<77>Immediately after the adjournment a Proclamation for the dissolution of Parliament was drawn up and signed by the King. Dissolution of Parliament discussed.Charles threw the whole blame upon the insolence of those who had resisted his command to adjourn.[90] Yet it was not without hesitation that the decisive step was taken. Coventry was supported by a considerable following in the Council in asking that a milder course should be adopted. Weston, whose impeachment had been called for by Eliot, argued strongly on the other side. For two days the contending parties strove with one another, and it was only on the 4th that March 4.Imprisonment of members.the Proclamation was made public.[91] The day before, Eliot and eight other members of the Commons had been summoned to appear before the Board. Seven of them presented themselves before the Council, and were committed either to the Tower or to other prisons. The other two were subsequently captured, and shared the fate of their friends.[92]
The Houses had stood adjourned to the 10th, and Charles thought it well to go in person to the House of Lords, in order that March 10.The dissolution pronounced.when the words of dissolution were pronounced he might take the opportunity of expressing his confidence in the Peers. It was observed that on his return he looked pleased with his day’s work, as if he had at <78>last freed himself from a yoke to which he had long submitted with difficulty.[93]
Charles’s feeling of self-satisfaction was in truth the most ominous element in the political prospect. No candid person can Charles’s self-satisfaction.find fault with him for dissolving Parliament. The House of Commons which had just ceased to exist had been elected under circumstances of peculiar excitement, and it had ended by clamouring for stringent measures of repression which would have been fatal to the free development of thought in England. Unhappily Charles had been Was the dissolution justifiable?himself to blame for the explosion by his unwise promotion of men holding unpopular opinions. If, recognising the true causes of his unpopularity, he had wished to gain a year or two to recover the confidence of the nation, no one but a constitutional purist would blame him for refusing to abdicate his hereditary authority. A wiser man might well have shrunk from placing himself unreservedly in the hands of a House of Commons which claimed supremacy in the State whilst crying down that essential condition of liberty of thought and speech, without which parliamentary government is only a more crushing form of tyranny.
The Declaration set forth by the King[94] to justify the dissolution was an able statement of his case against the House of Commons. The King’s Declaration.In his own mind at least Charles took his stand upon the law. He would carry out, he said, the provisions of the Petition of Right. He would allow no innovations in the Church. But he protested against the new doctrine that the House of Commons might erect itself into a supreme tribunal, before which all ministers of State, and even all courts of justice, were bound to give account. As to tonnage and poundage, it had always been enjoyed by his predecessors from the first day of their reign. His father had collected it for a year before it had been granted by Parliament. It was clear to him therefore that the Commons had no right to construe a formal and friendly act of acknowledgment into <79>an authority to transfer the whole government of England into their hands.
Of course there was an answer to all this. Formal or not, the grant of tonnage and poundage by Parliament signified that the government rested upon the co-operation of King and Parliament. If it was a new thing for the Commons to claim supreme power without the King, it was also a new thing for the King to claim supreme power without consulting the wishes of the nation. The old order had given way. It was not in the nature of things to eliminate the House of Commons from the constitution without effecting corresponding changes in every direction. A King without a Parliament would be quite different from a King with a Parliament. He would glide without a check down the easy path which leads through arbitrary power to despotism, and through despotism to anarchy. No doubt Charles did not distinctly acknowledge to himself that he had resolved never to call a Parliament again; but he had made up his mind to exact conditions which no English Parliament would ever again yield. The time had gone by when a House of Commons could be content with respectfully watching for the word of command from the throne, not because the members were more unruly than they had been fifty years before, but because the King was utterly careless of the course of public opinion. Elizabeth had controlled her Parliaments because she embodied that opinion better than they did. Charles would, in the end, be controlled by his Parliaments because they represented that opinion better than he did. He might indeed have found a work to do in guiding that opinion, in the hope of preventing it from degenerating into mob-government either in Parliament or in the streets. It was his misfortune to think it possible to fulfil this duty by placing himself in opposition to the current of contemporary sentiment. He did not appeal to the nation against the House of Commons. He bade the nation to keep silence whilst he moulded it into the shape which seemed best to himself.
On the 17th of March a series of questions was put to the prisoners. It now appeared that they were not all alike prepared to carry their opposition to extremes. Valentine indeed <80>firmly refused to answer any charge founded on acts done in Parliament. March 17.Examination of the prisoners.Coryton was less firm. He acknowledged that it was ‘fit to suffer by paying’ tonnage and poundage rather ‘than to do those things that might be worse.’[95] Before long he made his submission, and was at once released. Heyman, too, soon afterwards satisfied the Court that he might safely be allowed his liberty.
Selden, who was examined on the following day, had still less the temperament of a martyr than Coryton or Heyman. Intellectually audacious, March 18.Examination of Selden,he needed the applause of a favouring audience to inspire him to resist authority. He boldly assured his examiners that he was in absolute ignorance of all that had passed on the eventful morning. He had never moved that Eliot’s paper should be read by the clerk. He had only made a motion in order to help on the adjournment of the House in compliance with the King’s wishes. If he had understood Eliot’s speech, ‘he would have absolutely dissented from him.’ The falsehood was so unblushing that it can hardly be reckoned as a falsehood at all. He could never for an instant have expected to be believed. All he meant was to intimate that he had no intention of allowing himself to be made a victim for any opinion whatever.[96] He deeply felt his separation from his books and his pen, and he was anxious to recover the use of them as soon as possible.[97]
If Eliot was weak where Selden was strong, he was strong where Selden was weak. He never peered forward into the and of Eliot.gloom of the future in anxious watching for the new ideas of toleration and liberty; but he was not the man to flinch before danger. To every question put he had but <81>one reply to give. “I refuse to answer, because I hold that it is against the privilege of the House of Parliament to speak of anything which was done in the House.”[98]
No wonder the whole wrath of Charles was discharged upon Eliot. To Charles, according to an expression used by his Attorney-General Antagonism between Charles and Eliot.in a subsequent case, Parliament was a ‘great court, a great council, the great council of the King;’ but the Houses were ‘but his council, not his governors.’[99] Eliot claimed for Parliament an independent position, free except in the specified cases of treason, felony, or breach of the peace, from any authority whatever. The whole conflict between Crown and Parliament appeared to be summed up in this duel between two men, of whom one was armed to the teeth, and the other was a defenceless captive at his feet.
To Charles, Eliot was but an ambitious demagogue who must be punished in order that the commonwealth might have peace. Eliot, he knew, March 20.Eliot visited in the Tower.did not stand alone. Men of the highest rank — the Earl of Lincoln, Lord Rochford, Lord St. John, and many others — were flocking to the Tower to express their sympathy with him in his sufferings.[100] A proclamation March 27.Proclamation against false rumours.issued on March 27 bore the impress of Charles’s angry feeling. He spoke of Eliot as ‘an outlawed man, desperate in mind and fortune.’ “And whereas,” he continued, “for several ill ends the calling again of a Parliament is divulged, however we have shewed by our frequent meeting with our people our love to the use of Parliaments; yet the late abuse having for the present driven us unwillingly out of that course, we shall account it presumption for any to prescribe any time unto us for Parliaments, the calling, continuing, and dissolving of which is always in our own power, and we shall be more inclinable to meet in Parliament again when our people shall see more clearly into our intents and actions, when such as have bred this interruption shall have received their condign punishment, and those <82>who are misled by them and by such ill reports as are raised in this occasion, shall come to a better understanding of us and themselves.”[101]
The Proclamation breathed nothing but the fiercest indignation. Charles had no thought that amongst the wild deeds and wilder words of the past session there might be something which it would be well for him to lay to heart. There was no bending forward to meet his people half-way, no sympathetic eye to detect the true causes of their complaints. He alone stood upon the rock. He alone could afford to wait. His subjects might come to him. He would never go to them.
It was Charles’s fixed determination to inflict severe punishment upon Eliot. It was the business of the Crown lawyers to consider how State of the Treasury.he was to be reached in accordance with the forms of the law. In the meanwhile Weston was hard put to it to find a remedy for the emptiness of the Exchequer. The subsidies voted in the preceding session were more than swallowed up by the payment of debts contracted during the war. Nor was the war itself at an end. English commerce had long been liable to the ravages of Dunkirk privateers and of French cruisers. Then had come the strife about the customs duties. March 7.Tonnage and poundage exacted.The refusal to allow the legality of tonnage and poundage was now met by a prompt order that all persons declining to pay the duties were to be imprisoned until his Majesty should direct otherwise, ‘or that they be delivered by order of law.’[102] It was, however, easier to enforce obedience than to bring about a revival of trade. Merchants held back from buying and selling, and if any goods were brought into the Custom House at all, the owners were March 30.The Merchant Adventurers before the Council.hooted by the crowd outside as traitors to their country.[103] A deputation from the Merchant Adventurers, the great company which had in its hands the exportation of cloth, was summoned before the Council. The merchants who composed <83>it were asked why exportation had ceased. At first they made excuses. They were afraid of pirates. The markets were glutted. At last they spoke plainly. They were afraid of the Protestation of the House of Commons. Personally, at least, they had laid themselves open to a sharp retort. Manchester reminded them that they carried on the most lucrative part of their trade, the exportation of undressed and undyed cloths, in direct defiance of a parliamentary statute which had been suspended in their favour by an act of prerogative. In the end they were told to summon a full Court of the Company, and to submit the King’s wishes to its consideration.
