would be all the more intense. His strong nature could find no nurture in dogmatic assertions or in ceremonial devotion. He longed for purity of heart, for reality of life. What was he that he should silence the voice of judgment,— of a judgment which searched to the very depth of his being, pronouncing him unclean. We may well believe that long months of inward conflict harrowed his soul — a time of impaired health, of strange visionary imaginations and of drear melancholy despondency. Then at last came light, as it has come to so many others, in the beaming forth, from that Bible which he cherished, of the bright image of the Redeemer, of the Helper whose loving kindness would purify his life and ennoble his aims. Cromwell’s misery lasted as long as he gazed with painful introspection into himself; it was lightened as soon as he forgot himself. Yet he ever held that the misery was a necessary preliminary <55>to the joy. “Who ever,” he assured his daughters, “tasted that the Lord is gracious, without some sense of self, vanity, and badness?”
There was no vanity in the course which Cromwell took in Parliament. During the long session of 1628 he had remained silent. His conduct in Parliament.He was quite conscious that he was not master of the burning oratory of Eliot, or of the clear precision of Selden. The great lawyers who bore the weight of the struggle for the Petition of Right needed no help from him. As the battle changed its ground, it must have gained in interest in his eyes. Yet though the growing fondness for ceremonial observances was to him a return to the dark ways of carnal ordinances, he watched it all in silence, till a moment came when he became aware that he was in possession of the knowledge of a fact which might be of interest to the House. His first speech.When Sherfield charged Neile with originating the pardons, Cromwell remembered that he had heard a story in Neile’s disfavour from Dr. Beard. It was an old story enough now. It was the custom that on the Sunday after Easter, a preacher should be selected to sum up and repeat the main points of three other sermons which had been preached before the Lord Mayor and Aldermen from a pulpit in the open air in Spital Square. In some year not later than 1617, the first sermons had been assigned to Dr. Alablaster. It became known that Beard, who was appointed to recapitulate what the preacher had said, intended to controvert him as having spoken with approval of ‘tenets of Popery.’ Cromwell now told, in a few plain words, how Neile, who as Bishop of Lincoln was at that time Beard’s diocesan, had sent for him, charging him ‘not to preach any doctrine contrary to that which Alablaster had delivered.’ Beard, however, had persisted in his intention, had attacked Alablaster’s opinions, and had been reprimanded by Neile for his conduct.[67]
<56>We have no means of knowing what Alablaster’s arguments were; and it is easy to understand that the sight of one preacher ascending the pulpit to criticise the opinions of another which he was expected to condense would be regarded as unseemly by a bishop like Neile. The House was in no mood to examine into details. Phelips quoted a Dr. Marshall, who had been treated by Neile as Moore and Beard had been treated. Stronger charges followed. Sir Robert Crane had heard from ‘a very honest man, and a good divine’ that Cosin had been seen reading a book called The Preparation for the Mass during the administration of the Communion. Waller, too, had heard that Cosin had ordered a printer who was setting up the type for an edition of the Prayer-book, to substitute the word ‘priest’ for ‘minister.’ Marshall and Beard were sent for to give their evidence; and a select committee was appointed ‘to consider of those things that have been already agitated concerning the innovation of our religion, together with the cause of the innovation and the remedy.’
Some time must elapse before all the witnesses could appear. Dr. Moore arrived on the 13th. It was quite true, he said, that Feb. 13.Moore’s testimony.Neile had forbidden him to preach against Popery. At Winchester Cathedral, since Neile’s arrival, the communion-table had been removed to the place of the altar. On it had been placed ‘two high candlesticks, which, they say, were the same that were used at the marriage of Queen Mary.’ Then came a story which looks as if it was but the repetition of the wildest gossip. “Dr. Price … hath used at his house to have two napkins laid across, which done, he himself maketh a low obeisance to that <57>cross, and causes his man to put at one end of that cross a glass of sack, at another end a glass of claret, at another a cup of beer, and in the midst a cup of March beer.”[68]
As this was all the evidence to be had for the present, the House had time to turn its attention to the Roman Catholics. Selden, The college at Clerkenwell.who had no thought of including them in his anticipations of liberty, complained that of the ten priests seized in that College at Clerkenwell, which had played such a curious part at the opening of the last session, only one had been condemned. Sir Francis Davey said that only three had even been tried, and that though two of these who were acquitted, together with the seven who had not been brought to trial, had refused to take the oath of allegiance, they had not been retained in prison on that score. Feb. 14.Priests reprieved.The next day it came out that the condemned priest had been reprieved by a warrant from Chief Justice Hyde. The other nine persons had been released on bail by an order conveyed from the King by the Earl of Dorset. In the eyes of the House this carefulness not to shed blood for religion’s sake was treason to Protestantism. Yet what could they do? They repeated in chorus that the King was innocent: his ministers had done it all. It was very natural. All the old hereditary respect for the monarchy, all the consciousness of services rendered in the days of their fathers, stood in the way of a rupture with the King, if it could by any means be avoided. It would be difficult to avoid it much longer.
After all, ready as the Commons had been to welcome every suspicion against Neile and Cosin, The Commons accusers, not judges.it must not be forgotten that they were not judges, but accusers. When the evidence was brought into shape, it would have to be carried before the Lords, and the Lords would have to listen to the defence and to pronounce judgment.
