<272>When the King’s answer to the Remonstrance was read, Sir John Coke proposed that it should be debated in the House and May 6.The King’s answer to be considered.not in committee, as being more for the King’s honour. Against this proposal Eliot protested. There was greater freedom of speech in committee. If a member changed his views, he could say so, though he had already spoken. “For my part,” said Eliot, “I am often converted.”
It was no hypocritical affectation of humility which brought these words to Eliot’s lips. The records of this session are the highest Eliot’s moral worth.witnesses to the moral worth of the patriotic orator. No man was ever placed in more trying circumstances than Eliot during the first weeks of this session. He had been the life and soul of the last Parliament. It had thought with his thoughts and spoken with his words. Now other men were listened to more than himself. Policy which he thought unwise was frequently adopted. Yet all this he had borne without the slightest sign of self-will or petulance. He had spoken his opinion freely, and had frankly acknowledged that his opinion was changed whenever he saw that the argument was going against him.
After Wentworth’s failure it was not likely that the House would again ask for anything short of the extreme measure of its claims. Debate in committee.The discussion in committee was opened by an appeal from Alford to the lawyers present to inform him what benefit would accrue to the subject by the <273>confirmation of the statutes without explanation. Lyttelton promptly answered that the subject would be in a worse condition than before, as the abandonment of the resolutions would imply a doubt whether they were a correct interpretation of the statutes confirmed. Other members dwelt upon the vagueness of the King’s offers. The King, said Sir Nathaniel Rich, was like a debtor who said, ‘I owe you nothing, but pray trust me.’ They must know what the King offered before they could say whether they would trust him or not. Another member pointed to the difference of opinion on the meaning of the words ‘the law of the land’ in Magna Carta. “We all,” he said, “agree what it is. But have the Lords and the judges so agreed?” Pym pushed the argument still further home. “Our assurance,” he said, “in the King’s word were sufficient, if we knew what the King’s sense and meaning is. We have not his word only, but his oath also at his coronation.” If the law had been broken, it was clear that the King did not know what the law was. “We complain,” he added, “of unjust imprisonment upon loans. I hear not any say we shall be no more, or that matter of State shall be no more pretended when there is none. … We all rest on the King’s royal word. But let us agree in a rule to give us satisfaction.”
Sir John Coke remonstrated. Did Pym mean that the King’s word added no force to a law? Sir Harbottle Grimston threw back upon the Secretary the words which he had recently spoken. “The King’s ministers,” he replied, “tell us here they must commit.” Till the law on the point of committal was clearly understood, it was hopeless to expect an agreement. Even Sir John saw that something must be conceded. The loan, he said, was the original grievance. Let them petition his Majesty not to repeat it.
The Secretary little thought what echo his words would have. Sir Edward Coke rose at once.[494] Yes, he said, let us <274>rely on the King. “Under God, he is God’s lieutenant. Trust him we must.” Yet what was an answer in general words to particular grievances? A verbal declaration was not the word of a king. “Did ever Parliament rely on messages? They ever put up petitions of their grievances, and the king ever answered them? The King’s answer is very gracious. But what is the law of the realm? that is the question. I put no diffidence in his Majesty. The King must speak by a record and Coke proposes a Petition of Right.in particulars, and not in general. Let us have a conference with the Lords, and join in a Petition of Right to the King for our particular grievances. Not that I distrust the King, but because we cannot take his trust but in a Parliamentary way.”
The word had at last been spoken which the House could accept as its only safe guidance. The King would not allow them to General acceptance of the proposal.consider what was right and what was wrong; at least they could ask that the meaning of the existing laws should be placed beyond doubt, and that they should know whether the interpretation of Heath or the interpretation of Coke and Selden was to prevail. The acceptance of the proposal was general and immediate. Eliot, Seymour, Glanville, Littleton, Phelips, Pym, Hoby, Coryton, and Digges adhered to it at once. Even Wentworth accepted it as now inevitable, though he reserved for himself the right of reconsidering his position after the King’s answer had been received.
The leaders of the House had all declared that they were ready to trust the King, and they doubtless persuaded themselves that Was the King really trusted?it was really so. Sir Nathaniel Rich rose at the end of the debate to tear away the veil. A petition, he said, was better than a Bill, for by it they would have an answer before they sent up the subsidies. A petition, in fact, would receive an immediate answer. A Bill would be sent up at the end of the session, and what was <275>there to hinder the King from accepting the subsidies and rejecting the Bill?[495]
The sub-committee which had drawn up the previous Bill was A Petition of Right to be prepared.entrusted with the preparation of the petition. A protest against forced loans, arbitrary imprisonment, and compulsory billeting was to form its substance. To these heads was to be added another against the late commissions for the execution of martial law. After recent experience it was hopeless to guard the broad assertion of their illegality by any provision for the maintenance of proper discipline in the army, and all that could be done was to declare that the exercise of martial law was absolutely illegal.
There was no delay in the labours of the sub-committee. On the 8th the May 8.The petition brought in.Petition of Right was brought in by Selden, and the House of Lords was asked to appoint a day for a conference upon it. In order to make the medicine more palatable to Charles, the resolution for the five subsidies was at last reported to the House.[496]
There was, indeed, need to render the medicine palatable if Charles was to accept it willingly. Everything to which he had objected in the Bill The petition contrasted with the Bill.re-appeared in the petition in a harder and more obnoxious form. He was no longer asked merely to regulate the course of his future action. He had to allow that actions done by his orders had been in direct opposition to the law of England. His acceptance of the Bill would have been a friendly agreement to order his relations with the nation on new terms. His acceptance of the petition would be a humble acknowledgment of error.
During these days, when his proposals had been flatly rejected by the House, Charles lost all patience. A draft exists of a declaration which was to explain the causes of the dissolution which had been resolved on; but better counsels prevailed, and the breach was averted for a time.[497]
<276>The petition was at once sent up to the Upper House. On the 10th a Committee of the Lords reported that they left the May 10.The petition before the Lords. Report of the Lords’ Committee.question of imprisonment to the House. The rest of the petition they accepted with a few amendments, most of which were intended to render the condemnation of the past conduct of the Government less abrupt, whilst there were two which had been drawn up with the object of retaining for the King the power of exercising martial law over soldiers, though not over civilians.[498]
Coming from such a source the report was clearly more condemnatory of the Government than the petition itself. As we read over Composition of the Committee.the list of the committee — Coventry, Manchester, Arundel, Bedford, Bristol, Saye, Paget, Weston, with Bishops Harsnet and Williams[499] — we feel that Charles must indeed have stood alone in England before such names would be appended to words which even in their modified form contained the severest censure to which any King of England had submitted since the days of Richard II.
Before such a demonstration of opinion it was impossible for Charles to maintain his ground. In a letter to the Lords May 12.The King argues on his right of imprisonment.he condescended to argue the point of his right to imprison. “We find it insisted upon,” he wrote, that “in no case whatsoever, should it ever so nearly concern matters of State or Government, neither we, nor our Privy Council, have power to commit any man without the cause be showed, whereas it often happens that, should the cause be showed, the service itself would thereby be destroyed and defeated. And the cause alleged must be such as may be determined by our Judges of our Courts of Westminster in a legal and ordinary way of justice; <277>whereas the causes may be such as those Judges have not the capacity of judicature, nor rules of law to direct and guide their judgment in cases of so transcendent a nature; which happening so often, the very intermitting of that constant rule of government practised for so many ages within this kingdom, would soon dissolve the foundation and frame of our monarchy.” Yet Charles was ready to engage that he would never again imprison anyone for refusing to lend him money, and that when he did imprison he would always disclose the cause as soon as it could be done conveniently for the safety of the State.
The King’s letter was forwarded to the Commons by the Lords. The Commons would not hear of such a basis of settlement. May 14.His overture rejected by the Commons.When the petition was complete they would ask for the King’s assent. A letter was of no value. The Lords replied that they did not place more weight than the Commons upon the letter. All that they wished was to bring the petition into conformity with the letter, so as to give it a chance of securing the King’s assent.[500]
The Lords were about to try what they could do to give effect to their wishes; but though they had been apparently The Lords will try an accommodation.unanimous in supporting the proposed course, the unanimity was greater in appearance than in reality. Saye and his friends agreed to allow the attempt to be made, on the express understanding that if it failed they might fall back on the petition as it stood.