The Court was held, and the merchants were asked whether they would ship cloths or not. Not a hand was held up in the affirmative. The Council then turned to the Dutch merchants settled in London, in the hope that they would be less regardful of the resolutions of an English House of Commons. The Dutch merchants, however, refused to separate their interests from those of their neighbours. “We shall be much degenerate,” they replied, “if we go about to betray the liberties of the English nation.”[104] In London the resistance was general, and nearly the whole trade of the kingdom was concentrated in London. So angry was the King at this passive opposition, that he thought of dissolving the Merchant Adventurers’ Company, in order to substitute for it a body composed of noblemen and courtiers who would make no difficulty about paying the duties.[105]
The King’s exchequer did not suffer alone. It was calculated that there were in England 200,000 persons depending on the cloth trade.[106] The weavers in Essex were thrown out of work. The Council interfered to mitigate the worst consequences of the stoppage of trade. The adjoining parishes were ordered to contribute to the relief of the poor in the villages in which distress prevailed. <84>A proclamation was issued forbidding the export of corn, whilst at the same time some rioters who had rifled a vessel laden with grain at Maldon were put down with a strong hand. But the knot of the difficulty was in London, not in Essex, and one body of merchants after another was summoned before the Council, to be entreated or threatened to take the goods off the weavers’ hands.[107]
There were indeed some shrewd heads who perceived that men who lived by trade would not persist in ruining themselves The merchants continue to refuse to trade.for the sake of a principle. But such was not the general feeling. “The obstinacy,” said a letter-writer of the day, “lies not only in the merchant’s breast, but moves in every small vein through the kingdom.”[108] In the beginning of May there was a slight improvement. “I have ever said,” wrote Williams, “that the merchants would be weary of this new habit of statesmen they had put on, and turn merchants again by that time they heard from their factors that their storehouses began to grow empty. God send those men more wit who, living in a monarchy, rely upon the democracy.”[109]
The soreness caused by this prolonged resistance showed itself in the punishment inflicted by the Star Chamber upon Chambers. May 6.Chambers in the Star Chamber.Eight months before, he had told the Council that ‘the merchants were in no part of the world so screwed and wrung as in England, and that in Turkey they have more encouragement.’ The constitution of Constitution of the Star Chamber.the Star Chamber had been admirably adapted for the purposes for which it had been used in the days of the Tudor sovereigns. Composed of the two Chief Justices and the whole of the Privy Council, it brought the highest legal and the highest political capacity to bear upon cases in which the offenders were too powerful to be reached by the ordinary courts, or in which the evidence was too complicated to be unravelled by the skill of an ordinary <85>jury. It had thus become a tribunal constantly resorted to as a resource against the ignorance or prejudices of a country jury, much in the same way as a special jury is applied to in our own days.[110] In such investigations it showed itself intelligent and impartial. In political trials, however, impartiality could hardly be expected. Every member of the Court, with the exception of the two Chief Justices, was also a Privy Councillor. The persons who were cited as defendants had invariably given offence to the Privy Council, and the great majority of the members of the Court were therefore in reality parties to the dispute which they were called upon to decide.
Before such a court, Chambers had no chance of escape; but there was a difference of opinion as to the extent of the punishment Sentence upon Chambers.to be inflicted. The two Chief Justices, Hyde and Richardson, would have been content with a fine of 500l. The two bishops, Neile and Laud, would not be satisfied with less than 3,000l. The fine was at last fixed at 2,000l., and to this was added — the Chief Justices alone dissenting — imprisonment until the fault committed had been duly acknowledged.
Chambers refused to allow that he had committed any fault at all. In vain a form of submission prepared by the Court was He refuses to acknowledge his offence.offered to him for signature. “All the above contents and submission,” he wrote at the foot of it, “I, Richard Chambers, do utterly abhor and detest as most unjust, and never till death will acknowledge any part thereof.” Then followed a string of Scripture texts denouncing those who refused to execute judgment and justice, and who were ready to make a man an offender for a word.[111]
Chambers was not content with the choice of imprisonment rather than submission. In order to force on a legal decision upon the main point at issue, he brought an action in the <86>Exchequer for the recovery of his goods against the officers of the customs Brings an action against the Custom House officers.by whom they had been seized.[112] He even made application to the same Court to invalidate the Star Chamber decree against himself on various grounds, of which the most important was that the Court had exceeded the statutory powers conferred upon it in the reign of Henry VII.
Although the question of the legality of the levy of tonnage and poundage by prerogative alone was not one to be decided in a hurry, June 23.The greater part of the goods of the merchants restored.there was time before the Long Vacation to reduce the practical grievance of the merchants to the lowest possible point. A quantity of their goods sufficient to serve as a security for the ultimate payment of the duty was retained in the Custom House by order of June 25.the Court of Exchequer, while the rest of the property which had been seized was restored to its owners.[113]
The consideration of Chambers’s objection to the jurisdiction of the Star Chamber was also postponed. It was not likely that the July 17.Question of the jurisdiction of the Star Chamber.Barons of the Exchequer would seriously entertain it. It had long been held by lawyers, as it is held by lawyers at this day, that the jurisdiction of the Star Chamber was extended, not created, by the statute of Henry VII.; but the decision was thrown over to Michaelmas Term.[114]
It is impossible to overrate the services rendered to the nation by such men as Chambers. No doubt faults had been committed Service rendered by Chambers.on both sides in the political struggle; but when once the wearer of the crown insisted on standing alone without responsibility to anyone, it was necessary to raise a protest against a theory of government <87>which could never be admitted unless Englishmen were to degenerate into that servitude into which most of the nations of the Continent had sunk, in order to escape from the still more terrible evils of aristocratic anarchy.
At the time Chambers’s sturdy resolution appeared to be thrown away. It is not, however, by its immediate result that such conduct as his can be judged. The habit of firm but legal resistance to hardships permitted or supported by the opinion of those who hold the reins of government in their hands is one of those precious possessions of a race which every member of it is bound to defend to the uttermost. Chambers had not the tongue or the brain of Selden; but he knew what Selden never learned, that England required those who could suffer for her rights, as well as those who could defend them in argument.
In the main, the position taken by Chambers was the same as that taken by Eliot. Eliot, however, was for the present concerned not with April.Case of Eliot and the other members of the Commons.the general question of parliamentary taxation, but with the special question of the privileges necessary to enable the House of Commons to hold its own against the claim of the Crown to be the originator of taxation. It had been possible for the Star Chamber to make short work with Chambers. It was necessary for the Government to make sure of its ground before it could deal as it wished with Eliot.
The first thing to be done was to obtain the opinion of the judges. The Petition of Right had strengthened the hands of Opinion of the judges.the judges as arbitrators between the King and his subjects. It had not converted them into warm admirers of the doctrine of the supremacy of Parliament. The dismissal of Chief Justice Crew had doubtless not been without its effect in lowering the tone of the Bench, and his successor, Chief Justice Hyde, had neither energy nor acquirements to compensate for the irregularity of his elevation. Richardson, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, had received promotion on account of his connexion with Buckingham, whilst Chief Baron Walter enjoyed a high reputation as a sound lawyer and an honest man. Whether honest or not, the judges were now <88>under special temptations to look askance upon the House of Commons. In the last session their authority had been called in question as much as the authority of the Crown, and the ruling of the Barons of Exchequer in the case of customs had been treated with special contempt.
In spite of all this, however, it was not likely that the judges would act with precipitation. Their legal training would serve The Chief Justices and the Chief Baron consulted.to guard them against that, and there is no reason to doubt that they wished to take their position seriously, and to decide as fairly as they were able to do in such a case. It was not without hesitation that the two Chief Justices and the Chief Baron answered a series of questions propounded to them by Heath.[115] The extent of Parliamentary privilege had never been reduced to a fixed rule, and there would naturally be a wide difference of opinion on the subject between the members of the Privy Council and the members of the House of Commons.
The case put by the Attorney-General was a double one. In the first place, he held that in the week of adjournment before March 2, The Attorney-General’s case.there had been a conspiracy to publish false statements against Privy Councillors or, in plain language, against Weston. In the second place, he held that as soon as the King’s command to adjourn had been delivered by the Speaker, the House had been legally adjourned, and that all that had taken place afterwards was of the nature of a riot. In this way he did his best to steer clear of an examination of the full extent of Parliamentary privilege. <89>He laid his charges at times when the House was either not actually sitting or might be held not to be legally sitting.
From the answers of the judges it is evident that they took much the same view of the question as Heath had taken. They held that The answers of the judges.the King’s ordinary right of inflicting punishment was limited by the privileges of Parliament; but they did not hold that the House of Commons had the right of declaring itself to be possessed of any privileges it might think good to claim. It was the business of the judges to examine the precedents upon which such claims were based, and to hinder encroachments upon the authority of the Crown. Hence the answers to the questions put were framed in a spirit of true judicial caution. A conspiracy to publish false and scandalous rumours against the Privy Council or any of its members, ‘not to the end to question them in a legal or Parliamentary way, but to bring them into hatred of the people and the Government into contempt,’ would be punishable out of Parliament; but it would be necessary to examine the whole of the circumstances of the special case before it was possible to pronounce what the nature of the offence had been. On the second point the judges were of opinion that the power of adjournment was in the King’s hands, but that it must be exercised in accordance with the precedents of the House. If, however, any should tumultuously oppose it further or otherwise than the privileges of the House would warrant, it would be a great contempt.
In later times it has been wisely decided that it is not expedient that the judges should act as legal advisers of the Crown. The King not satisfied.In Charles’s reign they were regarded as the King’s counsellors, whose opinions he might obtain in all cases of difficulty. The natural impatience of the King to obtain an answer in accordance with his wishes was likely to come into collision with the natural desire of the judges to refrain from giving a decisive opinion on a point which had not been fully argued before them.
Charles was anxious, as he afterwards said, that his judges should not answer him in riddles. He sent two further questions, the replies to which might save him from the terrible <90>disaster of a defeat in open court. He wanted to know at once He puts two further questions.what would be ‘the nature of the offence’ if a conspiracy were fully proved. He wanted also to know whether any privilege whatever could ‘warrant a tumultuous proceeding.’
The three judges were not to be beaten from their position; and they suggested that, before their replies were acted on, it would be well that all their brethren should be consulted in a body.
The twelve judges were therefore convened on April 25. To Heath’s questioning they gave much the same answers as had been April 25–28.All the judges consulted.given before by the Chief Justices and the Chief Baron. They were further of opinion that it would be proper to proceed in the Star Chamber against the prisoners; but the form of proceeding ought to be such as not to deny the incriminated persons the use of counsel. Only after a full argument would it be possible to decide finally what the extent of Parliamentary privilege really was.
Whilst Heath was making preparations for acting on this advice, he was surprised by an unexpected move on the part of the prisoners. May 6.The prisoners apply for a Habeas corpus.Whether their actions in Parliament were punishable or not, it was clear to the seven prisoners who remained in the Tower after the liberation of Coryton and Heyman that they were fairly entitled to bail. Six of the number accordingly — Selden, Valentine, Holles, Strode, Hobart,[116] and Long — applied to the Court of King’s Bench for a writ of Habeas corpus. Eliot took no part in the demand, thinking, perhaps, that the judges would be more likely to give fair consideration to the application if he were not concerned in it.