In the meanwhile the enforced cessation of the debates on religion till the witnesses appeared gave time for the resumption of the debates on tonnage and poundage. A <58>compromise was far less probable than it had been a fortnight before. Tonnage and poundage again.Angry feelings had arisen, and they were not likely to be soothed by the knowledge that the possession of these duties would enable the King to set the ecclesiastical feeling of the House at defiance. Charles, on the other hand, could not forget that for more than a century the duties had been granted formally at the commencement of every reign, and the attempt of the House of Commons to convert this formal consent into a right of refusal must have seemed to him an unwarrantable shifting of the balance of the constitution; much in the same way as we should now regard an attempt of the Sovereign to exercise the right of veto upon Bills presented by Parliament.
There was one circumstance, however, which Charles had forgotten. It cannot be settled without settling the question of the impositions.Beyond the legal question lay the question of the safety of property. If the Commons gave way, they not merely conceded the right of levying an ascertained revenue, but of extracting from commerce an undefined amount which might entirely ruin the trade of the kingdom.
The 12th had been fixed as the day on which the discussion was to be resumed in a committee of the whole House. Before that day had arrived Feb. 10.Mutual provocation.the feeling on both sides was embittered by mutual provocation. On the one hand, a sheriff of London had been sent by the Commons to the Tower for giving unsatisfactory answers about the seizure of the merchants’ goods. On the other hand, proceedings had been commenced in the Star Chamber against some of the merchants, apparently to punish them for the riotous manner in which they had carried off these very goods;[69] and in the course of these proceedings a subpœna had been directed to Rolle, commanding his attendance.
It was impossible to deny that a breach of privilege had <59>been committed in summoning a member during the actual session. Feb. 11.Further inquiry demanded.The Attorney-General frankly acknowledged the mistake. But the House was not satisfied. “We heard the King say,” observed Kirton, “he took not nor did claim the subsidy of tonnage and poundage as his right; and yet, by the information exhibited in the Star Chamber, we see his Majesty’s ministers do proceed otherwise.” It was resolved to take these proceedings into consideration, together with the grievances of the merchants.[70]
It was most unlikely that, until the ecclesiastical difficulties had been settled, any arrangement satisfactory to both parties could be made Feb. 12.Eliot’s leadership makes an arrangement impossible.on this question of tonnage and poundage. Under Eliot’s leadership no such arrangement was possible. Full of enthusiasm for the supremacy of the House of Commons, he reverted to his old tactics of calling the King’s ministers to account, whilst he treated the King himself with the highest respect, a respect which was doubtless altogether unfeigned. He could not see that he was striking away all the supports of the Royal authority, as it had established itself under the Tudor sovereigns, and that whether his course was to be justified by precedents and reason or not, it was one to which no Sovereign with the slightest feeling of self-respect was likely to submit. He now He advises an attack upon the farmers of the customs.proposed to dissociate the farmers of the customs from the King. He argued that as these men had paid a certain sum into the Exchequer for the right of levying the duties, the Crown was not involved in the matter at all. If the farmers failed to recoup themselves by levying duties, it was upon them, and not upon the King, that the loss would fall. Let the barons of the Exchequer be told that they had been misinformed. If they once knew that the goods had been seized for the farmers, and not for the King, the ground of their decision would be taken away, and they would allow the replevins to take their course.
Eliot’s proposal to go round the difficulty was met by an <60>argument from Noy, that it would be better to meet it in the face. As Noy’s suggestion.he had attempted to mediate in the last session, he attempted to mediate now. He began by stating his opinion that tonnage and poundage was ‘an aid and subsidy,’ which ultimately fell upon the whole body of the nation. They were the greatest hinderers of peace who sought to take it by force. It would be necessary for the Commons to rid themselves of the proceedings in the Exchequer and in the Star Chamber, or the King’s claim would be confirmed by their silence. The best way to do this would be to go on with the grant, inserting in the Bill a clause declaring that all judgments based on the King’s claim to levy the duties were void and of no effect. As soon as such a Bill was drawn up the King would doubtless restore the goods which had been seized.[71]
Whatever chance there was of maintaining the right claimed by the House without a breach with the King lay in the prompt adoption of Noy’s proposal. Selden proposes a message to the Court of Exchequer.Unhappily Selden threw the weight of his authority on the other side. It is possible that his constitutional timidity led him to approve of the less direct mode of facing the difficulty. Whatever his motive may have been he argued that what had been done had been the act of the King’s ministers, not of the King himself. The message.Let a message be sent to the Barons of the Exchequer to inform them that the goods in question had been seized for tonnage and poundage. When they knew that they would doubtless alter their decree. Noy and other members who agreed with him urged that it <61>would be better for the merchants to plead their own cause in the Exchequer; but the House refused to accept the suggestion, and ordered that a message should be sent drawing the attention of the barons to the fact that the goods seized had been seized for tonnage and poundage.[72]
As yet the House had not openly engaged in a conflict with the courts of law; but such a conflict was now perilously near. Feb. 14.Reply of the Court.The Barons of the Exchequer were not likely to submit to dictation from the Commons, in whatever words it might be veiled. They replied that the attempt to recover the goods by replevin ‘was no lawful action.’ If the owners considered themselves to be wronged, they might ‘take such order as the law requireth.’
What answer could the Commons make? They appointed a committee to search the records of the Exchequer in the hope of convicting the barons of acting in defiance of their own precedents. In the meanwhile Eliot’s proposal to call the officials to account was adopted, and the Custom House officers were summoned to the bar.