That there was a strong element in the Upper House which desired to take a middle course was manifest. Though men like May 15.Debate in the Lords.Williams and Bristol and Arundel had suffered too much from the unrestrained exercise of the King’s authority not to join heartily in the main demands of the petition, they were too old statesmen not to be aware that a discretionary power must be lodged somewhere, and they laboured hard to discover some formula which should restrict it to real cases of necessity. At first it seemed that the <278>Lord Keeper would meet them half-way. “No man,” said Coventry, “ought to be imprisoned but a clear and direct cause ought to be showed, unless the very declaration of the cause will destroy the business, and in such a case, for a time, a general cause may serve.” A committee was appointed to draw up a form of words in which Coventry’s view might be embodied.
It was no such easy matter. The Committee for a long time was unable to agree upon anything. At last they reported May 16.Williams’s clause.a clause proposed by Williams.[501] Thus it ran:— “That no freeman be — for not lending money or for any other cause contrary to Magna Carta and the other statutes insisted upon, and the true intention of the <279>same, to be declared by your Majesty’s judges in any such matter[502] as is before mentioned — imprisoned or detained.”
The clause was certainly not clear, and needed all Williams’s explanations; but its intention was manifestly that which he said it was. While Its intention.he believed, as Wentworth believed, that in very special cases the King had by his prerogative the right of suspending the action of the ordinary law, he shrank from affirming this in so many words. The result was ambiguity itself. The author of the clause was the May 17.Explanation of Williams.first to discover that his meaning had been misunderstood. He had to explain that in referring the decision of the legality of a commitment to the judges he had no thought of countenancing the idea that they might refuse bail on the old ground of want of cause expressed. He meant, he protested, nothing of the sort. If his proposition meant that, it was ‘the idlest that ever was offered.’
A medium of agreement which needs explanation from its author is self-condemned; but it was probably not its obscurity which rendered it unpalatable to the majority of the Upper House. “Power,” said Weston, “which is not known and confessed, cannot be obeyed.” The following clause, probably Arundel’s clause adopted.originally drawn up by Arundel and finally brought in by Weston,[503] left no doubt of the reservation of authority. It ran thus:— “We humbly present this petition to your Majesty, not only with a care of preserving our own liberties, but with due regard to leave entire that sovereign power wherewith your Majesty is trusted for the protection, safety, and happiness of your people.”
Was even this free from ambiguity? On the 19th, the Commons having asked leave to argue against the proposed May 19.Its meaning doubted.amendments in the body of the petition, Williams moved that those amendments should be withdrawn and the new additional clause alone discussed. Buckingham rose to give his approval to the proposal, on the understanding that the reservation of sovereignty applied to the whole petition. Such a demand undeniably went far <280>beyond the intention of all members of the House who were Buckingham’s interpretation.more than mere courtiers. If it was granted, the King would be at liberty not merely to imprison without showing cause whenever he thought that the safety of the State so required, but to collect forced loans, to issue commissions of unlimited martial law, and to billet soldiers by force, whenever, in his judgment, such a contingency might arise. “If you Saye dissents.extend this addition to every particular in the petition,” said Saye, “the petition is quite overthrown. Your expressions were to reserve the sovereign power only in emergent cases, and not in the particulars mentioned in the petition, for then a man may be, for any particular mentioned in the petition, committed hereafter.”[504]
Saye’s objection was certain to find an echo in the Lower House. With a comparatively unimportant exception, all the May 20.Debate in the Commons.amendments to the body of the petition were rejected by the Commons, and their rejection was acquiesced in by the Lords. The additional clause now formed the only point in dispute between the Houses.[505] It was soon evident that the Commons would have nothing to say to it. They professed themselves unable to discover what sovereign power might mean. According to Bodin, said Alford, it means that which ‘is free from any condition.’ “Let us give that to the King that the law gives him, and no more.” “I am not able,” said Pym, “to speak to this question. I know not what it is. All our petition is for the laws of England, and this power seems to be another distinct power from the law. I know how to add sovereign to his person, but not to his power. Also we cannot leave to him sovereign power, for we never were possessed of it.”[506] Then, showing how well he was <281>informed of what had passed in the Upper House, Pym went on to allude to Buckingham’s explanation. “We cannot,” he said, “admit of these words with safety. They are applicable to all the parts of our petition.” The clause, in fact, was of the nature of a saving, and would annul the whole. Coke followed in much the same way. The prerogative, he said, was part of the law, but sovereign power was not.
Without a dissentient voice, therefore, the clause was rejected by the House of Commons. Coke had clearly taken the right ground The clause rejected.when he said that the prerogative was part of the law. As Wentworth had said before, if an actual emergency occurred, no man would dispute what the King did. Yet to insert a special saving of such a right as being above the law was to make all law uncertain.[507]
When the answer of the Commons was carried up to the Lords, many a tongue was loosed to speak against Weston’s clause. “Objection to the clause in the Lords.The prerogative of the Crown,” said Williams, “is a title in law, and those learned in the law do know the extent of it as well as of any other articles.” “The saving,” declared Bristol, “is no way essential to the business.” Might not, he suggested, the petition be sent up as it was, accompanied by a verbal statement that the Houses had no intention of infringing upon the prerogative. Buckingham stands by it.To such a solution as this, however, Buckingham would not listen. “Let it be resolved here among us,” he said, “that there be a saving.” He was not allowed to have his way. The House adjourned, at the joint motion of Saye and Arundel.
The next day Buckingham expressed his willingness to make a great concession. He was ready to change the words ‘sovereign power’ into ‘prerogative.’ The Lords try to explain it away.The House seems to have been fairly puzzled. Paget suggested that the judges should be asked their opinion. Abbot said he had heard a learned peer say that they could not destroy the prerogative, even by an Act of Parliament. Bridgewater naïvely expressed his opinion that after so long a debate <282>they ought to ‘resolve of some addition or other,’ and ‘to think of fitting reasons.’ Williams said he would not vote till it was made plain to him that the addition ‘did not reflect nor any way operate upon the petition;’ and Weston, the author of the clause, together with Dorset, usually one of the most determined partisans of the Government, expressed their full concurrence in this view of the case. No wonder that the original Opposition pushed their advantage home. Saye and North urged that before going in search of reasons for the addition, they had better decide whether the addition was necessary at all. Buckingham begged the House to vote at once whether there was to be a saving of the King’s power or not. Rather, urged Essex, let us vote first whether we will agree to the petition or not. In this chaos of opinion a proposal of Coventry’s was finally adopted, that the addition should be again commended to the Lower House, but that he should be authorised to explain that it really meant as little as possible.[508]
Buckingham had clearly lost his hold upon the Lords. As far as it is possible to judge from the debates, the prevailing opinion was that The Lords no longer under Buckingham’s control.the law was as it was stated in the petition, although a loophole ought to be left for sudden and unforeseen emergencies. Yet the moment they came to put this upon paper the difficulty of not yielding more than they intended to yield was altogether insuperable.
Insuperable, at least, the difficulty seemed to the Commons. In the debate which followed the Lord Keeper’s communication, May 22.The addition rejected by the Commons.not a single voice was raised in favour of the clause. Lawyers and country gentlemen argued alike that the additional clause would destroy the whole petition. The King, it would be understood to say, cannot billet soldiers or force loans upon us by the law; but he can by his sovereign power. Sir Henry Marten stripped the whole question of its techicalities. According to Æsop, he said, the lion, the ass, and the fox went out hunting together. The booty was taken, and the ass having divided it into three equal <283>portions, told the lion that it was his prerogative to choose between them. The lion took it ill that only a portion was offered him, and saying, “It is my prerogative to choose,” tore the ass in pieces. The fox, taught by the ass’s calamity, contented himself with a little piece of skin. Such, implied Marten, would be the fate of the English people if they once acknowledged a power superior to the laws. To this view of the case Wentworth gave his hearty approval. “I think,” he said, “we all agree we may not admit of this addition. If we do, we shall leave the subject worse than we found him, and we shall have little thanks for our labours when we come home. I conceive this addition, as it is now penned, amounts to a saving, whereas before the law was without a saving. I am resolved not to yield to it; but let us not vote it; let a sub-committee collect the reasons already given.”[509]
Wentworth was unwilling to come into unnecessary collision with the Lords, and as the House was of the same opinion, he had Arguments to be presented to the Lords.no difficulty in carrying his point so far as its immediate action was concerned. The clause was not rejected, but a sub-committee was to prepare an argumentative answer to be laid before the Lords.