The application was made on May 6, the day on which Chambers was being sentenced in the Star Chamber. It was May 7.The cause of committal expressed.held by the Government that it was not bound by the Petition of Right to express the cause of committal till a Habeas corpus had been actually demanded, and the original warrant had therefore given no reason <91>for the imprisonment beyond the King’s pleasure. A fresh warrant was now issued, stating the ground of committal to be notable contempts against the King and his Government, and stirring up of sedition in the State. The next step to be taken by the prisoners’ counsel would be to convince the judges that the offence so named was a bailable one.
The cause expressed was somewhat vaguely given. All reference to the existence of such a body as Parliament was carefully avoided. Heath’s information in the Star Chamber.In the information exhibited by Heath in the Star Chamber on the same day, it was impossible to avoid all mention of Parliament. But as little was said about it as possible. Heath took his stand upon the conspiracy to publish slanderous rumours, in order to bring the Government into disrepute. He now waived the question of the King’s right to enforce an adjournment which he had mooted in his private application to the judges, and he contrived to represent the tumult as an offence against the House as well as against the King, by alleging that, but for the machinations of the prisoners, the majority of the Commons would have been ready to adjourn.
It was possible that when Heath came to argue his case he would find that he had only escaped one difficulty to land himself in another. He would first have to prove that the conspiracy had a real existence. He would then have to prove the falsehood of Eliot’s deliberate statement that whatever he had said against Weston had been said with a view to a formal impeachment. The defendants, however, saved him the trouble of marshaling his evidence. May 22.The defendants demur.They repudiated the jurisdiction of the Star Chamber entirely. Of the pleas put in, Selden’s was the longest and most comprehensive.[117] The great lawyer was himself again. It was one thing to be brought face to face with Privy Councillors in a cell in the Tower. It was another thing to plead in due professional form. Going to the heart of the question, he asserted boldly, what Heath had abstained from denying, that the Royal command did not adjourn the House, and that all that had been <92>done till the doors were thrown open, must therefore be considered as having been done in full Parliamentary session, and as being covered by privilege of Parliament.
There was no avoiding any more the question whether the proceedings in the Star Chamber were barred by Parliamentary privilege. May 23.The point urged referred to the judges.It was referred to the two Chief Justices and the Chief Baron for their opinion. The point of ferred to the law was argued in their presence; but they could not bring themselves to take upon their shoulders the responsibility of giving a hasty decision. When June 6 arrived, June 6.Further delay.the day on which their answer was expected, they asked for further delay. They said that they had still many precedents to consult.[118]
The King was too impatient to be satisfied. He sent for all the judges, and asked them one by one what their opinion was. June 9.The judges before the King.The answer made has not been preserved, but it seems that seven out the twelve replied in a way which did not respond to the hopes and wishes of the King.[119]
Whilst the judges had been taking time to consider whether the general case came under the jurisdiction of the Star Chamber or not, June 5.Lyttelton demands bail for the prisoners.the Court of King’s Bench had been listening to arguments on the prisoners’ demand for bail. On the 5th, Lyttelton urged on behalf of the prisoners, that the sedition and contempt of which they were charged did not constitute treason, and that <93>there was therefore nothing to interfere with the taking of bail in the ordinary course.[120]
The heads of Lyttelton’s argument had been furnished by Selden. It seems to have made great impression upon the Attorney-General, as he asked for time to consider his reply. As June 9.Selden demands judgment.he was not ready on the 9th, Selden demanded an immediate decision. “Will you bail a seditious priest,” said Strode, with bitter reference to the affair of the Clerkenwell Jesuits, “though not seditious Parliament-men, as we be charged to be?”
On the 13th Heath at last replied. He began by casting a slur upon the Petition of Right. The first return, he said, would June 13.Heath’s reply.in former times have been held sufficient ‘when due respect and reverence were given to Government.’ But though Heath had no praise to bestow on the Petition, he was quite right in arguing that its conditions had been satisfied. A cause had been specified for the information of the judges. It was for them to decide whether the offence were bailable or not. The petition was silent as to the nature of a bailable offence, and the judges would therefore have to decide the point by the law as it had stood before. Heath then proceeded to argue that the judges had often refused bail to prisoners committed by the King, and that, at all events, they might exercise their discretion, and refuse bail to persons who were likely to do harm by spreading the contagion of sedition in the country. If they doubted whether the release of any particular prisoners would be dangerous or not, they ought to consult the King.
The old difficulty which had occupied so large a space in the debates of the previous year cropped up once more in an unexpected manner. Where is discretionary power to be placed?Somewhere or another there must exist in every State a discretionary power to modify and even to overrule the precepts of positive law. Parliament in 1628 had snatched that power from the King. Heath now offered it to the judges on condition that they would exercise it in the maintenance of the King’s authority. The judicial instinct of the judges repelled the dangerous <94>gift. It was the function of their office simply to declare the law. When Lyttelton asked them to bail the prisoners because the particular offence laid to their charge was legally bailable, he spoke in language which they could understand. When Heath asked them to retain the prisoners in custody because it was inexpedient to set them free, he spoke in language which would be comprehensible in a political assembly, but which was out of place when addressed to a court of law.
The judges felt themselves to be in a great strait. They did not believe that they would be doing right in refusing bail, but The judges write to the King.they did not wish to fly in the King’s face. They wrote to the King, therefore, informing him that they were bound by their oaths to admit the prisoners to bail, and suggesting to him that he might have the credit of the act by sending them directions to do so. In reply they Charles seeks delay.received a summons to Greenwich, where they were warned not to decide on so vital a point without consulting the judges of the other courts. The other judges naturally refused to give an opinion on a question which had not been argued before them, and as time was slipping away, it was possible that the Long Vacation might come before any judicial decision had been openly pronounced.[121]
Charles had evidently made up his mind that if it came to the worst, he would not allow the scruples of the judges to stand in his way. Yet He clings to the letter of the law.it was not in his nature to look fairly in the face the obstacle which had risen in his path. He did not wish openly to trample upon the guardians of the law. He did not wash to fall back upon State expediency as upon something far higher than legal precedent. He was anxious if possible to act through the judges, and would wrap himself proudly in the consciousness that the voice of the judges was the voice of the law itself.
His first step was to assure himself of June 22.Long, Hobart and Strode removed to the Tower.the safe custody of three of the prisoners who had not been originally committed to the Tower. Long, Hobart, and Strode were removed to the strong fortress, within the walls of which the King could count on the fidelity <95>of the keeper, Sir Allen Apsley. There they were to remain ‘until they were delivered by due course of law.’[122]
By due course of law Long, Hobart, and Strode would have appeared in court June 23.They do not appear in court.on the following day to receive an answer to their application for bail. When the time came for their appearance, the Court was informed by the keeper of the prison from which they had been taken, that it was no longer in his power to produce them.
There have been judges in England who would have been roused to indignation by the slight cast upon their office; but Hyde was not a Coke, and the Court contented itself with the assertion that the prisoners being absent, they could not be bailed, delivered, or remanded.
Charles felt that some justification was necessary. In an obscure and incoherent letter, which painfully betrayed the uncertainty of his mind, June 24.The King’s letter.he explained to the judges of the King’s Bench that he had kept back the prisoners because they had behaved insolently on a former occasion. Further, as no decision had yet been come to on the legality of the Star Chamber proceedings, he did not think the presence of the prisoners was necessary. Nevertheless, to show his respect to the Court, he would allow Selden and Valentine to attend them on the following day.[123]
Scarcely had this strange letter been despatched when Charles was warned by Heath that the Court was not likely to The prisoners not to be produced.take the hint which it was intended to convey. If Selden and Valentine appeared in court, wrote the Attorney-General, they would assuredly be bailed. Apsley must therefore be distinctly ordered not to produce them. Charles at once gave the order suggested, and wrote a second letter to the judges, telling them that he had changed his mind. None of the prisoners should be produced till he had reason to believe that they would make a better <96>demonstration of their modesty and civility than on the last occasion.[124]
When the Court met on the following day no prisoners appeared. The judges accepted the check without remonstrance. June 25.No bail allowed.On the 26th the term came to an end, and the Court contented itself with directing that the prisoners June 26.should be produced after the Long Vacation. This time Eliot’s name is found on the list of applicants for bail. It would seem that though he had taken no steps to share in his comrades’ chances of freedom, he was ready to share in their misfortune, now that there was no longer any risk of compromising them by his presence.[125]
Charles had been scrupulous to observe the Petition of Right in the letter, but he had not observed its spirit. He had sought to Charles’s conduct to the judges.entrust the arbitration between himself and his subjects to the judges, and on the first occasion that the judges decided against him, he set aside their decision by a subterfuge. Perhaps it was inevitable that he should refuse to submit. A modern Parliament under similar circumstances would have overruled the judges by suspending the Habeas Corpus Act. It is a clear gain to the working of the constitution that overwhelming power should be placed in a political not in a judicial body. It is also a clear gain that it should be placed in a body which is likely to exercise it as seldom as possible. Charles was neither in the position of an absolute king nor of an absolute Parliament. The traditions of the constitution forbade him from claiming to be the source of law. Yet the traditions of the constitution justified him in claiming the supreme regulative power in the nation. True to his nature, he concealed from himself the real meaning of his act by the trick in which it was enveloped. His own position was weakened by the manoeuvre. He had humiliated the judges, and if he humiliated the judges his subjects were not likely to respect them. He could no longer <97>look to them to break the collision between himself and his Parliament, if ever a Parliament should meet again.
The arrival of the Long Vacation left every constitutional question unsettled. In Charles’s relations with foreign Powers Charles’s foreign policy.equal uncertainty prevailed. Common sense, it might be thought, would have convinced him that his only chance of success at home lay in complete abstention from entanglements with foreign states. It was impossible for him to lay down the law on the Rhine or the Danube without the support of a united nation. It was equally impossible for him to lay down the law at Westminster if he was engaged in war or in the preparations for war. Weston saw all this clearly. Charles did not see it at all. He fancied that because he was able to send Eliot to the Tower his word would be equally powerful at Paris or Madrid. He did not even perceive the necessity of interesting himself in the objects for which the nations of the Continent were striving, and of waiting patiently till his own special grain could be garnered in the general harvest. To recover the Palatinate was the one object which he had set before him, and it was a matter of indifference to him whether he recovered it by the aid of France or Spain, of Protestant or Catholic. He was treating more or less openly with Richelieu, with Olivares, with Christian IV., and with Gustavus Adolphus at one and the same time. Was it to be wondered at if he failed to secure the confidence of any one of them?