When the officers appeared, the questions put to them showed that those who guided the deliberations of the House had Feb. 19.The Custom House officers at the bar.resolved to restrict the ground of dispute to a question of privilege. They were asked whether they had known Rolle to be a member of Parliament when they seized his goods. The officer to whom the question was put replied that Question of privilege raised.he was not aware that a member’s goods as well as his person were covered by the privilege, and May, who alone, with the feeble Coke, sustained the weight of the defence of the Government, declared that it had never been heard ‘till this Parliament’ that a member ‘should have his goods privileged against the King, and he is not yet satisfied that he ought.’ Eliot urged the House simply to discuss the question whether the officers were delinquents or not. The Commons were indeed in a great strait; but voices were not wanting to urge them to take some broader course. Those who objected to see a great constitutional question <62>narrowed to a mere dispute over privilege had the weighty Pym’s objection to narrow the dispute.support of Pym. “The liberties of this House,” he said, “are inferior to the liberties of this kingdom. To determine the privilege of this House is but a mean matter, and the main end is to establish possession of the subjects, and to take off the commission and records and orders that are against us. This is the main business; and the way to sweeten the business with the King, and to certify ourselves, is, first, to settle these things, and then we may in good time proceed to vindicate our own privileges.”
In Pym’s words was to be heard the prudence of the great tactician of the Long Parliament. His skill was formed upon Pym’s procedure.the truest perception of the conditions of action. He felt instinctively that the great cause of the subject’s rights ought to be brought into the foreground, and that the petty question of Rolle’s privilege, resting as it did on precedents not absolutely certain, and involving an unfair advantage to members of the House over other merchants, ought to be kept in the background.
Once more Selden failed to rise to the height of the argument. If a point of privilege was raised, he said, all other matters Selden’s course.must give place. Sir Nathaniel Rich pointed out the risk into which Selden was bringing the House. Rich’s suggestion.He asked whether it was true that a member of Parliament had privilege for his goods against the King. “We have not used,” he added, “when anything has been done by the King’s command, to the breach of a privilege of this House, to fly on the officer that hath put such commands in question; but have by petition gone to the King and it hath ever succeeded well.” He suggested that the mode of proceeding should be referred to a committee.
Eliot would not hear of such a suggestion. “Place your liberty,” he cried, “in what sphere you will, if it be not to Eliot will not accept it.preserve the privileges of this House; for if we were not here to debate and right ourselves and the kingdom in their liberties, where had all our liberty been at this day?” The course proposed by Pym, however, was not left unsupported. Digges and Seymour spoke warmly for it. May <63>thought that the time was come to strike in for the King. “God forbid,” he said, “that the King’s commands should be put for delinquency. When that is done his crown is at stake.”[73] Eliot turned aside from the main issue to wrap himself once more in the robes of privilege. “Mr. Chancellor of the Duchy,” he replied to May, “said we were making a question of bringing the King’s command for a delinquency. But the question is whether an act done on pretence of the King’s command, to the breach of the privileges, be a delinquency or no. I have heard the King cannot command a thing which tends to the breach of Parliament privilege, and the Chancellor of the Duchy said that if we did go about to bring the King’s commands for a delinquency, the King’s crown was at stake, which if we should go about were an act of the highest treason.” May rose to explain. He had accused no one, but if the officers were punished after justifying themselves on the King’s command, the King might think that his crown was at stake, ‘seeing he should be no more obeyed.’[74]
May had touched the heart of the question. The question of responsibility was the question of sovereignty. If that was decided against Charles Importance of the question raised.a complete revolution would have been effected in the relations between the King and his subjects, as those relations had been understood by four generations of Englishmen.
The Commons shrank, as well they might, from facing so tremendous an issue. After two days of further discussion the committee Feb. 21.Decision of the Commons.came to a vote on the restricted question of privilege. Their resolution declared that a member of the House ought to have privilege for his goods as well as for his person. Did this mean, asked May, that he ought to have privilege against the King? The committee did its best to avoid a reply. Many of the members expressed a conviction that the goods had been seized without orders, till the production of the King’s warrants made the <64>subterfuge no longer possible. In the vote which was taken, the King’s name indeed was not mentioned, but it was resolved that Rolle was to have privilege for his goods.[75]
It was impossible for Charles to keep silence any longer. The next day was Sunday, and, as usual, a full Council was held Feb. 22.The King intervenes.in the afternoon. The King attended its meeting, and declared ‘that what was formerly done by his farmers and the officers of the Customs was done by his own direction and commandment of his Privy Council, himself for the most part being present in Council, and if he had been at any time from the Council Board, yet he was acquainted with their doings, and gave full direction in it; and therefore could not in this sever the act of the officers from his own act, neither could his officers suffer from it without high dishonour to his Majesty.’ To this declaration the Council assented unanimously, and Sir John Coke was ordered to inform the House of the King’s words.[76]
When the morning came, however, Coke did not at first deliver the message, waiting perhaps to see if the House might be Feb. 23.Were the officers to be punished?inclined to extricate itself without the intervention of the King. May pleaded hard for an amicable solution. “We all agree,” he said, “that a wound is given, and there is oil and vinegar to put into it. If we put in oil, we may cure it; if vinegar, I know not what may be the success. Think upon some course to have restitution made.”[77]
Eliot waved the suggestion haughtily away. He had confidence, he said, in the justice of the King. Let them proceed to consider the delinquency of these men. It may be that a murmur of applause showed that Eliot had carried the committee with him. At all events Coke thought that the time was come Coke announces the King’s decision.for the fulfilment of his mission. “I must now,” he said, “speak plain English.” The officers had acted by the King’s command, and the step proposed to be taken against them concerned him highly ‘in point of government.’ He could not sacrifice his honour by giving way to the distinctions which appeared to satisfy others.
<65>It was now plain to the dullest understanding that the House would have to deal with the King and not with his officers. Charles would not follow the Tudor habit of throwing over his ministers to escape responsibility. The House adjourned to the 25th, to afford time for consideration.