The next morning the sub-committee reported the heads of the answer which they proposed that Glanville and Marten should deliver. May 23.Wentworth proposes a further accommodation.Before they had been adopted by the Grand Committee, Wentworth rose. “We are now fallen,” he said, “from a new statute and a new law to a Petition of Right, and unless the Lords co-operate with us, the stamp is out of that which gives a value to the action. If they join with us it is a record to posterity. If we sever from them it is like the grass upon the house-top, that is of no long continuance. And therefore let us labour to get the Lords to join with us. To this there are two things considerable; first not to recede in this petition either in part or in whole from our resolutions; secondly, that the Lords join with us, else all is lost. We have protested we desire no new thing; <284>we leave all power to his Majesty to punish malefactors. Let us clear ourselves to his Majesty that we thus intend. It is far from me to presume to propound anything. I dare not trust my own judgment, only to prevent a present voting[510] with the Lords. Let us again address ourselves to the Lords that we are constant in our grounds that we desire no new thing, nor to invade upon his Majesty’s prerogative: but let us add, though we may not admit of this addition, yet if their Lordships can find out any way to keep untouched this petition, we will consider of it and join with them.”[511]
Wentworth was consistent with himself in attempting to provide for all emergencies. To Eliot the suggestion was a mere machination of evil, for he saw, what Wentworth did not see, that these emergencies must be left to future generations to provide for; and he saw too, in a dim way, that the House of Commons was the heir of the Tudor monarchy, and would be the depositary of those extraordinary powers which Charles had forfeited the right to exercise. Thus, without knowing it clearly, he became the advocate of change in the frame of the State, which should indeed maintain old principles and should operate within the lines of the old constitution; whilst Wentworth, whose mind was full of schemes for alteration and reform, was an advocate of the constitutional forms which had existed in the days of his youth. Early in the session he had announced that the Commons could do nothing without the King. He now announced that they could do nothing without the Lords.
To Eliot such a suggestion was intolerable. “As though,” he said, “the virtue and perfection of this House depended upon Eliot’s rejoinder.and were included in their Lordships! Sir, I cannot make so slight an estimation of the Commons as to make them mere cyphers to nobility! I am not so taken with the affectation of their Lordships’ honour, so much to flatter and exalt it. No! I am confident that, should the Lords desert us, we should yet continue flourishing and green.” At the proposal itself, he went on to say, he could not but be <285>amazed. It was to throw them back after so long a debate into new rocks and difficulties.[512] Eliot then insisted on the danger of making the slightest change in the petition, and charged Wentworth with deserting the cause which he had once espoused. Then addressing himself to the substance of the proposal, he exposed in masterly language its entire futility. “No saving in this kind,” he said, “with what subtlety soever worded, can be other than destructive to our work.”
These last words contain the true vindication of the persistency with which the Commons held to their determination. Not that Wentworth, looking at the question from a different point of view, was without excuse. Whether the Commons were right or wrong, their petition contained within it the germs of a revolution. As a matter of fact no man then living could remember the time when the discretionary power which Charles claimed had not been exercised by the Crown. Wentworth at once Wentworth’s reply.rose to vindicate his motives. Declaring that he had merely meant by his metaphors that without the assent of the Peers the petition would have no statutory force, he explained his own position. “My proposition,” he said, “is for no moderation, but preserve the petition in the whole or the parts of it. I will never recede from it. Put it not in extremity to have it voted against us. It was wondered I spake after so long a debate. I have discharged my conscience and delivered it. Do as you please. God, that knows my heart, knows that I have studied to preserve this Parliament, as I confess the resolutions of this House, in the opinion <286>of wise men, stretch very far on the King’s power, and if they be kept punctually, will give a blow to government. The King said that if government were touched, he was able to protect us; and by[513] this saving indeed is added nothing to him.”[514]
It was quite true; the bare law of the petition could never be the rule for all future time. Martial law would have to be How far was there weight in it?executed upon soldiers if discipline was to be maintained. Provision must somehow be made for lodging the men when they were brought together, and, if extraordinary evils demanded extraordinary remedies, men must be imprisoned without much regard for their legal rights. What Eliot saw and Wentworth did not see, was that these powers could no longer safely be entrusted to Charles. When the law was once made without exception, exceptional cases could be settled as they arose with consent of Parliament. To us the change seems simple enough. But the change was great in those days. By making the consent of Parliament necessary to the King, it deprived him of that right of speaking in all emergencies as the special representative of the nation, which he held from custom if not from constitutional law.
Wentworth’s argument made no impression on those who heard it. Seymour alone supported it; but he met with The Commons decide against Wentworth.no response, and Glanville and Marten were despatched to lay their long train of reasoning before the Lords.
It was impossible for the Lords to maintain the addition any longer. As far as we can judge, the great majority of the House, with Bristol and Williams at its head, was of the same opinion as Wentworth. Argument and the current of events had made Buckingham powerless. Whilst, however, this majority was strong enough to refuse to follow Buckingham, its weakness, like Wentworth’s weakness, lay in the impossibility of placing ideas upon paper without surrendering to the King more than it was willing to surrender. Weston’s clause had merely been <287>thrown out as a feeler, and the moment it was seriously assailed it was dropped without difficulty. Yet the Lords felt that The Lords make a fresh proposal,something must be done. Clare proposed that a Committee of both Houses should draw up another form upon which they could all agree. Abbot suggested that a conference should be held to see ‘if there be any that can find a more commodious way of accommodation.’ There was plainly nothing definite fixed, nothing which it was possible to ask the House to stand on. Laud’s old friend, Bishop Buckeridge, of Rochester, made a very different proposal. Let the petition, he said, be delivered to the judges, that they may give their opinion whether anything in it ‘do intrench upon the King’s prerogative.’ Their opinion could then be entered on the roll, ‘and then this petition can no way prejudice the King’s right.’ The idea here was much the same as Wentworth’s; the idea of an inalienable prerogative, not above the law but part of the law, and which it was therefore not necessary to express in words. Clare’s suggestion was the one adopted. The Commons were asked to join the Lords in a committee, ‘to see if, by manifestation and protestation or declaration or any other way, there could be any way found out to satisfy his Majesty.’[515]
The proposal was elastic enough. The reasons for rejecting it were admirably put by Phelips. “What,” he said, “which is rejected by the Commons.should be the subject of this accommodation? It must be somewhat like the last addition. If it be so put into other words and acted otherwise, yet virtually and actually it will be interpreted to amount to the very same thing. Also we have already expressed as much care over his Majesty’s prerogative as can be made. We have obliged ourselves by our oaths, and how apt have we been to defend it upon all occasions!” Wentworth and Seymour were in favour of appointing the joint committee; but they found no support, and the proposal of the Lords was rejected.
The action thus taken by the Commons was in little danger of meeting with a repulse in the House of Lords, as Wentworth <288>had feared. The leaders of that middle party, which was now able to command a majority, declared that they would push their May 25.The middle party in the Lords agree with the Commons.desire for an accommodation with the King no farther. Arundel explained that he had now no wish to press the Lower House ‘with an addition to this petition.’ “We do hold it fit,” he added, “to declare to the King that we intend not to prejudice his prerogative in this petition, in regard we are exempted from the oath of supremacy.” The Lords, in fact, would practically join in that oath to which Phelips had appealed, and the right of the prerogative would be left as vague as before. Bristol accepted the way of escape offered. The Commons, he said, had declared that they had no intention of prejudicing the prerogative. Let the Lords make the same declaration at once.