The spring of 1629 was a time of crisis in Germany. In the preceding summer Wallenstein had been beaten back from the German affairs.walls of Stralsund. The assistance given to the citizens by Sweden and Denmark had enabled them to resist the master of the most numerous and well-appointed army which had been seen on the Continent since the days of the Romans. The King of Sweden and the King of Denmark drew near to one another in spite of ancient rivalry and personal jealousy. Yet, though Wallenstein had failed at Stralsund, his power still seemed irresistible. Krempe had fallen, and Glückstadt was menaced; and if Glückstadt and Stralsund were overcome, Germany would be at the feet of the Emperor. <98>Ships would be built and equipped, and neither Copenhagen nor Stockholm would be safe.
Then it was that the Emperor and the Catholic Electors committed a fault as portentous in its consequences as the March 19.The Edict of Restitution.Revocation of the Edict of Nantes was to be in future years. The Edict of Restitution, signed nine days after the dissolution of the English Parliament, swept into the hands of the Catholic clergy the bishoprics and abbeys of Northern Germany which had long been in possession of Protestant laymen. The Protestant populations of these ecclesiastical lands knew that their religion was at stake. The Protestant princes around knew that the provision which they had been accustomed to find in these lands for their younger sons was snatched away from them, and that each one of the lost territories would be turned into a garrison held against them in the interests of the Emperor and his Church.
It might be a question whether Charles was able to interfere at all with Charles’s negotiations with Sweden and Denmark.profit on the Continent. But there could be no question that, if he was to interfere at all, it was only by a close alliance with the German princes that he could hope to gain his ends.
Such a policy had a warm supporter in Sir Thomas Roe. As ambassador at Constantinople, he had been the constant correspondent of January.Sir Thomas Roe’s proposal.the exiled Elizabeth, had been made the confidant of all her hopes and schemes, and had done his best to carry them out so far as his influence allowed him. “Honest Tom,” as she playfully called him, after consulting the Prince of Orange on the way, had returned to England in January, with little understanding of the political strife which had arisen during his long absence from home, but with an overflowing knowledge of Continental politics and a clear belief that England’s true place was on the side of the Protestants of the world. At that time a good understanding between the King and the House of Commons was looked forward to at Court, and Roe had no difficulty in persuading February.the Privy Council to listen with approval to his urgent entreaty that forty ships and 6,000 men should be sent to the aid of the King of Denmark <99>before March was over.[126] As, however, nothing could be finally settled till the result of the session was known, Roe was allowed to visit the Hague once more, to concert measures with his friends in Holland.
In the beginning of March Roe was once more in England. He found there March.Spens in England.Sir James Spens, the Scotchman who had been so often employed as a negotiator by Gustavus, and who had come to urge upon Charles the necessity of taking an active part in the war. He found, too, Parliament on the eve of dissolution. Charles professed himself as ready as ever to help the King of Denmark. But at present he had not the means to do it. His uncle must have a little patience till he could put his affairs in order.[127]
Gustavus’s plan was his old one of a Protestant alliance to hold head against the Emperor in Germany, whilst France undertook January.French intervention in Italy.the conflict against Spain in Italy. Events appeared to be propitious to the execution of his scheme. A disputed succession in the Duchies of Mantua and Montferrat had brought Spain and France into collision beyond the Alps without an actual declaration of war. Casale was besieged by a Spanish army in the name of the claimant who was favoured by Spain and the Emperor. In the name of the Duke of Nevers, the claimant favoured by France, Richelieu, carrying Louis with him, scaled the Alps in the depth of winter, compelled the Duke of Savoy to separate himself from Spain, and to place Susa in French hands as a pledge of his submissiveness. The siege of Casale was raised. March 5.A limit was placed to Spanish predominance in Italy, as a limit had been placed to Wallenstein’s predominance in Germany by the failure of the siege of Stralsund. In Italy, as in Germany, a centre of resistance was formed to a hard uncongenial domination. The ambassadors of the Italian <100>princes flocked to the camp of Louis, proffering their friendship and their services.
At Susa, the scene of Richelieu’s triumph, the treaty was signed which put an end to the war between France and England. April 14.Peace between France and England.The principle that each Sovereign was to be free to settle his relations with his own subjects as he thought fit was tacitly accepted. Louis put in no claim for the toleration of the English Catholics. Charles put in no claim for the better treatment of the French Huguenots. When Louis learned from his sister that she was perfectly satisfied with her present household, it was impossible for him to press for the return of her French attendants.
The removal of the difficulties which stood in the way of the treaty was publicly and deservedly ascribed to the efforts of the Venetian ambassador Contarini. As might have been expected, he had relied much on the influence of the Queen. At a moment when she was looking forward to becoming a mother for the first time, it would have been hard for the husband Publication of the Peace.to resist the entreaties of his wife. The peace was published in London on May 10. Henrietta Maria, proud of her work, came up from Greenwich to take part in the Te Deum which was to be sung at the Chapel at Somerset House in celebration of an event which gave her such peculiar reasons for rejoicing. The fatigue of the journey was too great for her, and soon after her return she was May 13.Miscarriage of the Queen.frightened by two dogs quarrelling in her presence. On the morning of the 13th she gave birth prematurely to an infant which lived only for two hours. For some time she was herself in great peril. The King was constantly at her bedside, waiting upon her with the tenderest affection during the time of her trial. If God pleased, he said to the physicians, he might have other children. But let them do all they could to save his wife.[128]
Henrietta Maria looked upon the treaty of Susa merely as a reconciliation between her husband and her brother. <101>Contarini regarded it as the first step to an alliance against Spain. Charles was, however, February.Charles sends Vane to Holland.still hankering after the promises which Spain was always ready to dispense. In February he had sent Sir Henry Vane to the Hague to ask the Prince of Orange and the States what they thought of the Spanish offers of peace. As might have been expected, March 20.they did not even think them worth listening to. They knew well that Spain was crippled by the loss of the treasure fleet, and that a portion of her forces would be diverted to the defence of Italy. Vane was accordingly sent back with an admonition to Charles to take part in the vigorous prosecution of the war.
How could Charles prosecute the war vigorously? The despatch urging the King of Denmark to patience was already on its way. Negotiation between Denmark and the Emperor.Negotiations had long ago been commenced at Lübeck between Christian and the Emperor. Yet Christian had assured Charles’s ambassador Anstruther that, if he could be certain of aid from England, he would continue the war. On May 2 May 2.he learned that he was to be fed by hopes, and he knew too well from the sad experience of Lutter that it was useless to depend on promises which Charles had not the means of fulfilling. He angrily told Anstruther that he ‘wished of God he had known sooner what he might have expected.’[129] Ten days afterwards May 12.The Peace of Lübeck.a treaty was signed at Lübeck. Christian received back his hereditary dominions, and abandoned the championship of German Protestantism. A small fleet which was being leisurely fitted out in the English ports was equipped too late to be of any avail.
The news which reached Charles from France seemed to be almost as bad as the news which reached him from Denmark. Rohan’s rebellion in France.Richelieu was the last man in the world to throw himself into a policy of adventure. He contented himself with the success which he had acquired at Casale, and returned to France to complete the subjugation of the Huguenots. Rohan and the Protestants of <102>Languedoc and the Cevennes were still in arms in the South. The King in person, with the Cardinal by his side, marched against the insurgents. On May 28 Privas was taken and treated with the utmost barbarity by the triumphant soldiery. Charles may well be excused if he suspected Richelieu of having taken advantage of his credulity to impose a religious tyranny upon the French Protestants. “I have made peace with France,” he said to Contarini, “for the advantage of Christendom and to carry out my original designs for the public good.” He added that he could not tell what the French were aiming at. The other day a French gentleman had repeated in his presence a list of the Huguenot towns which his master was assailing. “In short,” said Charles, “he seemed to be telling me the best news in the world. I thought at first that he was joking, but when I found that he was serious, I listened with great patience without answering a word.”
Of all this the Spaniards were not slow to take advantage. Coloma had written from Flanders to his old friend Weston, holding out Coloma’s letters to Weston.vague hopes of the restitution of the Palatinate. He obtained permission for Rubens to visit England on an unavowed mission. No diplomatist could have been personally more welcome to Charles, who was never so happy as when he was arranging his pictures or discussing their beauties. Rubens had many illusions to disperse. May 27.Rubens in England.He acknowledged that it would not be so easy to restore the Palatinate as Charles seemed to think. Only part of it was held by Spanish garrisons, and if those garrisons were removed, their place would be at once occupied by the troops of the Emperor and the League.[130]
The statement made by Rubens was not the less disagreeable because it was true, and Charles, Charles favours Gustavus and the Dutch.doubting whether he had anything to hope from France or Spain, turned once more an open ear to those who were urging him to a strictly Protestant alliance. Gustavus was allowed to <103>levy one regiment in England and another in Scotland.[131] The Dutch were permitted to take into their service soldiers for whom Charles had himself no further use.[132] He sent Roe on a June 20.Roe’s mission to the Baltic.diplomatic mission to the Baltic. It is true that he bound himself to nothing by it. The ambassador was to mediate a peace between Sweden and Poland, which would set Gustavus free to carry out in Germany the great enterprise which he was already meditating; but he carried with him no engagement from Charles to provide either men or money.