If anything was needed to confirm Charles in his resolution, it must have been the knowledge that if he surrendered the Feb. 24.The Resolutions on Religion.Custom House officers he would next be called upon to surrender the bishops. On the 24th a sub-committee had completed the Resolutions which were to be submitted to the House on the religious difficulty.[78]
The Resolutions repeated the grievances of which complaints had been made in the debates. Popery and Arminianism were spreading, Grievances recited.communion-tables had been removed, to be set as altars at the eastern end of churches. Candlesticks had been placed on them, and obeisance made towards them. Congregations had been ordered to stand up at the singing of the Gloria Patri, and women coming to be churched had been compelled to wear veils. Then there was the ‘setting up of pictures and lights and images in churches, praying towards the east, crossing’ and other objectionable gestures. The orthodox doctrine had been suppressed — the doctrine which had the support of the Prayer-book, of the Homilies and Catechism, of Jewel’s writings, of the public determination of divines, of the Lambeth Articles, of the Irish Articles, of the resolutions of the Synod of Dort, as well as of the uniform consent of writers whose works had been published by authority, and of the submission enjoined by the two Universities upon the opponents of the Lambeth Articles. Those who now opposed this orthodox doctrine had been preferred to bishoprics and deaneries, and some prelates, Neile and Laud in particular, had been taken into special favour, and having gotten the chief administration of ecclesiastical affairs under his Majesty, had discountenanced and hindered the preferment of those that were orthodox, and favoured and preferred such as were contrary.
<66>In the last clause lies, to modern ears, the real weight of the Commons’ case. The King’s authority was being used in Remedies proposed.a one-sided way to secure the undue preponderance of unpopular opinions. The remedy proposed was the old remedy of compulsory uniformity. The laws were to be put in force against ‘Popish opinions’ and ‘superstitious ceremonies.’ ‘Severe punishment’ was to be inflicted on those who should ‘publish, either by word or writing, anything contrary to orthodoxy.’ The books of Montague and Cosin were to be burnt, and ‘authors and abettors of those Popish and Arminian innovations,’ to be condignly punished. ‘Good order’ was to be taken ‘for licensing of books.’ ‘Bishoprics and other ecclesiastical preferments’ were to be conferred only ‘upon pious, learned, and orthodox men.’ Parliament was to consider how means might be provided for maintaining ‘a godly and able minister in every parish church,’ and care was to be taken that the Ecclesiastical Commissioners might be men ‘approved for integrity of life and soundness of opinion.’
If the House should adopt these resolutions — and there was slight probability that it would refuse to do so — it would be but to little purpose to allay the strife about the responsibility of officials. Of liberty, and of all the treasures which that word conveys, there was no thought in the minds of the members of the House of Commons. The idea had not yet presented itself even to the leaders. It would be the merest pedantry to blame them for not anticipating the thought of days to come. Only through suffering does any people enter into rest. To strive ever forwards amidst bewildering entanglements and distracted wanderings from the true path is the law of progress — for a nation as truly as for an individual. Happy is that nation which keeps its courage high and its heart pure, that the eyes of its understanding may in due time be enlightened.
The day — February 25 — on which the House was to resume its debates, brought an order of the King commanding an adjournment Feb. 25.Attempts to avert a rupture.for another week, and to this order the House submitted. Charles fondly hoped that the Commons might be induced to reconsider their position. His agents were busy with the leaders to induce them <67>to desist from their pretensions, in order that, as he afterwards said, ‘a better and more right understanding might be begotten between him and them.’[79] It could not be. In the State, King and Commons were striving for the mastery. In the Church the policy of silence imposed on theological disputes and of permission to revert to older ceremonial practices, was met by the policy of the absolute exclusion of opinions and ceremonies to which the existing generation had ceased to be accustomed.
It is hardly likely that under any circumstances the breach could have been long averted; but the conflict in its actual form was Eliot resolves to appeal to the country.distinctly the work of Eliot. He now resolved to urge the House to appeal from the King to the country. When the House met again, on March 2, it would probably only meet to be re-adjourned, and Eliot resolved to take advantage of its claim to adjourn itself in order to move a protest which might go forth to the world before the dissolution which was certain to follow.
Of the leaders who had stood by his side in the great struggle for the Petition of Right, Selden alone supported him now. Pym had relapsed into silence ever since the course which he had proposed had been overborne by the torrent of Eliot’s eloquence. Phelips, Lyttelton, and Digges, with many another whose voice had once been loud, took no part in his counsels; but there was plenty of indignation amongst members of less repute, and amongst these he found not a few who were ready March 2.The adjournment resisted.to assist him in carrying out his plan. His chief difficulty was to obtain a few minutes before the Speaker left the chair, and arrangements were accordingly made to resist the usual hurried adjournment.
As was expected, when the morning of March 2 came, the Speaker, Sir John Finch, declared the King’s pleasure that the House should be adjourned to the 10th.[80] He then put the <68>formal question to which, under such circumstances, a negative had never been returned. Shouts of ‘No!’ ‘No!’ rose on every side. Eliot rose, as if to speak to the question of adjournment. Finch did his best to check him. He had, he said, an absolute command from his Majesty instantly to leave the chair if any one attempted to speak.
The question of the right of adjournment thus brought to an issue was not beyond dispute. The King had again and again The right of adjournment.directed adjournments. The Lords had always considered the command as binding. The Commons had been accustomed to adjourn themselves in order to avoid the appearance of submission to the King’s authority, though they had never refused to comply with his wishes.