Would this view of the case be acceptable at Court? Dorset, impulsive as when he had gone forth to the bloody duel which has Resistance of Buckingham and his friends.fixed a stain on his name for ever, or when he declared in the Parliament of 1621 that the passing bell was tolling for religion, stood foremost in the breach. “My Lords,” he said, “if I did not believe this petition would give the King a greater wound here in his government than I hope ever an enemy shall, I would hold my peace.”[516] Buckingham himself declared firmly against the course proposed. “The business,” he said, “is now in your hands alone, which gives me comfort. It now remains whether you will depart from your addition. If we now depart from our addition, we do in a manner depart from ourselves. The addition must[517] be either in the preamble, or in the body, or the conclusion. If it be nowhere I cannot give my vote to it. The reason is[518] that it carries words in it not expressed in Magna Carta and the other six statutes. Let them go their way and we make a petition, and then we may make a protestation as we please.”
If anything were needed to justify the resolution of the <289>Commons, it was these words of Buckingham. He, at least, The Lords adopt the view of the Commons.wanted something more than the prerogative which Bristol and Arundel were ready to allow. But the days were gone by when Buckingham could hope to carry the House with him. Abbot advised the Peers to ‘join with the Commons in the petition, though we would have had also some demonstration of their saving of the King’s just prerogative.’[519] “When their liberties,” said Northampton, “have been trenched upon, their goods have been taken away not by a legal course, I will desire that it may be amended. When the subjects’ liberty is in question, I will creep upon my knees with a petition to his Majesty with all humility. When the King’s prerogative is in question, I will get upon my horse and draw my sword, and defend it with my life and estate.” After this a motion was made by another peer that a declaration might be prepared for clearing the King’s prerogative.[520]
The advice thus given was taken. The next day a form was unanimously adopted by which the Lords declared, altogether May 26.Declaration of the Lords.apart from the petition, that their intention was not to lessen or impeach anything which by the oath of supremacy they had ‘sworn to assert and defend.’
It was not much. The oath of supremacy simply bound those who took it to defend the authority of which the Crown was already possessed, without specifying what that authority was. The declaration, however, left it open to those who held that the Crown had a right to override the law in cases of emergency, to assert that they had not sacrificed their consciences to political convenience. The Commons on their part May 28.The petition passes both Houses.had no desire to push matters farther. On the 28th the petition was brought up to the Lords, and was by them adopted without more discussion.
Three or four weeks earlier, Charles would probably have refused even to consider the petition in the form in which it now reached him; The King’s difficulties.but the last week had brought news of disaster which would hardly allow him to turn his back so easily upon the proffered subsidies. In <290>Germany Stade was lost. In France Rochelle was still unsuccoured.
The disasters of the autumn of 1627 had converted the war in North Germany into a succession of sieges. Whilst January.Morgan at Stade.Schleswig and Jutland were overrun by the Imperialists, Christian clung with the grasp of despair to the fortresses by which the mouth of the Elbe was guarded. Krempe and Glückstadt on the eastern side were supplied with money and provisions by the Dutch. Stade, near the western bank, had the misfortune to be confided to Morgan’s English garrison. Every disposable penny in the Exchequer had been applied to the French war, and since August the little force — 4,000 men in all — was left to shift for itself.[521] Anstruther and Morgan raised a little money on their own credit, not enough to do more than to procure a fresh supply of shoes and stockings. Even though no actual siege was opened, the enemy lay closely around the town, and provisions were not to be obtained from the surrounding country. Yet the brave old Morgan showed no signs of flinching. “If it must be my extreme hard fortune,” wrote the General, “to be thus abandoned, I will not yet abandon myself, nor this place, as long as with cat and dog — our present diet — we shall be able to feed an arm to that strength that it may lift a sword.”[522]
Week after week slipped away, and help came not. Want and disease were doing their fell work, and Morgan had little hope of holding out. Before the end of March Anstruther received a little money from England. It was now too late. The town was closely blockaded and no supplies could be sent in. On April 27 April 27.Surrender of Stade.Stade was formally surrendered to Tilly.[523] The garrison was allowed to march out with all the honours of war, and a month later, whilst the Lords and Commons were fighting their last battle over the Petition of Right, the whole sad story was known in England.[524]
<291>Thus dropped the curtain, amidst gloom and disaster, upon the scene of English history on which Charles and Buckingham End of English intervention in Germany.had entered so hopefully four years before. The war for the deliverance of the Palatinate, to be waged whether the nation supported it or not, had come to this. The sixteen hundred brave men, worn with toil and hunger, who stepped forth from Stade with colours flying and with arms in their hands, the noble old General who had held his own so long, abandoned as he was by King and country, had no need to feel the shame of failure. The shame was for those who had directed the course of war so aimlessly, and who had so erroneously judged the conditions of the contest.
Even now Charles thought but little of the disaster in Germany compared with the other disaster in France. The deliverance of the Palatinate had come to be for him a matter of secondary importance, in which he had long since ceased to expect success. The deliverance of Rochelle was a matter of personal honour.
Before the end of April Denbigh’s fleet, sixty-six vessels in all, had at last left Plymouth Sound. The crews were pressed men, carried off against their wills from their daily occupations to a service of danger in which the reward was but scanty pay, or most probably no pay at all. Many of them were soldiers converted forcibly into sailors from very necessity. Such a fleet was hardly likely to overcome even moderate opposition. When, May 1.Denbigh’s fleet at Rochelle.in the afternoon of May 1, Denbigh’s force ranged up in front of the port of Rochelle, the danger was plainly seen to be of the most formidable description. The passage up the harbour, narrow enough of itself, was still further narrowed by moles jutting out from either side, and Defences of the French.the opening between them was guarded by palisades, in front of which were vessels, some of them sunken, some floating at the level of the water. Even to reach such a formidable obstruction it would be necessary to beat down the fire of twenty armed vessels, supported by crowds of musqueteers, who were in readiness either to fire upon the enemy from the shore or to float off in barges to the succour of their friends. It may be questioned whether Drake or Nelson, <292>followed by crews as high-spirited and energetic as themselves, could have made the attack successfully. It is certain that Denbigh’s force, composed as it was of men without heart in the matter, could not but fail.
Of the details of the failure it is hardly possible to decide in the midst of the conflicting evidence. The English officers, when they came home, threw all the blame upon the Rochellese who accompanied them, whilst the Rochellese bitterly retorted the accusation. It is, however, plain that the English officers had no confidence in their chance of success, and Denbigh was not the man to inspire those beneath him with a more daring spirit. A resolution was taken to wait till the next spring-tides made the attack easier for his fire-ships. On the morning of the 8th May 8.Failure of the undertaking.a fresh apprehension seized upon the commander. The wind was blowing from Rochelle, and if he could not set fire to the ships of the enemy, the French might possibly set fire to his. He therefore gave the order to weigh anchor, that the fleet might retire to a little distance. When the minds of men are in a state of despondency the slightest retrograde movement is fatal. The Rochellese weighed anchor as they were told, but they understood that the expedition had been abandoned, and made all sail for England. Thus deserted, the whole fleet followed the example.[525]
The first news of difficulty had only served to sharpen Charles’s resolution. On the 17th he issued orders to Denbigh to May 17.Determination of Charles not to give way.hold on at Rochelle as long as possible, and to ask for reinforcements if he found them needful.[526] On the 19th he knew that the fleet was on its way home.[527] Never before had he been so angry. “If the ships had been lost,” he cried, impatiently, “I had timber enough to build more.” He at once despatched Denbigh’s son, Lord Fielding, to Portsmouth with orders to press into the <293>King’s service every vessel he could meet with, and to direct his father to go back at all hazards to Rochelle, and there to await the further supplies which would be sent.[528] Secretary Coke himself was sent down to Portsmouth to hurry on the reinforcements. On the 27th May 27.Denbigh was off the Isle of Wight, professing his readiness to return as soon as his shattered fleet could be collected.[529] It was easier for him to talk of returning than actually to return. Three of his vessels May 28.laden with corn for Rochelle were snapped up by the Dunkirk privateers within sight of the English coast.[530] The ships which remained were full of sick men, and in urgent need of repair. The fire-ships were not ready. There were May 30.not enough provisions on board to enable the fleet to stay long at Rochelle, even if it returned at once. Although the ships were in want of water, Denbigh dared not send his men on shore, lest they should run away from so unpopular a service. Before this combination of difficulties even Charles was compelled to give way, and orders were despatched to Denbigh to refit his squadron, but to remain in England till the whole available maritime force of the country could be got ready to accompany him.[531]
Such were the tidings pouring in upon Charles during the days when he was considering the answer which he would give May 26.The King’s difficulties about the petition.to the Petition of Right. Unless he gave his consent to that, he would never touch a penny of the subsidies, and without the subsidies the relief of Rochelle was absolutely hopeless. Everything combined to make him anxious to assent to the petition, if he could do it without sacrificing the authority which he believed to be justly his. The one point which still appeared necessary to him to <294>guard was the right of committing men to prison in special cases without showing cause.