Before Roe left England he obtained a promise from Charles that he would come to no agreement with Spain without the consent of his friends and allies.[133] Course of Rubens’ negotiation.Charles, in fact, had taken fresh offence at the declaration of Rubens, that he had no authority to surrender any part of the Palatinate. Rubens had afterwards disgusted him by proposing a mutual cessation of arms between England and Spain, whilst each state was left free to assist its allies upon the Continent. The Prince of Orange was at that time besieging the fortress of Hertogenbosch, one of the bulwarks of the Spanish Netherlands. Charles, in the presence of Rubens, expressed a hope that the siege might be successful. “Why,” said the painter, “should your Majesty wish the triumph of my master’s rebels?” “I found them,” replied the King, “a free State. I do not know them as rebels. They are my friends, and I wish them to gain the victory, in order that your master may become more moderate.”[134] Rubens was told that Cottington would be sent as ambassador to treat for peace at Madrid, but that the intention of the King of Spain to surrender the fortresses held by him in the Palatinate must first be distinctly declared.[135]
<104>Whilst Charles was in this mood the Marquis of Chateauneuf, the new French ambassador, arrived in England. He was June 28.Pacification in France.able to announce that the Huguenots in the South of France had submitted to the King. No resistance to the Royal authority would be allowed; but toleration was to be the maxim of the State. Catholic and Protestant were to have nothing to fear from one another, that they might devote their energies to the defence, it might be to the aggrandisement, of their common country.
Chateauneuf was empowered to invite Charles to active co-operation against Spain. He soon discovered that nothing of the kind was June 28.Chateauneuf in England.to be expected. “I have orders,” he said to Contarini, “to offer to England carte blanche for all that they wish to have done in Germany; but I find them so weak that I do not see how, as things stand, anything of importance can be done.”[136]
The very urgency of the French ambassador must have startled Charles, and he was still more disgusted when Chateauneuf, July.Charles turns to Spain.at Holland’s instigation, recommended him to call a Parliament, in order that he might declare war with some prospect of success. Spain, at any rate, did not ask him to join in a war or to summon a Parliament. Once more he turned to Rubens. “In September or October,” he said to the Queen, “you will see a Spanish ambassador here.”[137] Weston plied him, as ever, with the argument that unless he made peace he must summon a Parliament again. At last Charles took the step which he had long hesitated to take. On July 12 Rubens was able to forward the English demands in writing. Charles recognised the necessity of consulting others besides the King of Spain about the Palatinate. He would be content, he said, if Rubens would promise to do all good offices in his power with the Emperor and the Duke of Bavaria, and he hoped that those potentates would send ambassadors to Madrid to <105>treat conjointly with his own. Yet he must have something more than a mere negotiation on which to depend. Philip must distinctly declare that, whatever happened, he would deliver up the fortresses which he himself held in the Palatinate.[138] Cottington, who had lately been appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer, July 9.Resolves to send Cottington to Madrid.was accordingly named ambassador to the King of Spain. On July 19 Charles announced his intention to the Council. He invited no opinion, and his tone was such that no one ventured to object.
The immediate cause of the resolution thus taken was a fresh letter from Coloma to Weston. It was now arranged that Coloma should come to England as Philip’s ambassador; but the real business of the negotiation was to be left to Cottington at Madrid.
Chateauneuf saw clearly that his real antagonist was Weston. The Lord Treasurer was as unpopular at Court as he was in the country. July.Weston’s antagonists at Court.The close-fisted guardian of the Exchequer kept a tight hold upon pensions, and pleaded in surly tones the emptiness of the Treasury to those who had incurred debts in the service of the King. Many a courtier cried out for a Parliament, that he might dip his hand in the stream of subsidies.[139] Rubens, himself no ascetic, was astonished at the vast expenditure of the Court. Carlisle and Holland distinguished themselves by the splendour of their hospitality. Not a few of the lords in attendance upon the King followed their example with very insufficient revenues. The necessary result followed. “Therefore,” wrote the artist, “public and private affairs are to be sold here for ready money.”[140] All this craving discontent Chateauneuf hoped to mould to his uses by making the Queen the centre of an organisation which would receive the word of command from the Louvre.
Everything the ambassador saw led him to believe that with the Queen on his side he could hardly fail of success. Charles was still an ardent lover. He kissed his wife again and again Relations between Charles and the Queen.in Chateauneuf’s presence. “You do not see that at Turin,” he said gaily, referring to the Queen’s eldest sister. “Nor at Paris either,” he added in a lower tone, with a glance at the loveless wedlock of Louis. Some councillors complained that the King was always in his wife’s apartments. Except when he was hunting it was impossible to speak to him. Yet he was excessively jealous of the supposition that he was under the Queen’s influence. “I wish,” he said to her one day, “that we could be always together, and that you could accompany me to the Council; but what would these people say if a woman were to busy herself with matters of government?” Chateauneuf thought that if the Queen would play her cards well she might lead her husband where she chose; but he could not persuade her to care for politics at all. She was too happy in the immediate present, too little capable at any time of a sustained effort, except when some personal object was at stake, to trouble herself with the combinations of statesmen.[141]
Chateauneuf now tried to reach the Queen through her religious zeal. He proposed to establish in her household The Queen’s priests.eight French Capuchins and a bishop, and to get rid of the two Oratorians who had been in attendance since the expulsion of the French, one of whom, Father Philips, an Englishman, had acted as the Queen’s confessor. Chateauneuf found the King ready to give his wife all freedom in the exercise of her religion. He sometimes scolded her for staying in bed so long that she was unable to hear mass before noon. To the eight Capuchins he made no objection; but he would not hear of the bishop. He would come to England, he said, in his episcopal habit, and would jostle with the bishops of the land. To the Queen he expressed his own personal objection. “Your mother,” he said, “is sending you a governor. When <107>he comes do not let him enter your room as you allowed the Bishop of Mende to do. Let him approach you only at church and at dinner.” The King of France, he told Chateauneuf, wanted to have two ambassadors in London, one for himself and another for the Queen.
If the King would not admit a bishop, the Queen would not part with her confessor. Chateauneuf was forced to give way to her strongly expressed wishes, and to renounce for the present the hope of establishing the Capuchins in England, at least till the two kings could come to terms on the subject of the bishop.[142]
The ambassador had therefore to engage the Queen against Weston in some other way. The sore point was at last found. The Queen’s need of money.Henrietta Maria was profuse in her expenditure. “She is a bad housekeeper,” said Charles of her in her presence. Weston, who found it hard enough to get money for any purpose, was driven to despair by the urgent need of satisfying the Queen’s demands. Chateauneuf openly did his best to effect a reconciliation, but the quarrel served his purpose too well to be in reality disagreeable to him.[143]
By this time Charles was looking for an answer from Spain to his demand about the fortresses of the Palatinate. He waited in vain. September.Further negotiation with Spain.He was told that when Cottington arrived at Madrid the English propositions would form a fitting subject of negotiation. They could not be discussed in England as a preliminary to his mission. Olivares, in fact, declined to bind his hands beforehand. Charles struggled hard against this conclusion. He pleaded with Rubens that the places held by the Spaniards were of little importance to them, whilst his own reputation was deeply concerned in their recovery. Olivares, however, maintained an imperturbable silence, and Charles gave way. Cottington was to go to Madrid without any previous declaration from Philip. If he did not receive a satisfactory answer about the fortresses, <108>he was to come away at once, and Charles was to be free to accept the overtures of France.
In Cottington Rubens had found an instrument ready to his hand. His good faith, he assured Olivares, could not be greater if he had been a Spanish Councillor of State. The minister of the King of England now joined the Fleming in urging Charles to offer a higher price for the Palatinate than a mere treaty of peace. Why should not England request the Dutch to come to terms with Spain by threatening to abandon them entirely to themselves, or even to take part against them if they persisted in carrying on the war? Charles gave way at last so far as to consent that when Cottington left for Madrid Sir Henry Vane should be sent back to the Hague in order to induce the States-General to accept his arbitration.[144] Roe’s negotiation, of which so much had been thought a few months before, was now entirely neglected, and Charles even left his ambassador to wander amongst the Baltic States without a single despatch to acquaint him of the turn which affairs were taking in England.
Though the treaty with France had done something to revive English trade, the old difficulties were not at an end. Continued resistance to the payment of Customs.To some extent, indeed, the prediction of those who declared it impossible for the merchants long to desist from buying and selling had been realised. Many of them were now again passing goods through the Custom House; but there were many who were still obstinate, ‘because,’ as the new Venetian ambassador, Soranzo, expressed it, ‘they believe in their conscience that they will commit the greatest sin in surrendering their liberties.’ The political struggle was carried on with all the instinctive resolution of a war of religion.
The Government wisely resolved to The Star Chamber prosecution of members of Parliament dropped.leave the merchants to time and to the allurements of gain. The prosecution of the members of Parliament could not be so lightly abandoned. The Star Chamber process was, <109>however, dropped, in compliance with the wishes of the judges. The great cause was to be removed to the King’s Bench.
The scandal of calling the offending members before a Court mainly composed of Privy Councillors was thus avoided. Charles would appeal to the ordinary guardians of the law to punish his assailants.
He had not much cause to fear. The judges were ready enough to carry out his wishes. The course to be pursued in Sept. 9.Difficulties about bail.the question of bail was settled at a conference between Coventry, Manchester, and Dorchester with the assistance of Heath. The first day of term on which the prisoners would be brought up in pursuance of the rule of the Court was October 9. It was now resolved to anticipate the day, to bring them up as soon as possible, and to take their bail for the remainder of the vacation on condition that they would give security for their good behaviour whilst at liberty; in other words, that they would engage not to make the Government unpopular by recounting their wrongs.[145]
This proposal was adopted by the judges without difficulty. They were even prepared to go farther. Not only would they offer the bail Sept. 30.Course adopted by the judges.on the King’s terms, but they would offer it as a matter of favour, not as a right to which the prisoners were legally entitled.[146] Even with this Charles was not satisfied. He required that if the prisoners once Oct. 1.Further difficulties.refused the grace offered them, they should not be allowed another chance unless they first asked his pardon. On this point, however, the judges were firm. Hyde answered that the prisoners would not be so foolish as to reject the favour offered to them, yet, ‘if they should be so gross,’ and should afterwards repent of their folly, ‘bailable they are by law.’