Eliot had made up his mind that the time had arrived when the House ought to make a practical use of the right of self-adjournment The Speaker held down.which he claimed for it. As Finch moved to leave the chair, Denzil Holles and Benjamin Valentine stepped forward, seized him by the arms, and thrust him back into his seat. May and Edmondes, with the other Privy Councillors present, hurried to his assistance. For a moment he broke away from his captors. But his triumph was short. Crowds of members barred the way, and Holles and Valentine seized him again and pushed him back into his seat. “God’s wounds!” cried Holles, “you shall sit till we please to rise.” Physical force was clearly not on Finch’s side, and he made no further effort to escape.[81]
<69>As soon as quiet had been restored Eliot’s voice was heard claiming for the House the right to adjourn itself. His Majesty, Eliot claims to be heard.he went on to say, must have been misinformed, or been led to believe that they had ‘trenched too far upon the power of sovereignty.’ They had done nothing unjust, and Proposes a declaration.as the King was just, there could be no difference between them. A short declaration of their intentions had been prepared, which he asked to be allowed to put to the question.
Eliot spoke from the highest bench at the back of the House, and he threw the paper forward in order that some one in front The Speaker refuses to allow it to be read.might hand it to the clerk to be read even if the Speaker refused his consent to its reading. Shouts of “Read! read!” were raised in the midst of a confused struggle. The crowd swayed backwards and forwards around the chair. In the midst of the excited throng, Coryton struck one of his fellow-members.[82] The Speaker defended his rights. He knew no instance, he said, in which the House had continued to transact business after a command from his Majesty to adjourn. “What would any of you do,” he added plaintively, “if you were in my place? Let not my desire to serve you faithfully be my ruin.”
There was no room for the suggestion that the Speaker was not properly authorised to order the adjournment. He had had the command, he said, from the King’s own lips. Eliot rejoined that they were quite ready to adjourn in obedience to his Majesty, but the declaration must first be read. Strode in a few words acknowledged the reason for this persistency. “I desire the same,” he said, “that we may not be turned off like scattered sheep, as we were at the end of the last session, and have a scorn put on us in print, but that we may leave something behind us.” They wished that their voice should be <70>heard as a rallying cry to the nation in the conflict which had begun.
One after another rose to urge upon the Speaker the duty of obeying the order of the House. The order of the House, said Eliot, The Speaker told to obey the House.would be sufficient to excuse him with the King. If he refused obedience, he should be called to the bar.
At this intimation of defiance of the King’s command, some members rose to leave the House. Orders were at once given The door locked.to the Serjeant-at-Arms to shut the door, that no tales might be carried to those who were outside. The Serjeant-at-Arms hesitated to obey, and Sir Miles Hobart, at his own suggestion, was directed to close the doors. He swiftly turned the lock and put the key in his pocket.[83]
As soon as order was restored, Finch’s voice was heard once more. To be called to the bar, he said, was one of the Finch begs to be allowed to go.greatest miseries which could befall him. Then, after a few words from others, he begged to be allowed to go to the King, as in the last session. He had done them no ill-offices then, and he would do them none now. “If I do not return, and that speedily,” he ended by saying, “tear me in pieces.”
Cries of ‘Ay!’ and ‘No!’ showed that there was a division of opinion. Eliot again threatened the Speaker with the consequences of Renewed appeal to him to put the question.persisting in his refusal. No man, he said, had ever been blasted in that House, ‘but a curse at length fell upon him.’ He asked that his paper might be returned to him. He would read it himself, that the House and the world might know the loyalty of the affections of those who had prepared it. Before the paper was returned, Strode made one more effort to have the question regularly put. “You have protested yourself,” he said to the Speaker, “to be our servant, but if you do not what we command you, that protestation of yours is but a compliment. The <71>Scripture saith, ‘His servants ye are whom ye obey.’ If you will not obey us, you are not our servant.”
Finch’s position was indeed a hard one. Elected by the Commons, but with a tacit regard to a previous selection by the King, His difficult position.the Speaker had hitherto served as a link between the Crown and the House over which he presided. In Elizabeth’s days it had been easy for a Speaker to serve two masters. It was no longer possible now. The strain of the breaking constitution fell upon him. “I am not the less the King’s servant,” he said piteously, “for being yours. I will not say I will not put the reading of the paper to the question, but I must say, I dare not.”
Upon this final refusal Eliot raised his voice.[84] He told his hearers, silent enough now, how religion had been attacked; how Eliot’s speech.Arminianism was the pioneer to Popery; how there was a power above the law which checked the magistrates in the execution of justice. Those who exercised this power had been the authors of the interruptions in this place, whose guilt and fear of punishment had cast the House upon the rocks. Amongst these evil councillors were some prelates of the Church, such as in all ages have been ready for innovation and disturbance, though at this time more than any. Them he denounced as enemies to his Majesty. And behind them stood He proposes to impeach Weston.another figure more base and sinister still. The Lord Treasurer himself was the prime agent of iniquity. “I fear,” continued Eliot, “in his person is contracted the very root and principle of these evils. I find him building upon the old grounds and foundations which were built by the Duke of Buckingham, his great master. His counsels, I am doubtful, begat the sad issue of the last session, and from this cause that unhappy conclusion came.” Not only was Weston ‘the head of all the Papists,’ and the root of all the dangers to which religion was exposed, but the course <72>which he had taken in the question of tonnage and poundage had been adopted from March 2.a deliberate design of subverting the trade of the country, and in the end of subverting the government. When commerce had been ruined, and the wooden walls of England were no longer in existence, the State would be at the mercy of its neighbours. “These things,” cried Eliot, “would have been made more apparent if time had been for it, and I hope to have time to do it yet.”