In the face of past events, the Commons had reasonably decided that this could not be. Charles naturally thought otherwise. We need not suppose that he nourished any violent or unfair intentions. He would doubtless represent to himself that he wanted no more than the power of intervening in special emergencies for the good of his people, and enough had passed in the two Houses to make it possible for him to imagine that he would still be able to have his way. The Lords had distinctly spoken of his prerogative as something untouched by the petition, and even the Commons had declared that they had no intention of encroaching upon it.[532] A hypocritical prince would perhaps have been content with this — would have assented to the petition and have tacitly reserved for himself the right of breaking it afterwards. But Charles’s hypocrisy was not often of this deliberate kind. He usually deceived, when he did deceive, rather by reticence and concealment than by open falsehood. As soon, therefore, as the petition was agreed to by the Peers, and before it had been formally presented to him, he summoned the judges into his presence.
The question he asked them was ‘whether in no case whatsoever the King may not commit a subject without showing a cause.’ The King’s questions to the judges.Their answer was delivered the next day. “We are of opinion,” they said, “that by the general rule of the law May 27.Their answer.the cause of commitment by his Majesty ought to be shown; yet some cases may require such secrecy that the King may commit a subject without showing the cause, for a convenient time.” In other words, the judges held that they would still have the power of remanding an accused person.
That such a question should have been asked can surprise no one who has attended carefully to the debates in the House of Lords. The idea that the petition in this respect could not be literally carried out was one which had occurred even to many of those who were prepared to recommend its adoption as it stood.
<295>The King’s second question was of more doubtful wisdom. He asked ‘whether in case a habeas corpus be brought, and The King’s second question.a warrant from the King without any general or special cause returned, the judges ought to deliver him before they understood the cause from the King?’ Such a question answered in the negative would imply that, as in the case of the last autumn, the judges ought to await the King’s announcement of the cause, however long it might suit him to withhold it.
The judges answered cautiously. “Upon a habeas corpus,” they said, “brought for one committed by the King, if the cause May 30.The judges’ second answer.be not specially or generally returned, so as the Court may take knowledge thereof, the party ought by the general rule of law to be delivered. But if the case be such that the same requireth secrecy and may not presently be disclosed, the Court in discretion may forbear to deliver the prisoner for a convenient time, to the end the Court may be advertised of the truth thereof.”
Charles was evidently dissatisfied with this reply. In plain English, it meant that the judges might grant a remand at their discretion, but that the length of the remand was not to depend upon the King’s pleasure. So far the decision of the judges was in consonance with the rules of common sense. As had been pointed out again and again, cases would arise in which criminals at large would escape from justice if they knew on what charge their confederates had been arrested. But was the decision in consonance with the Petition of Right? The third question.Charles anxiously put the question ‘whether, if the King grant the Commons’ petition, he did not thereby conclude himself from committing or restraining a subject for any time or cause whatsoever, without showing a cause.’ May 31.The third answer.The answer of the judges was that he did not. “Every law,” they explained, “after it is made, hath his exposition, and so hath this petition; and the answer must have an exposition as the case in the nature thereof shall require to stand with justice, which is to be left to the courts of justice to determine, which cannot be discerned until such case shall happen; and although the petition be <296>granted there is no fear of conclusion as is intimated in the question.”[533]
The day after the last reply was given in was Whit Sunday, a day spent as busily by the King as Good Friday had been spent by the House of Commons. June 1.The Council consulted.At the council table the whole question of the petition was discussed, and the forms of answer drawn up by Heath to suit every possible contingency were doubtless laid before the board. Of these forms[534] there was probably only one which, to any extent, Heath’s suggested answer.suited the exigencies of Charles’s position. “Since both the Lords and Commons,” it was proposed that the King should say, “have severally, with dutiful respect to us, declared their intentions not to lessen our just power or prerogative as their sovereign, we do as freely declare our clear intention no way to impeach the just liberty of our subjects; and therefore, this right undoubtedly being so happily settled between us and our people, which we trust shall ever continue, we do freely grant that this petition shall in all points be duly observed.”
By these words the petition would become the law of the land, especially if the old words of Norman French, “Soit droit fait comme est desiré,” had been added. The claim to special powers would still have been maintained, but by the use of the word ‘prerogative’ Heath not only borrowed the expression of the House of Commons itself, but placed the King’s claim under the special guardianship of the judges, who were constantly accustomed to decide on the extent of the prerogative.
It may be that Charles shrank from subjecting his authority to the decision of the judges. It may be that he had little taste for a clear and definite restriction upon his powers. The day before, too, had been spent in Buckingham’s company,[535] <297>and Buckingham had no wish to see the King give way. The form finally adopted, with the full consent of the Privy Council,[536] united Answer agreed on.all the objections it is possible to conceive. “The King willeth,” so it was determined that the Lord Keeper should speak, “that right be done according to the laws and customs of the realm; and that the statutes be put in due execution, that his subjects may have no cause to complain of any wrongs or oppressions contrary to their just rights and liberties, to the preservation whereof he holds himself in conscience as well obliged as of his prerogative.”[537]
Such an answer meant nothing at all. The petition was not even mentioned. It was Charles’s old offer of confirming the statutes Its worthlessness.whilst refusing the interpretation placed upon them by the Commons. Its words breathed an entirely different spirit from the questions to the judges. The King no longer asks for a limited power to meet special emergencies, which Bristol and Wentworth, if not Eliot and Coke, would have been willing to grant him, but he throws back not merely the question of imprisonment, but every question which the petition professed to answer, into the uncertain mazes of his own arbitrary will. If nothing better than this was to be had, the Commons had toiled in vain.
The next morning the Peers and Commons were in the King’s presence in the House of Lords. “Gentlemen,” he said, “June 2.The answer given.I am come here to perform my duty. I think no man can think it long, since I have not taken so many days in answering the petition as ye spent weeks in framing it; and I am come hither to show you that, as well in formal things as essential, I desire to give you as much content as in me lies.” Then, after a few words from the Lord Keeper, the answer agreed upon the day before was read.