The King insisted. He sent his letter empowering the judges to offer bail, but Oct. 2.accompanied with a warning that if his grace was refused the prisoners should ‘neither have their liberty by his letter or by other means till they <110>had acknowledged their fault.’[147] The next morning they were admitted one by one before the Court. The bond for good behaviour was Oct. 3.A bond for good behaviour demanded.undoubtedly in the power of the judges to demand. By the prisoners it was regarded as a deadly insult, for it was seldom if ever asked, except from keepers of disorderly houses, from women of profligate life, or from turbulent disturbers of the peace. One of the seven, Walter Long, after a quarter of an hour’s resistance, accepted the terms at the urgent entreaty of his counsel. Refused by six of the prisoners.Not one of the others followed his example. When he found that he stood alone, he bitterly repented his weakness, complained that he had been circumvented, and entreated in vain to be sent back to share the imprisonment of his comrades.[148]
The judges were in a difficulty. The 9th would quickly come, when they were legally bound to give bail if it was asked for, though Oct. 4.The judges and the King.they might persist in coupling their offer with the condition which had been rejected. The King had forbidden them to grant bail after the first refusal till the prisoners had asked his pardon. Hyde supplicated Charles to revoke his decision,[149] and he and Whitelocke were ordered to wait on the King at Hampton Court.[150] They found him in a good humour. It is possible that he thought the chance that the prisoners would now give way was too slight to be taken into account. He always wished, he said, to comply with the opinion of his judges as long as they did not speak in riddles. He would raise no further objection to the re-appearance of the prisoners on the 9th.
When the 9th came the seven appeared at the bar. This <111>time they all refused the terms offered. Long, his few days of Oct. 9.The bond for good behaviour again refused.unwelcome liberty having come to an end, briskly placed himself by the side of the others, and thus ‘by yielding his body once more to prison, he set his mind at liberty.’ The three puisne judges tried their best to explain away the condition of bail as unimportant. Hyde alone threatened the prisoners with the consequences of their folly. If they did not accept the King’s offer now they might, he told them, be left in prison, it might be for seven years.[151]
Hyde was sick of it all. There was no dignity in the part he was called on to play to sustain him. Why, he asked Heath, impatiently, was Oct. 13.What is to come next?any further trouble to be taken? Further proceedings were unnecessary. ‘The best way were to dispose of them either where they now are or to other prisons at the King’s pleasure, and there leave them as men neglected until their own stomachs came down, and not to prefer any information at all, they being now safe, and so shall continue.’ Heath would not hear of so high-handed a proceeding.[152] He had confidence in the strength of his own position, and he was not afraid to speak out the arguments in which he trusted in the face of a hostile world. He brought in his information against Eliot, Holles, and Valentine, those who had taken the principal part in the attack upon the Speaker.
Hyde might well shrink back. Events had conspired to thrust forward the judges into a position which it was impossible for them to hold. The storm of the political battle raged around them, and they were dragged forth to act as arbiters <112>where arbitration was impossible.[153] The Commons had spurned their decisions, and now the King, with more outward show of respect, The judges have to submit to the King.waved away their claims to measure his political authority by the standard of legal precedents and maxims. It was so clear to him that his own position was legal, that he could not understand the scruples of the judges. At this very moment he was treating one of them with contumely, and was doing his best to present to his subjects the men on whose judgments he wished to rely as the tools of a Government which would tolerate no decision of which it did not approve.
The Chief Baron, Sir John Walter, had every claim to the consideration of the King. He had been his Attorney-General when Oct. 12.Chief Baron Walter.he was Prince of Wales, and was universally respected for his ability and integrity. Up to the Long Vacation his course had been eminently satisfactory to Charles. In the Court of Exchequer he had refused to allow the replevins for the goods seized for non-payment of duties, and he had encouraged the King to proceed against the imprisoned members of Parliament.
Soon after the beginning of Michaelmas Term, however, Walter received a visit from Coventry. The Lord Keeper had come He is asked to resign his place.to suggest to him that he should petition the King to be allowed to retire from the Bench. His Majesty, it appeared, was displeased with him on account of his laxity, on the circuit from which he had just returned, Oct. 13.in enforcing the obligation of his subjects to attend musters. Walter protested that there had been no laxity at all. The King refused to accept the explanation. He sent Coventry back to ask the Chief Baron whether he intended to ‘submit himself to his Majesty, or stand to his trial.’ Walter replied that he would stand <113>to his trial. “I desire,” he wrote, “to be pardoned for making[154] a surrender of my patent, for that were to punish myself. I do with confidence stand upon my innocency and faithful service to his Majesty, and therefore will abide my trial.”[155]
Charles was unprepared for such an answer. As always happened, he was disconcerted by firm but quiet opposition. Walter held his office by patent ‘as long as he should behave well,’ and the scandal of an open investigation, which at the most could only result in proof of negligence, was of all things most to be deprecated at a time when Charles was appealing to the judges to arbitrate between himself and his people. He Oct. 22.He is suspended.shrank from the Chief Baron’s challenge. If, however, he could not deprive Walter of his office, he could suspend him from the exercise of his judicial functions.[156] Walter, therefore, continued to bear the title of Chief Baron of the Exchequer, but during the year of life which remained to him, he never again took his seat upon the Bench.
Contemporaries agreed to regard the charge about the musters as a mere subterfuge. The real cause of Charles’s displeasure, Probable reasons for this step.they held, was that Walter, after having exhorted him to proceed against the members,[157] now turned round, and expressed himself strongly against the course which had been adopted. If this was the case, Charles might very well have taken offence at so sudden a change of opinion, and might have charged him, as he is said <114>to have done, with ‘dealing cautelously, and not plainly, concerning the Parliament men.’[158]
It is possible too that a further consideration was not without weight with Charles. The case of the members of Parliament was Chambers’s case in the Exchequer.to be decided in the King’s Bench, and as far as that case was concerned, it was of no practical importance what Walter might think about the matter. The cases connected with the levy of tonnage and poundage would, however, come before the Court of Exchequer, and it would be highly inconvenient for Charles to have them decided before Question of the Star Chamber jurisdiction in the Exchequer.a Chief Baron who was likely to adopt the popular view. If reliance can be placed on a statement which has reached us, it would seem that the Barons of the Court, with Walter at their head, had already remonstrated strongly with the Lord Treasurer for attempting to levy Chambers’s fine before the question of its legality had been adjudged. After Walter’s removal no further difficulty was raised.[159] The three remaining Barons dealt summarily with Chambers’s plea questioning the jurisdiction of the Star Chamber. That Court, they informed him, was erected many years before the statute of Henry VII. to which he had appealed as limiting its powers. It was ‘one of the most high and honourable Courts of Justice,’ and to deliver one who was committed by the decree of one of the courts of justice was not the usage of the Exchequer.[160] The proceedings on the <115>main question of the right to tonnage and poundage dragged on for some time longer, apparently without any wish on the part either of the Government or of the judges to bring them to an issue.
From these intrigues it is pleasant to turn to Eliot and his companions in suffering. On October 29, together with Holles and Valentine, Oct. 29.Eliot in the Marshalsea.Eliot was transferred from the Tower to the Marshalsea, ‘from a palace to a country house,’ as he playfully expressed it, in order that he might be in the custody of the authorities of the court which was to determine his case. It was not long before Holles, worn out by the importunities of his wife and friends, consented to give the security for good behaviour which would set him at liberty till the day of trial.[161]
Some weeks would have to be passed by Eliot in his new prison before the case was ripe for a hearing. They were spent by him without hope of better times in this life, but in the quiet and cheerful confidence of well-doing. He had none of the self-consciousness of the aspirant to martyrdom. He had words of playful and tender affection for his friends, serious thoughts about the prerogative of kings at home, and about new homes for exiled religion in far America. He had not a word of scorn for his adversaries, not a word of regret for his comrades’ desertion. Now and then came a friendly letter from Hampden or Luke, with presents of game and country cheer. Selden and Strode came to join him in the Marshalsea before long. Here he was allowed greater liberty than in the Tower, and was permitted, under due guardianship, to attend the preaching at St. Mary Overies.[162]
At last, on January 26, Eliot, Holles, and Valentine once more stood together at the King’s Bench bar. Heath’s information 1630.Jan. 26.Heath’s information.now at last went directly to the point. There was no longer any attempt to escape from the full assertion of the jurisdiction of the Court over actions done in Parliament. The Attorney General did not urge that there had been a conspiracy in a private house during <116>the adjournment, or that the Parliament had ceased to be a Parliament after the King’s orders to adjourn had been conveyed to it. The conspiracy, he now declared, had been formed in Parliament itself, to resist the King’s lawful order, and to rend asunder the links which bound the King to his subjects by calumniating the ministers of the Crown, and by assaulting the Speaker. All this had been done in order to compel the House to listen to an invitation to the people to refuse obedience to the King.[163]
To this the prisoners answered by denying the jurisdiction of the court over acts committed in Parliament. The judges tried to Jan. 27.The judges try to limit the issue.limit the issue as much as possible. They declared that on the main question, their minds were made up already, and that all the twelve judges had concurred in resolving that an offence committed in Parliament, criminally or contemptuously, might, when Parliament came to an end, be punished in another court. The only question to be argued was whether the King’s Bench was the proper court to punish it.
Mason, who undertook the defence of Eliot, took no notice of this intimation. He roved over the whole field of inquiry, and was Arguments on behalf of the prisoners.told by the Court that a great part of his argument was nothing to the present question. Calthrop, who followed on Valentine’s behalf, was more discreet. He argued that there was no instance of the interference of the King’s Bench with cases in which Parliamentary privilege was involved, excepting when a capital offence was alleged to have been committed. If the Court took cognisance of the present charge, it would be impossible to draw the line at which its interference was to stop. If treason or murder were committed in Parliament, they might indeed be questioned out of Parliament; but if words were to be called to account on the ground that they had been spoken ‘maliciously and seditiously,’ then ‘all actions of Parliament men’ might, ‘under pretence of malice,’ be drawn within the sphere of the Court. Besides, Parliament was a superior court to the King’s Bench, and as such was not subject to its jurisdiction.
<117>Heath, in reply, admitted that some actions were covered by Parliamentary privilege; but he drew the line not at capital offences but Heath’s reply.at criminal offences. If no precedent could be found for calling in question such actions as those of which the prisoners had been guilty, the reason was that no such offence had ever been committed before. For the present, however, the only question was whether the Court had the right of punishment on the hypothesis that the offence was proved to have been committed. If it had not, there would undoubtedly be a failure of justice whenever, as in the present case, a Parliament came to an end without taking action in the matter. Even if a new Parliament were disposed at some future time to seek out the criminal, it could have no official knowledge of the facts of the case.