Once more Eliot’s lightly-kindled imagination had played him false. The charge of deliberate treason was as unfounded as it was improbable. In the wild excitement of that day everything seemed credible to him, and the proud confidence of his bearing stamped upon his listening auditors the firm assurance that he was not dealing his shafts at random. At last, turning to the paper which he held in his hand, he briefly Explains the proposed protest.explained its meaning. “There is in this paper,” he said, “a protestation against those persons that are innovators in religion, against those that are introducers of any new customs, and a protestation against those that shall execute such commands for tonnage and poundage, and a protestation against merchants that, if any merchant shall pay any such duties, he as all the rest shall be as capital enemies of the State, and whensoever we shall sit here again, if I be here — as I think I shall — I will deliver myself more at large, and fall upon the person of that man.”[85]
Eliot had made known what the contents of the paper were; but unless his resolutions could be formally put by the Speaker, The reading of the protest again urged.they would not go forth as more than the expression of his private opinion. Coryton urged that it would be for the King’s advantage that the paper should be read. He had need of help from the House, and those persons that had been named kept it from him. The members had come there with a full resolution to grant not merely tonnage <73>and poundage, but all other necessary supplies as well. Shouts of ‘All! All!’ encouraged Coryton to proceed. “Shall every man,” he said, “that hath broken the law have the liberty to pretend the King’s commands?” Ought that transcendent Court, highest of all others, to permit the laws to be broken. “Therefore,” he ended, “I shall move that his Majesty may be moved from this House to advise with his grave and learned Council, and to leave out those that have been here noted to be ill councillors both for the King and kingdom.”
There was one in that assembly whose ears tingled with shame and indignation. Jerome Weston, the Lord Treasurer’s eldest son, Weston defended by his son.stood up to defend his father. “We have here in consideration,” he said, “human laws which, as they be many, so there is one eternal law of God, that we should love our neighbours as ourselves. Now, what can be more unjust than, without true grounds, to lay aspersions upon a noble person? Would any of us think it just to be done to ourselves? Let not the Lord Treasurer be prejudged. He has as faithful a heart to Church and commonwealth as any man sitting here.”
Then, as now, the House of Commons was wisely tolerant of divergence of opinion, especially when it was prompted by domestic affection. Clement Coke’s syllogism.Even in that supreme hour of conflict the call was not altogether without effect. The reckless Clement Coke, indeed, struck the blow home. “Whoever,” he said, “laid tonnage and poundage on the people without the gift of Parliament is an enemy to the commonwealth, and that this great person has done this, there are not light suspicions only upon him, but apparent proofs.” Eliot’s explanation.But Eliot was not so entirely thrown off his balance as to assume guilt which had not been proved. He had no intention, he declared, of asking the House to take his assertions as evidence. He hoped to be allowed to produce his proofs when they met again.
The discussion threatened to Selden threatens to place Eliot in the chair.become endless for want of definite aim. Selden brought it back to the original issue by telling the Speaker once more that he was bound to put the question. If he refused, they <74>had in him a master instead of a servant. He would virtually abdicate his office, and they ought then to proceed to the choice of another Speaker. For the present Selden contented himself with moving that Eliot should take the chair and put the Resolutions to the House.[86]
An unexpected obstacle arose. Eliot having, as it would seem, despaired of obtaining a formal vote upon his Resolutions, had Eliot has burnt his paper.thrown the paper in the fire. “I think,” said Holles, reasonably enough, “that gentleman hath done very ill to burn that paper.” Eliot gracefully submitted to the correction. “I give that gentleman great thanks for reproving me for the burning of that paper, and of all obligations that have passed between us I hold this for the greatest.” With the exception of a formal motion made shortly afterwards, these words of courtesy were the last utterance of the high-souled man within the walls of the House of Commons.
Whatever was to be done must be done speedily. As Holles rose, a knocking was heard at the door. The King had The Serjeant sent for.sent for the serjeant to bring away the mace. The House would not yet part with the symbol of authority; but after some delay, the serjeant was allowed to go. Hobart let him out, and locked the door after him again.[87]
As soon as order was restored, there was a fresh discussion on the propriety of Heyman upbraids the Speaker.naming the Lord Treasurer. Sir Peter Heyman turned once more upon Finch: “I am sorry,” he said, “that you must be made an instrument to cut up the liberties of the subject by the <75>roots. I am sorry you are a Kentish man, and that you are of that name which hath borne some good reputation in our country. The Speaker of the House of Commons is our mouth, and if our mouth will be sullen and will not speak when we would have it, it should be bitten by the teeth, and ought to be made an example; and, for my part, I think it not fit you should escape without some mark of punishment to be set upon you by the House.”
It was easier to speak of punishment than to inflict it. Maxwell, the Usher of the Black Rod, was now knocking at the door with Black Rod at the door.a message from the King. The moments were fast flying, and there was no time for longer deliberation. Charles had sent for his guard to force a way into the House. Not a minute was to be lost in idle recrimination. Holles reads the Resolutions.Holles threw himself into the breach. “Since that paper is burnt,” he said, “I conceive I cannot do his Majesty nor my country better service than to deliver to this House what was contained in it, which, as I remember, was thus much in effect:[88]—
“Whosoever shall bring in innovation in religion, or by favour seek to extend or introduce Popery or Arminianism, or The Three Resolutions.other opinions disagreeing from the true and orthodox Church, shall be reputed a capital enemy to this kingdom and the commonwealth.
“Whosoever shall counsel or advise the taking and levying of the subsidies of tonnage and poundage, not being granted by Parliament, or shall be an actor or an instrument therein, shall be likewise reputed an innovator in the government, and a capital enemy to this kingdom and commonwealth.