When this answer was read the next morning in the Commons, Eliot, representing the general dissatisfaction, moved <298>that its consideration should be postponed till Friday, June 6.[538] He had, however, June 3.Its consideration postponed.something more to say than that. The breach with the King against which he had struggled so long seemed now inevitable. But was it really the King who was to blame? Eliot must have known Buckingham’s part in the matter.at least as well as we can know how Buckingham had been the soul of the opposition to the petition in the house of Lords, and how he had struggled to the last to make it meaningless; and he must have suspected, if he did not know, that the last unsatisfactory answer had been dictated by the favourite.[539] If this were so, Eliot may well have thought that the time was come when the legal claims on which the Commons had been hitherto standing must be reinforced with other arguments, reaching far more widely than any which that Parliament had yet heard. He would again stand forward as the Eliot of 1626. Subsidies must be refused — if they were to be refused at all — not merely because the King’s part of the bargain, tacitly made, had not been fulfilled, but because, as the last Parliament had declared, they would be utterly wasted if they were to pass through Buckingham’s hands. What danger he might draw on his own head, Eliot recked nothing. Like the great Scottish reformer, he was one who ‘never feared the face of any man.’ As he spoke he felt within him the voice of an offended nation struggling for utterance.[540]
<299>He began by reminding his hearers that they met there as the great Council of the King, and that it was their duty to inform him of Eliot on the state of the nation.all that it was well for him to know. That duty it was now for them to fulfil. At home and abroad everything was in confusion. At home true religion was discountenanced. Abroad their friends had been overpowered, On foreign policy.their enemies had prospered. Rash and ill-considered enterprises had ended in disaster. In Elizabeth’s days it had not been so. She had built her prosperity upon a close alliance with France and the Netherlands. Now France was divided within herself, and driven into war with England. To this French war the Palatinate had been sacrificed. Such a policy might well be regarded rather ‘a conception of Spain than begotten here with us.’
At these words Sir Humphrey May rose to interrupt the speaker. Knowing as he did how closely this French war was entwined May’s interruption.round the King’s heart, he was perhaps anxious to check words which would only widen the breach which he so much deprecated. But the House was in no mood to listen to a Privy Councillor. Eliot was encouraged with cries of “Go on!” from every side. “If he goes on,” said May, “I hope that I may myself go out.” “Begone! begone!” was the reply from every bench; but the spell of the great orator was upon him, and he could not tear himself away.
When Eliot resumed he was prepared to try a higher flight than even he had hitherto ventured on. He had no longer to speak merely of disaster and mismanagement, which might be plausibly at least accounted for by the niggardliness of the Commons. Striking at the very heart of the foreign policy of the Government, Eliot on the French war.he asked why the moment when Denmark had been overpowered at Lutter had been chosen for the commencement of a fresh quarrel with France. Was it credible that this had been advised by the Privy Council? With full knowledge doubtless how completely the French war had been the act of Buckingham, with less knowledge, it may be, how completely it had also been the act of the <300>King, he turned upon the councillors present, perhaps specially upon May. “Can those now,” he said, “that express their troubles Asks who had advised it.at the hearing of these things, and have so often told us in this place of their knowledge in the conjunctures and disjunctures of affairs, say they advised in this? Was this an act of Council, Mr. Speaker? I have more charity than to think it; and unless they make a confession of themselves, I cannot believe it.”
The main error in policy, if it was but an error, having been thus exposed, Eliot turned to the mismanagement of the war. Misconduct in military operations.The expedition to Cadiz, the expedition to Rhé, the latest failure at Rochelle, he painted in the gloomiest colours. Buckingham’s name was not mentioned, but it must have been branded in letters of flame upon the mind of every man who sat listening there. At home, too, the Court, the Church, the Bar, the Bench, the Navy, were handed over to men ignorant and corrupt; the Exchequer was empty, the crown lands sold, the King’s jewels and plate pawned. “What poverty,” he cried, “can be greater? What necessity so great? What perfect English heart is not almost dissolved into sorrow for the truth? For the oppression of the subject, which, as I remember, is the next particular I proposed, it needs no demonstration. The whole kingdom is a proof. And for the exhausting of our treasures, that oppression speaks it. What waste of our provisions, what consumption of our ships, what destruction of our men have been! Witness the journey to Algiers! Witness that with Mansfeld! Witness that to Cadiz! Witness the next![541] Witness that to Rhé! Witness the last!— And I pray God we shall never have more such witnesses.— Witness likewise the Palatinate! Witness Denmark! Witness the Turks! Witness the Dunkirkers! Witness all! What losses we have sustained! How we are impaired in munition, in ships, in men! It has no contradiction. We were never so much weakened, nor had less hope now to be restored.”
Such was the terrible catalogue of grievances flung forth, <301>one after another, in words which pierced deeply into the hearts of those who heard. To the end Buckingham’s name had not been mentioned. Whatever Eliot’s secret thoughts might have been he said nothing of reviving the impeachment of the unpopular minister. A Remonstrance to be prepared.He asked that a Remonstrance — a statement of grievances, as we should now say — might be drawn up, in order that the King might be informed what the Commons thought of his policy.
There were many among Eliot’s hearers who shrank from so bold a step. Some thought it would be better to ask for a Feeling of the House.fuller answer to the petition. Sir Henry Marten suggested that Eliot’s speech proceeded from disaffection to his Majesty, whilst others looked upon it as an angry retort upon the King’s answer. Eliot rose to explain. So far from his words having been called forth by the King’s answer, he and others had long ago formed a resolution to call attention to these grievances when a fit opportunity occurred; and the truth of this statement, which doubtless referred to the line taken by Eliot at the private meeting before the opening of the session,[542] was attested by Wentworth and Phelips. In spite of all that had been said, Eliot’s proposal was adopted, and the next day was fixed for the discussion of the Remonstrance.[543]
Even as an answer to the King’s reply, it might fairly be argued that Eliot’s proposal was well-timed. The King had claimed to be Bearing of the proposal.possessed of special powers above the law, for the honour and safety of the realm. Such powers he had wielded for more than three years, and the Remonstrance would tell him what had come of it.
Charles fancied himself strong enough to drive back the rising tide. Believing, as he did, that all the disasters which had happened had June 4.The King tries to stop the Remonstrance.arisen from the reluctance of the Commons to vote him money, he now sent to tell them that the session would come to an end in a week, that he had given an answer to their petition ‘full of justice and grace,’ and would give no other. They were therefore seriously to proceed to business, without <302>entertaining new matters; in other words, to pass the Subsidy Bill, and let the Remonstrance alone.[544]
The House was now in Eliot’s hands. The silence to which Wentworth was self-condemned since the failure of The House refuses to stop.his conciliatory efforts, was the measure of the downward progress which Charles had been making since the days of the leadership of the member for Yorkshire. After listening to a report from the Committee of Trade,[545] strongly condemnatory of the cruel treatment to which shipowners and mariners had been subjected when pressed into the King’s service, the House, taking not the slightest notice of the Royal message, went into committee on the Remonstrance.[546]
The next morning a sharper message was delivered from the King, positively June 5.Sharper message from the King.forbidding the House to proceed with any new business which might spend greater time than remained before the end of the session, or which might ‘lay any scandal or aspersion upon the State, Government, or ministers thereof.’
It was a terrible awakening for the leaders of the Commons; the more painful because, Distress of the House.in their simple loyalty, they would not open their eyes to its real meaning. If they could have fully realised the fact that their King was against them; that even without Buckingham’s intervention, Charles would have closed his ears to their prayers; that Charles, if he was not the originator, was the most obstinate defender of all that had been done, they might have nerved themselves with pain and sorrow to the conflict before them. It was because they could not see this that a feeling of helplessness came over them. The King, they earnestly attempted to believe, was good and wise; but he was beyond their reach. Between him and them stood the black cloud of Buckingham’s presence, impenetrable to their wishes, and <303>distorting every ray of light which was suffered to reach the place in which Charles remained in seclusion. Before this grim shadow, almost preternatural in its all-pervading strength, bearded men became as children. Sobs and tears burst forth from every side of the House.
With quivering voice and broken words Phelips strove to give utterance to Phelips declares the misfortune of the House.the thoughts within him. There was little hope, he said; for he could not but remember with what moderation the House had proceeded. “Former times,” he said, mournfully, “have given wounds enough to the people’s liberty. We came hither full of wounds, and we have cured what we could. Yet what is the return of all but misery and desolation? What did we aim at but to have served his Majesty, and to have done that which would have made him great and glorious? If this be a fault, then we are all criminous.” It was their duty, he proceeded, to give advice to the King. If they were to be stopped in doing this, Phelips declares the misfortune of the House.let them cease to be a council. “Let us presently,” he concluded by saying, “inform his Majesty that our firm intents were to show him in what danger the commonwealth and state of Christendom stands; and therefore, since our counsels are no better acceptable, let us beg his Majesty’s leave every man to depart home, and pray to God to divert those judgments and dangers which too fearfully and imminently hang over our heads.”