The judgment delivered was a foregone conclusion. The reasons by which it was prompted found their fullest expression in the mouth of Whitelocke, Judgment of the Court.the only one of the judges on the bench who had had personal experience of Parliamentary life. The offence charged against the prisoners, he said, was one tending to the destruction of the commonwealth. Whitelocke’s argument.It was true that Parliament was a high court, and the King’s Bench an inferior court. But Parliament itself was not called in question. The issue lay between the King and some private persons. “You have,” he said, “in every commonwealth a power that hath this superiority, that do they right or wrong, are subject unto no control but of God, and that in this kingdom is the King. But no other within the realm hath this privilege. It is true that that which is done in Parliament by consent of all the House shall not be questioned elsewhere; but if any private member puts off the person of a judge, and puts on the person of a malefactor, becoming seditious, is there such sanctimony in the place that they may not be questioned for it elsewhere? … There is no man hath more privilege than a minister, in regard he preacheth the word of God, yet if he fall on matter of slander to the State, his coat shall not privilege him. So, if a Parliament man, that should be a man of gravity and wisdom, shall decline his gravity, and fall on matter of sedition, he hath made <118>himself incapable of that privilege, although I conceive the Parliament to be the best servant the King hath, and the commonwealth cannot stand without it. I have been a Parliament man almost these twenty years, yet I never observed any inveighing against the person of any great man, but we followed the matter, although we thought that there were as great offenders then as at any time. Suppose a judge of this court flies into gross invectives and leaves his office, shall this judge in Court of Oyer and Terminer plead his privilege? No, for you did this as a defamer, not a judge.”[164]
But for one consideration, it would be impossible to resist this argument. If Parliament was to be nothing more than the high court which Consideration of its weight.in technical langauge it still is, it would be for the public benefit that a power should exist strong enough to impose upon its members the restraints to which every other Englishman submits his language and his actions. It was because Parliament was rapidly becoming more than a high court that Whitelocke’s argument was invalid. It was unconsciously putting in a claim to share in the superiority which, as Whitelocke said, was subject to no control. By-and-by it would vindicate that superiority to itself. Privileges which might be lightly regarded when the machinery of government was working easily, became matters of life and death when the different powers of the constitution were eyeing one another suspiciously, ready before long to sound the challenge to civil war. Calthrop had said that if malice could bring words within the jurisdiction of the King’s Bench, malice might be imputed to anyone. To surrender the point at issue was to renounce the weapon without which victory in the approaching strife was hardly possible.
It was simply impossible that this broad view of the case should be taken by the judges. Even Eliot did not avow it — probably hardly thought of it in the self-communings of his heart. With him resistance proceeded rather from instinctive defiance of wrong than from a deliberate foreknowledge of the path before him. As yet the Court had only claimed its <119>jurisdiction. It had further to decide whether an offence had been committed. For Question of criminality reserved.the rest of the time allowed for the preparation of the defence neither Eliot nor his friends were idle. They seem to have thought it possible to discover some form which would enable them to defend themselves without betraying the privileges of Parliament. They met with unexampled difficulties. Counsel could not be brought together at their summons, either because the lawyers shrank from embarking further in a cause so displeasing to the King, or because they knew that it would be perfectly hopeless to discover a form of words which would satisfy Eliot and the judges as well. Feb. 12.At last, on February 12, the lawyers were collected, and a paper was drawn up reciting once more Eliot’s reasons for declining the jurisdiction of the court. Struck down by illness, the result of fatigue brought on by his exertions in preparing his case, Eliot was unable to be in court on the day when judgment was pronounced.[165]
Holles and Valentine, however, were there, refusing — as he would have refused — to acknowledge the jurisdiction of the court The judgment.by pleading to the charge. Jones, who delivered the judgment, took unworthy advantage of their silence, treating it as an acknowledgment of their fault. Eliot was sentenced to a fine of 2,000l., Holles to 1,000 marks, Valentine, as being less wealthy, to 500l. None of them was to be released from prison without acknowledgment of his offence and security for good behaviour.[166]
The ground on which the judgment was based was the generality of the charges brought by Eliot in the House. He Its view of the case. Distinction drawn in it.might have accused any particular Privy Councillor as a preparation for an impeachment. He had, however, brought a sweeping charge against Privy Councillors in general, and, as he could not possibly have intended to impeach the Privy Council as a body, his words must be regarded as malicious.
Though the distinction was not without ground, it would be impossible to maintain it in practice. A member out of favour <120>at Court would be sure to let drop some words which might be interpreted as a general accusation, and he would find himself face to face with the judges. The rough common-sense view of Dorchester’s view of the case.the situation was taken by Dorchester when he said that the object of the trial was ‘to let the world see that Parliament men must be responsible for their words and actions in other courts, and so they will be more moderate and circumspect hereafter, and the King, when he finds good, may meet his people with so much the more assurance that they will never transgress in the point of due respect and obedience;’[167] an opinion which fully justified Eliot in refusing submission to a claim which was certain sooner or later to pass into the assertion of a right to control Parliamentary speeches of every kind.
Eliot knew that he had no mercy to expect from Charles. The way was made easy for the other prisoners to make submission, and Treatment of the prisoners.all but two of them were soon at liberty, whilst some of them were even allowed to leave their prisons without any submission at all. It was not so with Eliot. It was from Eliot’s lips that the challenge of the King’s authority had first come. It was Eliot who presented himself before Charles’s eyes as the malignant accuser of Buckingham, who had struck down the minister in order that he might strike down the King. To those who know him for what he was, no caricature could be more distorted than such a portrait. It is indeed no service to historical truth to paint him as a faultless prodigy. It is enough to know him as a man, sometimes mistaken, but never wilfully blind to truth, equally ready to brand with withering scorn the traitor to his country, and to turn his own cheek to the petulant reproaches of those whose blows were only directed against himself. The last trial of his patience was that he was deserted in the hours of watching by those who had stood shoulder to shoulder with him in the excitement of the battle. Yet, even for them he had no word of reproof, as he had no word of regret for his own calamities. He was still in the prime of life <121>— only thirty-eight years of age — when liberty is sweet. But, like Luther at Worms, it was not in him to do otherwise than he did. A word of submission would have set him free to revisit his Cornish home and the dear ones whom it contained. That word he would not speak. He had taken care to relieve his children from the consequences of the King’s anger. When the Sheriff’s officers inquired at Port Eliot for property on which to levy the fine, they were told that the man whom they believed to be the owner of that fair estate had nothing which he could call his own. Everything had been made over to trustees for the use of his family. It was only with his body that he was able to answer the demands made upon him. “I am now freed,” he wrote to a friend, “from the tedious attendance of courts and counsel, and am passing again to the observance only of myself.”[168] In the highest sense he belonged to himself alone. In a lower sense he belonged to the King and to the King’s officers. “Mr. Lieutenant,” said the Marshal of the King’s Bench as he delivered him at the Tower, “I have brought you this worthy knight, whom I borrowed of you some months ago, and now do repay him again.”[169]
Eliot’s many friends were struck with admiration at his self-devotion. “The judgment upon you,” wrote Kirton, “is blown amongst us with wonder attending it. For my own part I can wonder at nothing; but I think that that man who doth not take your judgment as in part a judgment upon himself, doth fail either in honesty or discretion. I will use no more words unto you of it, because I know you are so well composed that things of this nature, although never so high, slack not your resolutions, or move you to be otherwise than you were. The time may come that such virtues may be regarded.”[170]
Many years were to pass away before Eliot’s principles were fully adopted by the nation. The Yet his views are as yet only partially accepted.mass of mankind is never moved by the fear of impending evils. To the farmer as he plodded on his daily rounds, to the trader as he looked for customers in his shop, <122>it was nothing that the power exercised by the King might possibly be put forth at some future time to the detriment of religion or of commerce. The ecclesiastical innovations were as yet confined to a very few localities. The Custom House officers did not as yet exact a single penny more than had been paid without sign of reluctance for many years. On the other hand, the events of the last session had made it plain that the objects at which Eliot aimed could only be attained by defiance of the King; and much as the intelligent classes were dissatisfied with the course which Charles had taken, not even they, and still less the bulk of the nation, were as yet prepared to defy the King.
It was well that it should be so, well that the belief that it was impossible for a sovereign to cut himself off from sympathy with his people, and yet to keep free from actual misgovernment, should be slowly accepted. To Eliot belongs the glory of being the first to see plainly that this could not be, that Charles’s isolation was a fruitful seed of evil. It was for him to suffer as those suffer who see that which their fellows cannot see. Like the Swiss warrior, he had gathered into his own bosom the spear-points of the adverse host. His countrymen would follow by-and-by through the breach which he had made at the cost of his life.
[90] Proclamation, March 2, Rymer, xix. 29.
[91] Contarini to the Doge, March 6⁄16, Ven. Transcripts, R. O.
[92] Council Register, March 3, 4.
[93] Lords’ Journals, iv. 43; Contarini to the Doge, March 13⁄23, Ven. Transcripts, R. O.
[94] Declaration, March 10, Parl. Hist. ii. 492.
[95] Interrogatories and Examinations, March 17, S. P. Dom. cxxxviii. 87, 88, 89.
[96] Mr. Forster (Sir J. Eliot, iii. 249) doubts the correctness of these answers because ‘the alleged result of Selden’s examination is not reconcilable either with his former speeches or with his tone afterwards.’ Probably Mr. Forster contented himself with the abstract in Mr. Bruce’s Calendar. The original examination (S. P. Dom. cxxxiv. 8) is signed by Selden, and his signature is attested by the Privy Councillors present.
[97] Selden to Apsley, March 30, S. P. Dom. ccxxxix. 78.
[98] S. P. Dom. cxxxiv. 7.
[99] Heath’s speech against Leighton, p. 9, Camden Miscellany, vol. vii.
[100] Apsley to Dorchester, March 20, S. P. Dom. cxxxix. 19.
[101] Proclamation, March 27, Rymer, xix. 62.
[102] Council Register, March 7.
[103] Contarini to the Doge, March 20⁄30, Ven. Transcripts, R. O.
[104] Tanner MSS. lxxi. fol. 1.