“If any merchant or other person whatsoever shall voluntarily yield or pay the said subsidies of tonnage and poundage, not being granted by Parliament, he shall likewise be reputed a betrayer of the liberty of England, and an enemy to the same.”[89]
It was hopeless to apply again to Speaker or Clerk. Holles <76>put the question himself. Hearty shouts of ‘Ay!’ ‘Ay!’ adopted the The Resolutions adopted.defiance which he flung in the face of the King. The House then voted its own adjournment. The door was The House adjourns.thrown open at last, and the members poured forth to convey to the outer world the tidings of their high resolve. Eleven years were to pass away before the representatives of the country were permitted to cross that threshold again.
[39] The ordinary account of the debates of this session appears in its best form in a volume in the possession of Lord Verulam, which was described by Mr. Bruce in the 38th volume of the Archæologia. Mr. Bruce’s copy has, through Lord Verulam’s kindness, been placed in my hands. The Parliamentary history has additional matter from other sources, and Nicholas’s Notes (S. P. Dom. cxxxv.) give a report entirely independent, commencing with Jan. 27. Mr. Forster (Sir J. Eliot, ii. 197) gives from the MSS. at Port Eliot a speech said to have been spoken by Eliot on Jan. 20. I am afraid this must be relegated to the domain of speeches never uttered. Lord Verulam’s MS. distinctly says of that day, that on it ‘nothing was done but only the settling of the committees,’ and Nethersole, in the letters in which he details the main occurrences of the session, has no mention of any such speech.
[40] The copy of the statutes of the last session in the Museum Library <31>shows that this was what was really done, and it is so put in Nethersole’s letters to Elizabeth, S. P. Dom. cxxxiii. 4.
[41] Meade to Stuteville, Sept. 27, Nov. 8, Court and Times, i. 402, 422.
[42] Hudson, in his treatise on the Star Chamber, written before any controversy arose, holds that the Court had the power of cutting off ears in certain cases.
[43] According to Nethersole, Chambers’s case was expressly mentioned: “They began to complain that the Petition of Right granted the last session had been already invaded in all the parts thereof: that of the liberty of men’s persons, by the imprisonment of a merchant without showing a lawful cause, the difficulty in showing a corpus habeas: that against the use of martial law, by the taking a man’s ears off by a sentence in the Star Chamber, being an arbitrary Court, and having no power of life or limb; that of the property of men’s goods, by the seizure of the wares of divers merchants, for refusing to pay the customs and impositions, there being no law to demand this, and the refusing of the grant of a writ of replevin when it was demanded.” Nethersole to Elizabeth, Jan. 24, S. P. Dom. cxxxiv. 4. Not one of these charges necessarily involved a direct breach of the Petition, the question of property being the very one which the judges had to decide. The line taken here involved the assertion that the interpretation of the Petition belonged to the House of Commons, not to the judges.
The case of billeting at Chichester, Rushworth, ii. 32, is sometimes <32>alleged as a breach of the Petition; but the Petition forbade billeting against the householder’s will. The authorities of Chichester were called in question for threatening to bar the gates of the city against the soldiers, so as to prevent the householders from exercising an option.
[44] Mr. Forster (Sir J. Eliot, ii. 205) says that Phelips alleged that 5,000l. worth of goods had been sold for dues not exceeding 200l. He gives no authority for his statement, and it is altogether improbable.
[45] Hatsell, i. 67.
[46] Ibid. i. 99.
[47] Contarini, who tells this, adds, however, significantly, “Parmi nondimeno che primo d’ avantarsi in questa materia vogliono aggiustar i punti della religione.” Contarini to the Doge, Jan. 30⁄Feb. 9, Ven. Transcripts, R. O.
[48] Nethersole to Elizabeth, Jan. 24, S. P. Dom. cxxxiii. 4.
[49] This debate is only to be found in Nicholas’s Notes.
[50] Pym is frequently spoken of as a statesman for whom religious questions had only a secondary interest. I believe this view of his character to be incompatible with his course in these early Parliaments. See especially his speech in the Parliament of 1621.
[51] Mr. Forster (Sir J. Eliot, ii. 210) gives the speech from Eliot’s own MS. and follows the Parliamentary History in assigning it to an earlier day. Lord Verulam’s MS. assigns it to the 26th, and explains the allusion to Eliot’s countryman, as referring to Rouse, not to Coryton, as Mr. Forster supposed. Nicholas, however, gives the 29th, and his shorthand notes must be accepted as conclusive on a question of this kind.
[52] This debate is only to be found in Nicholas’s Notes.
[53] This debate I take from Lord Verulam’s MS. and Nicholas. The Parl. Hist. (ii. 457) is confused, giving speeches really delivered on the following day.
[54] The edition of his sermon printed in 1640, gives July 7 instead of the true date, as appears from the Act of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. See An Illustration of Neal’s Hist. of the Puritans, Durham, 1736.
[55] This appears from Lord Bute’s MS. of Whitelocke’s Memorials.
[56] Illustration of Neal, 47–58. The Dean and Chapter to Neal 23, S. P. Dom. cxiii. 65.
[57] See, however, Coke’s argument on the other side, 4 Inst. cap. 74.
[58] Cosin to Laud, Nov. 22, S. P. Dom. cxxi. 33.
[59] The Bishop of Chichester is the name given in Lord Verulam’s MS. Nicholas is surely right in giving that of the Bishop of Winchester, whose connection with the affair is referred to in a subsequent speech of Eliot’s.
[60] Nicholas’s Notes.
[61] Hardwick, Hist. of the Articles, 143. Cardwell, Synodalia, i. 34, 53.
[62] Contarini to the Doge, Feb. 13⁄23, Ven. Transcripts, R. O.
[63] Erroneas opiniones vel minus orthodoxas, doctrinas falsas, earumque publicationes, scandalize dicta, male gesta. Nicholas’s Notes.