Perhaps it would have been better, if anything could have been better with such a king as Charles, that Phelips’s proposal should have been adopted on the spot. But whatever reticence the leaders may have deliberately imposed upon themselves, there was too much angry feeling against Buckingham to be long suppressed. Eliot pointed out that there had been misrepresentation to the King, as was especially shown in the clause of the message forbidding them to lay aspersions on the Government. They had no such intention. “It is said also,” he added, “as if we cast some aspersions on his Majesty’s ministers. I am confident no minister, how dear soever, can —”
The sentence was never ended. Finch, the Speaker, <304>started from his chair. He, too, felt the weight of the issues with which Eliot stopped by the Speaker.the moment was fraught. “There is command laid upon me,” he said, with tears in his eyes, “to interrupt any that should go about to lay an aspersion on the ministers of State.”
What Eliot meant to say can never be known. He had too much self-command to make it likely that he was going beyond the position he had assumed in the former debate. Probably he was but about to express an opinion that no minister could stand higher with his Majesty than the needs of his subjects. But the ill-timed intervention of Finch had done more than Eliot’s tongue could have done. It was one more proof how impossible it was for the Commons to reach the King.
Eliot sat down at once. If he was not to speak freely, he would not speak at all. What Eliot expressed by his silence, Digges declares their remaining useless.Digges expressed in words: “Unless we may speak of these things in Parliament, let us arise and be gone, or sit still and do nothing.” Then there was a long pause. At last Rich wishes to consult the Lords.Rich rose to protest against the policy of silence. It was most safe for themselves, he said, but not for their constituents. Let them go to the Lords and ask them to join in the Remonstrance.
In the despondent mood in which the members were, there were not wanting a few who thought Eliot had been to blame. It was that terrible speech of his on the 3rd,[547] they said, which had done the mischief. The House would not hear of such an explanation. From the first day of the session, it was resolutely declared, no member had been guilty of undutiful speech. Others again essayed to speak. Old Coke, with the tears running down his furrowed face, stood up, faltered, and sat down again. At last it was resolved to go into committee to consider what was to be done.
Finch, thus released from his duties, asked The Speaker leaves the House.permission to leave the House. The permission was not refused. With streaming eyes he hurried to the King to tell what he had heard and seen. To him too, and to all real <305>friends of the prerogative, the breach between the Crown and so thoroughly loyal a House must have been inexpressibly sad.
The impression left by the Speaker’s departure was that a dissolution was imminent. Men waxed bolder with the sense of Debate in the committee.coming danger. “The King,” said Kirton, “is as good a prince as ever reigned. It is the enemies to the commonwealth that have so prevailed with him, therefore let us aim now to discover them; and I doubt not but God will send us hearts, hands, and swords to cut the throats of the enemies of the King and State.” Wentworth, rejecting Rich’s proposal, moved to go straight to the King, with the Remonstrance. Were they not the King’s counsellors?
Coke was the next to rise, his voice no longer choked by his emotions. He was about to say that which Eliot had refrained from saying. He quoted precedent after precedent in which the Commons had done the very thing that the King had warned them against doing. Great men, Privy Councillors, the King’s prerogative itself, had once not been held to be beyond the scope of Parliamentary inquiry. “What shall we do?” he cried; “let us palliate no longer. If we do, God will not prosper us. I think Coke names the Duke.the Duke of Bucks is the cause of all our miseries, and till the King be informed thereof, we shall never go out with honour, or sit with honour here. That man is the grievance of grievances. Let us set down the causes of all our disasters, and they will all reflect upon him.” Let them not go to the Lords. Let them go straight to the King. It was not the King, but the Duke, who had penned the words ‘We require you not to meddle with State government, or the ministers thereof.’ Did not the King once sanction the principle which this message condemned? Did he not, as Prince of Wales, take part as a Peer of Parliament in the proceedings against Lord Chancellor Bacon and Lord Treasurer Middlesex?
Amidst expressions of approbation from every side, Coke sat down. At last the word which was on all lips had been spoken. Then, as a contemporary letter-writer expressed it, ‘as when one good hound recovers the scent, the rest come in <306>with a full cry, so they pursued it, and every one came on home, and laid the blame where they thought the fault was.’ Selden but put into shape what Coke had suggested. “All this time,” he said, “Resolution to name Buckingham.we have cast a mantle on what was done last Parliament; but now, being driven again to look on that man, let us proceed with that which was then well begun, and let the charge be renewed that was last Parliament against him, to which he made an answer, but the particulars were sufficient that we might demand judgment on that answer only.”[548]
As Charles had made Wentworth’s leadership impossible, so, it seemed, he would now make Eliot’s leadership impossible. The mere representation of the evils of the State seemed tame after what had taken place that day. The remaining heads of the Remonstrance were hurried over, and just as a final clause, condemnatory of Buckingham, was being put to the vote, the Speaker reappeared with a message from the King, The King stops the debate.ordering them to adjourn till the following morning. In doubt and wonder the members departed to their homes.
It was but eleven o’clock when the debate that morning was forcibly interrupted. It may be that if the words spoken in the Commons had reached the King alone, the Houses would have met the next day only to be dissolved. But the Commons were not alone. In the other House a message from the King demanding an adjournment had been interpreted as ominous of a dissolution. Bristol at once interposed Bristol proposes a representation to the King.the weight of his authority. It was indiscretion, he said, to speak of such a thing as a dissolution from conjecture. If it was true that the Privy Council had advised it, the Lords were greater than the Privy Council. They were the great council of the kingdom, and it was for them to lay before the King the true state of the kingdom. There was danger from Spain, danger from France, danger from the Dunkirk privateers. “The whole Christian world,” he said, <307>“is enemy to us. We have not in all the Christian world but one port to put a boat into, Rochelle. We have been like the broken staff of Egypt to all that have relied upon us. The distress of our friends lies before us, the power and malice of our enemies. Now, if we return home, when God had put it into the King’s heart to call a Parliament, what disadvantage will it be unto us when our adversaries shall observe that the King and his people have three times met, and departed with no good! Whosoever shall say that a monarch can be fed by projects and imaginations, knows not of what he is speaking.”[549] Bristol concluded by moving for a Select Committee to ‘represent unto the King the true state of the kingdom, to be humble suitors unto him to let things pass as they have done in the times of his ancestors. To be likewise suitors unto the King, that[550] if there have been any carriage of any private persons displeasing to him, he will not make a sudden end of this Parliament.’[551]
Although, from motives of respect to Charles, Bristol’s motion was not formally adopted, The Lord Keeper ordered to acquaint the King with the feeling of the House.the Lord Keeper was directed to acquaint the King with the feeling of the House.[552]
Even Charles, self-willed as he was, could not venture to stand up against both Houses. Charles withdraws from his ground.Thanking the Lords for the respect which they had shown him by refusing to appoint the committee which Bristol had proposed, he assured them that he was as fully aware as they were of the dangers of the kingdom — a message which drew from Essex the demand that Bristol’s motion for a committee should be put again, and from Bristol himself the expression of a hope that they would at least petition the King not to put a sudden end to the Parliament.[553]
By the Lower House, too, a message had been received <308>qualifying the one which had given such offence the day before. The King, according to this explanation, had no wish to debar the Commons from their right of inquiry, but wished merely to prohibit them from raking up old offences by looking into counsel which had been tendered to him in past times. The explanation was gravely accepted. “I am now as full of joy,” The Commons go on with the Remonstrance.said Eliot, “as yesterday of another passion.” But the Commons went steadily on with their Remonstrance. On the morning of the 7th they had June 7.gone so far as to inquire into the levy of Dulbier’s German horse, intended, as one member said, ‘to cut our throats or else to keep us at their obedience.’[554]
The House of Lords again intervened. Bishop Harsnet, the author of the Lords’ propositions, from which the controversy had Intervention of the Lords.by this time drifted so far, now stood up in defence of the Petition of Right. Hateful to the Calvinists on account of his bold attacks made in early life upon the extreme consequences of their cherished doctrine of predestination, he was no less distrusted by Laud for his refusal to entertain the extreme consequences of the opinions which they held in common. The answer to the petition, he said, was full of grace, but it did not come home or give the satisfaction which was expected. Let the Commons be asked to join in a petition to the King for another answer. Williams supported the proposal. It was rumoured, he said, that the answer was not the King’s, but had been voted by the Council.[555] “I do not see,” he added, “in all the learning I have, that this is at all applicatory to the petition or any part of it.” “I conceive,” said Bristol, “the answer to be rather a waiving of the petition than any way satisfactory to it. I believe that those The King asked for a clear answer to the petition.distractions and fears which since have sprung amongst us took their original from that answer.” The House was unanimous in its desire for a clearer reply. Even Buckingham was unable to oppose himself to the current. The Commons, as soon as they were <309>invited, gladly gave their consent, and a deputation, with Buckingham at its head, was sent to ask Charles for a clear and satisfactory answer to the petition.[556] They returned with the news that the King would bring his own reply to their request at four o’clock.