[105] Joachimi to the States-General, April 2⁄12, Add. MSS. 17,677 M. fol. 336.
[106] Salvetti’s News-Letter, April 10⁄20.
[107] Council Register, April 18, 29; May 12, 22, 23.
[108] Notes on Trade, April 6. Lake to Vane, April 20, S. P. Dom. cxl. 24; cxli. 10.
[109] Williams to Dorchester, May 5, S. P. Dom. cxlii. 19.
[110] We are so apt to think of the Star Chamber simply as a Court employed upon State Trials, that it requires a strong effort of the imagination to grasp the fact that the great majority of cases before it were owing to the action of private prosecutors.
[111] State Trials, iii. 374.
[112] There are two actions traceable, Chambers v. Dawes &c., and The Attorney-General v. Chambers. The answer of Dawes &c. is dated May 12, and Chambers’s answer is dated June 22. I presume, therefore, that Chambers brought his action first. Exchequer Bills and Answers, Charles I., Nos. 264, 236.
[113] The amount demanded from Chambers was 364l. 2s. 2½d. on goods valued at 7,282l. 0s. 8d. or almost exactly 5 per cent. Exchequer Orders and Decrees, June 23.
[114] State Trials, iii. 376.
[115] Two sets of questions have been printed, the one in Rushworth, i. 662; the other in the State Trials, iii. 235, and 238, note. Mr. Forster treated them as mere variations, and Mr. Bruce seems to have been of the same opinion, as he has calendared the MSS. of both forms under the same date, April 27. I feel no doubt that they are quite distinct. The form in the State Trials which is taken from Nalson is said to contain the answer to questions put to ‘the three Chief Judges.’ From S. P. Dom. cxli. 45, we find that the three judges asked that their opinions might not be published ‘but by consent and conference with the other judges.’ Rushworth’s form contains answers from all the judges, and is therefore doubtless subsequent to that given in the State Trials.
[116] Hobart’s name is omitted in the usual accounts of the matter. But the Rule Book of the King’s Bench shows that he joined the others.
[117] Parl. Hist. ii. 507; S. P. Dom. cxliii. 4–13.
[118] Heath to Conway, June 4, S. P. Dom. cxliv. 37. Gresley to Pickering, June 10, Court and Times, ii. 17. I have no doubt that the arguments mentioned in the former letter were delivered before the judges. Mr. Forster speaks of them as arguments in the Star Chamber. It does not seem that the case was ever argued in the Star Chamber at all. The judges had to consider whether the prisoners could be made to answer in that Court, ‘off de gevangen parlementslieden gehouden syn te rechte te staen in de Sterre Chamber.’ Joachimi to the States-General, Add. MSS. 17,677 M. fol. 358 b.
[119] Gresley to Pickering, June 10, Court and Times, ii. 19. Life of D’Ewes, i. 414. The only names of the seven which have reached us are those of Denham, Yelverton, and Hutton.
[120] State Trials, iii. 241, 252.
[121] Whitelocke’s Memorials, 14.
[122] Controlment Roll, King’s Bench, 5 Charles I. Membr. 65.
[123] The King to the Judges of the King’s Bench, June 24, Rushworth, i. 680.
[124] Heath to Dorchester; the King to Apsley; the King to the Judges of the King’s Bench, S. P. Dom. cxlv. 40, 41, 42.
[125] Rule Book of the King’s Bench.
[126] Contarini to the Doge, Feb. 6⁄16, Ven. Transcripts, R. O. When publishing Sir Thomas Roe’s Mission for the Camden Society (Miscellany, vii.), I was not aware of this first visit to England.
[127] Dorchester to Anstruther, March 9, S. P. Denmark.
[128] Salvetti’s News-Letter, May 15⁄25; Contarini to Zorzi, May 15⁄25, Ven. Transcripts, R. O.
[129] Anstruther to Dorchester, June 6, S. P. Denmark.
[130] Contarini to the Doge, May 15, May 29⁄25, June 8, June 5⁄15, Ven. Transcripts, R. O. Weston to Coloma, Feb. 24⁄March 6, Simancas MSS. 2519. Salvetti’s News-Letter, May 29⁄June 8.
[131] Salvetti to Sacchetti, May 29⁄June 8.
[132] Joachimi to the States-General, June 5, June 23⁄15, July 3, Add. MSS. 17,677 fol. 357, 362.
[133] Contarini to the Ambassadors in France, June 19⁄29, Ven. Transcripts, R. O.
[134] Contarini to Zorzi, June 8, 11, June 26⁄18, 21, July 6, ibid.
[135] Rubens to Olivares, June 26⁄July 6, Simancas MSS. 2519.
[136] Despatch of Contarini and Soranzo, July 3⁄13, Ven. Transcripts, R. O. Chateauneuf’s Instructions, May 10⁄20, Aff. Étrangères, xliii. 139.
[137] Rubens to Olivares, July 12⁄22, Simancas MSS. 2519.
[138] Paper given to Rubens by Weston, enclosed in a letter from Rubens to Olivares, July 12⁄22, Simancas MSS. 2519.
[139] Chateauneuf to Richelieu, July 27⁄Aug. 6, Aff. Étrangères, xliii. 204.
[140] Rubens to Olivares, July 10⁄20, Simancas MSS. 2519.
[141] Chateauneuf to Richelieu, July 13⁄23, Aug. 17, Aug. 31⁄27, Sept. 10, Aff. Étrangères, xliii. 195, 217, 249.
[142] Chateauneuf’s despatches are full of his negotiations on this subject from his arrival till his departure.
[143] Chateauneuf to Richelieu, July 13⁄23, Aff. Étrangères, xliii. 125. Soranzo’s Despatch, July 17⁄27, Ven. MSS.
[144] Rubens to Olivares, Aug. 23⁄Sept. 2, Sept. 11⁄21, Simancas MSS. 2519. Instructions to Vane, Oct. 18, S. P. Holland.
[145] The King to the Judges of the King’s Bench, Sept. 9; Heath to Dorchester, Sept. 10, S. P. Dom. cxlix. 37; i. 37.
[146] Hyde to Dorchester, Sept. 30, ibid. cxlix. 110.
[147] Dorchester to Hyde, Oct. 1; Hyde to Dorchester, Oct. 1; Dorchester to Hyde, Oct. 2, S. P. Dom. cl. 3, 4, 10.
[148] Narrative of Proceedings, ibid. cl. 85.
[149] Hyde to Dorchester, Oct. 4, ibid. cl. 22.
[150] This interview is dated Sept. 30 by Rushworth (i. 682), but the letters which we have on that date and the following days seem incompatible with the date. After the 4th it is quite in its place. Besides, it accounts for the want of any answer to Hyde’s letter of that date, all the rest of the correspondence being carefully preserved.
[151] Narrative, S. P. Dom. cl. 85. State Trials, iii. 288.
[152] Heath to Dorchester, Oct. 13, S. P. Dom. cl. 53. Hyde’s opinion can only be gathered from Heath’s letter, from which the words in the text are given. Hyde’s meaning is therefore left in obscurity. I suspect that he meant that, as the Petition of Right had been obeyed, the cause of imprisonment had been shown, and bail had been refused, the prisoners might be left where they were simply on the ground that they had refused to give bail. It seems incredible that a Chief Justice should argue, even in Hyde’s position, that the punishment for their action in Parliament ought to be perpetual imprisonment without trial, unless there had been some quibble to fall back upon.
[153] The notion that the judges could settle all political quarrels is something like the notion that arbitration can settle all international quarrels. In both cases much can be done when both parties are agreed on the principles of the point at issue, and merely ask for their application. In neither case is there sufficient physical force to compel submission when there is disagreement as to principles.
[154] i.e. ‘to be excused from.’
[155] Coventry to the King, Oct. 12; Dorchester to Coventry, Oct. 13; Coventry to Dorchester, Oct. 14, S. P. Dom. cl. 47, 52, 58.
[156] Gresley to Puckering, Oct. 24, Court and Times, ii. 35.
[157] Salvetti dwells upon this point. He says (News-Letter, Oct. 16⁄26), that Walter was suspended, ‘per havere da principio consigliato sua Maestà d’ agitare contro di questi gentilhuomini come fine ad hora ha fatto, et che dipoi giuditiariamente si fusse gettato alla popularità.’ That he had done this judicially is a mistake. Soranzo says that the judges had been ordered to condemn the prisoners, and that the King had been much disgusted by their refusal to do so. He had accordingly suspended one, et dicono lui stato quello che più degl’ altri affermó doversi venir alla retentione, perche vi eran leggi che li condannavano.’ Soranzo’s despatch, Oct. 23⁄Nov. 2, Ven. MSS.
[158] Whitelocke, Mem. 16. He gives as Walter’s opinion ‘that a Parliament-man for misdemeanour in the House criminally out of his office and duty, might be only imprisoned, and not further proceeded against.’ This opinion, if indeed it proceeded from Walter, is so strange as to be unintelligible as it stands. It is possible that we have here a distorted report of the words of Hyde, whatever they may have been exactly, to which Heath replied on Oct. 13. See p. 111.
[159] The following note occurs on the back of a MS. account of the proceedings in the Exchequer in Chambers’s case. “The 2 of July, 1629, a fieri facias cap. and extent from the Lord Treasurer and Chancellor of the Exchequer without the consents of the Lord Chief Baron and other Barons, who disavowed the proceedings as being out of the due course of the law.” Add. MSS. 11,056, fol. 39 b.
[160] Rushworth, i. 676.
[161] Gresley to Puckering, Nov. 5 (not 1), Court and Times, ii. 36.
[162] Forster, Sir J. Eliot, ii. 293.
[163] Information, State Trials, iii. 320.
[164] State Trials, iii. 293. Harg. MSS. 25, fol. 2. I have taken extracts indiscriminately from the two reports.
[165] Forster, Sir J. Eliot, ii. 315–322.
[166] State Trials, iii. 309.
[167] Dorchester to Fleming, March 3, S. P. Dom. clxii. 18.
[168] Eliot to Kirton, Feb. 20. Forster, Sir J. Eliot, ii. 326.
[169] Meade to Stuteville, March 13, Court and Times, ii. 66.
[170] Kirton to Eliot, March. Forster, Sir J. Eliot, ii. 327.