[64] Not “Laud,” as in the Parl. Hist.
[65] They are collected, accompanied by judicious reflections, in Sanford’s Studies of the Great Rebellion, 174.
[66] Carlyle (ed. 1857), i. 80.
[67] Nicholas, who took down the speeches in shorthand, gives the speech thus: “Mr. Cromwell saith that Dr. Beard told him that one Dr. Alablaster did at the Spital preach in a sermon tenets of Popery, and Beard being to repeat the same, the now Bishop of Winton, then Bishop of <56>Lincoln, did send for Dr. Beard, and charge him, as his diocesan, not to preach any doctrine contrary to that which Alablaster had delivered, and when Dr. Beard did, by the advice of Bishop Felton, preach against Dr. Alablaster’s sermon and person, Dr. Neile, now Bishop of Winton, did reprehend him, the said Beard, for it.” The remainder of the speech, as printed from the Parl. Hist. by Carlyle, referring to Manwaring, and concluding, “If these are the steps to Church-preferment, what are we to expect?” is taken from another speech by another speaker, on a different occasion.
[68] Nicholas’s Notes.
[69] In Nicholas’s Notes the information is said to have been for not paying the duties; but the account given above seems the only way of explaining how the matter got into the Star Chamber. The non-payment would be for the Exchequer Court to punish if it chose to do so.
[70] The fullest report is in Nicholas’s Notes. The Parl. Hist. transfers the speech to the 11th.
[71] Nicholas’s Notes. The feeling of the House was probably well expressed by Nethersole. “On Thursday last,” he writes, “the matter of tonnage and poundage was taken into consideration, and by what was then said, it is easy to see that the House will give it to the King your brother, without any diminution in point of profit, but not without a very full acknowledgment and declaration of the right of the subject and cessation of all that hath been done to the prejudice thereof either by the King your father or your brother.” The question of impositions, in short, was to be settled as well as that of tonnage and poundage. But there was more behind. The writer adds that nothing had been done since ‘nor will be much till religion be settled, whereon the hearts of all the House are earnestly set.’ — Nethersole to Elizabeth, Feb. 14, S. P. Dom. cxxxv. 40.
[72] Nicholas’s Notes.
[73] “Actum est de imperio,” in May’s words, as in Eliot’s and his own second speech.
[74] Only from Nicholas’s Notes do we learn the full importance of this debate. Hitherto we have only had a fragment of it.
[75] Nicholas’s Notes.
[76] Rushworth, i. 659.
[77] So far from Nicholas; what follows is from Lord Verulam’s MS.
[78] Parl. Hist. iii. 483. There is some difficulty about the date of this. Lord Verulam’s MS. here becomes utterly confused, and other MSS. give varying dates. I have followed Harl. MS. 4296, fol. 65 b.
[79] Parl. Hist. ii. 502. Contarini to the Doge, March 6⁄16, Ven. Transcripts, R. O.
[80] There are two accounts of the proceedings of this day which throw a much clearer light upon them than anything which has been hitherto published; one in Nicholas’s Notes, the other amongst the State Papers, Dom. cxxxviii. 6, 7. Excepting in the case of one or two unimportant <68>speeches the order in which everything occurred becomes quite clear from the agreement of these authorities. Some valuable information is to be had from Lord Verulam’s MS., of which this part was published by Mr. Bruce in Archæologia, xxxviii. 237. Mr. Forster’s narrative is very incorrect, and the paper printed at p. 244 was certainly not the paper read by Eliot. Consequently the charges which he brings against Heath of distorting facts are founded upon a very imperfect knowledge of the evidence.
[81] As Finch spoke frequently afterwards, it is probable that Holles and Valentine did not continue to hold him, contenting themselves with watching him. Mr. Forster separated the two seizures, but I have followed <69>Heath’s information (Parl. Hist. ii. 510), which gives a very probable account of the matter. The theory that the Government was always inventing falsehoods seems to me quite unreasonable.
[82] This incident is placed here by Heath, and is made probable by the words used by Coryton soon afterwards, in which he speaks of himself as having been to blame as well as the rest.
[83] The usual account makes the shutting of the doors consequent upon an attempt of the Serjeant to carry off the mace. But a comparison of the three principal narratives induces me to think that the Serjeant received orders from the King to bring away the mace at a later period.
[84] Eliot began, “I shall now express,” &c., as printed by Mr. Forster (ii. 244). Then followed, “The miserable condition,” &c., which Mr. Forster believed to have been spoken at the beginning of the debate (ii. 240). The concluding phrase, “And for myself,” &c. (ii. 245) followed next.
[85] This last paragraph is from S. P. Dom. cxxxviii. 6. It is more lifelike than the words given in Nicholas’s Notes. “If ever I serve again in Parliament I shall proceed against them as capital enemies of the State.” It must be acknowledged, however, that the latter form agrees better with that printed by Mr. Forster (ii. 245).
[86] Nicholas’s Notes.
[87] Heath’s information speaks of the serjeant as having been detained a prisoner. On the other hand, Lord Verulam’s MS. and Hargrave MS. 299, fol. 139 b, plainly speak of his being put out. I have tried to reconcile the two. From Nicholas’s Notes we learn that the knocking was heard when Holles rose, and from S. P. Dom. cxxxviii. 6, that the messenger was still at the door after Eliot’s reply. This delay would enable Heath to speak of the serjeant as a prisoner. Mr. Forster brings no authority for his statement that the serjeant laid his hand on the mace to take it away, and that ‘a fierce cry arose to shut the door.’ Sir J. Eliot, ii. 244. The door had been shut long before.
[88] Nicholas’s Notes.
[89] Parl. Hist. ii. 491.