At four o’clock, therefore, on that eventful day, Charles took his seat upon the throne. The Commons came trooping Charles assents to the Petition of Right.to the bar, ignorant whether they were to hear the sentence of dissolution or not. They had not long to wait. “The answer I have already given you,” said Charles, “was made with so good deliberation, and approved by the judgment of so many wise men, that I could not have imagined but that it should have given you full satisfaction; but, to avoid all ambiguous interpretations, and to show you that there is no doubleness in my meaning, I am willing to please you in words as well as in substance. Read your petition; and you shall have such an answer as I am sure will please you.” Then after it had been read, as the shouts of applause rang out loud and clear from the Commons, the clerk pronounced the usual words of approval, ‘Soit droit fait comme est desiré.’
Charles had yet a few more words in reserve. “This,” he said, “I am sure is full; yet no more than I granted you on my first answer; for the meaning of that was to confirm all your liberties; knowing, according to your own protestations, that you neither mean nor can hurt my prerogative. And I assure you that my maxim is, that the people’s liberties strengthen the King’s prerogative, and that the King’s prerogative is to defend the people’s liberties. You see how ready I have shown myself to satisfy your demands, so that I have done my part; wherefore if the Parliament have not a happy conclusion, the sin is yours; I am free from it.”[557]
Once more the acclamations of the Commons rose. The shout was taken up without as General joy.the news spread from street to street. The steeples of the City churches rang out their merriest peals. As the dusk deepened into darkness bonfires were lighted up amidst rejoicing crowds. Since the day when Charles had returned from Spain no such signs of public happiness had been seen.[558]
[494] Mr. Forster (Sir J. Eliot, ii. 47) is evidently mistaken in speaking of Coke as rising with the draft in his hand. The Bill had been before the Committee for some days, and the petition was not yet in existence. It must be remembered that without the use of Harl. MS. 4771, or Nicholas’s Notes, Mr. Forster had a very limited amount of straw to make his bricks <274>with. A great part of the speech he attributes to Coke does not seem to stand on any evidence, and I fancy he must inadvertently have carried his marks of quotation too far.
[495] Harl. MSS. 4771, fol. 137–140 b. Nicholas’s Notes.
[496] Commons’ Journals, i. 894. Harl. MSS. 4771, fol. 144.
[497] The draft is in Heath’s hand (S. P. Dom. cxxxviii. 45, i.), and was calendared by Mr. Bruce, and quoted by Mr. Forster as applying to the <276>dissolution in 1629. I find it hard to believe that either Mr. Bruce or Mr. Forster ever seriously examined the paper. There is not a word referring to the second session, whilst everything would be in place in May 1628. The paper is undated, but if it belongs to this session must have been drawn up in the week following May 2; I suspect after the petition was known to the King.
[498] Parl. Hist. ii. 351.
[499] Lords’ Journals, iii. 788.
[500] Harl. MSS. 4771, fol. 155. Lords’ Journals, iii. 796.
[501] There are two clauses in the Lords’ Journals (iii. 799, 80) with no names to them. Compare Elsing’s Notes. The second, the one finally adopted, is twice claimed by Weston. From the same notes we learn that there had been two forms before, the one proceeding from Williams and the other from Arundel, the latter of which was probably in some way or other amended by Weston. Williams’s speeches, as there reported, leave no doubt that his was the one in which the King’s sovereignty is not mentioned. The usual attribution to Williams of the clause about sovereignty falls to the ground, and that theory, in fact, is directly contradicted by Williams’s notes on the King’s letter as given by Hacket, ii. 77. Of the supposed intrigues of Williams, and his alleged efforts at this time to bring Wentworth over to the Court, I know nothing. Hacket’s account of a later reconciliation with Buckingham will be given in its proper place. Williams, no doubt, acted with Bristol and Arundel, but to act with Bristol and Arundel was to be opposed to Buckingham and the Court, though not so decidedly as Saye. The true story of Williams’s proposed clause is told in a paper in Harl. MSS. 6800, fol. 274, under the heading “The offer of accommodation made by the Bishop of Lincoln.” He would have left the preface to the petition as it stood, adding a complaint that divers of his Majesty’s subjects had been imprisoned without cause shown, and would then have inserted the clause in the text for ‘that no freeman in any such manner as is before mentioned be imprisoned or detained.’
He also proposed a form for the King’s reply, as follows: “Neither we nor our Privy Council shall or will at any time hereafter commit or command to prison, or otherwise restrain the persons of any for not lending of money unto us, nor for any other cause contrary to the true intention of Magna Carta and those other six statutes insisted upon to be expounded by our judges in that behalf.”
[502] “Matter” in the Harl. copy; “manner” in the Lords’ Journals.
[503] As I have said, he twice claims the authorship in Elsing’s Notes.
[504] Elsing’s Notes.
[505] Rushworth, whom Mr. Forster had no choice but to follow, gives a debate as taking place on the 17th, which is really the debate of the 20th, together with a jumble of two speeches of Wentworth’s foisted in from the 22nd and 23rd, and a speech of Selden’s from the 22nd.
[506] Mr. Forster corrects ‘he never was’ for ‘we never were’ (Sir J. Eliot, ii. 55, Note 8); but “we never were” has the authority of MSS. otherwise varying from one another; and Pym may have meant, ‘We can only leave what we have control over. This is beyond our control.’
[507] Harl. MSS. 4771, fol. 166.
[508] Elsing’s Notes.
[509] This is from Harl. MSS. 4771, fol. 176 b, except the words ‘as it is now penned,’ which come from Nicholas’s Notes. The debate is headed in Nicholas, May 23.
[510] Voting a rejection of the clause in opposition to them.
[511] Harl. MSS. 4771, fol. 176 b.
[512] There is evidence here that Eliot’s speeches in the Port Eliot MSS., though in the main correct, were subject to some manipulation. He is there made to refer to that which had been done ‘by the Grand Committee this morning in direction of those arguments to the Lords which they framed.’ When Eliot wrote this down, he must have fancied that the speech had been delivered in the House itself, and Mr. Forster thereupon (ii. 68) supposed that Wentworth’s speech to which Eliot replied was delivered in support of a fresh proposal of the Lords which was really not discussed till the 24th. But unless the whole debate is a dream of the Harleian reporter, the debate was in committee, and the direction of the committee was not given till after Eliot’s speech was finished. The end of Eliot’s speech, too, seems to have been altered in the same way.
[513] “to” in MS.
[514] Harl. MSS. 4771, fol. 176 b. Parl. Hist. ii. 364.
[515] Elsing’s Notes; Harl. MSS. 4771, fol. 193 b.
[516] The report ends at “shall.” The five following words are added from conjecture.
[517] “to be,” MS.
[518] “Reason that,” MS.
[519] Minute Book, House of Lords MSS.
[520] Elsing’s Notes.
[521] At the beginning of the year the garrison numbered 3,900, viz. 2,700 English, 700 Scots, 500 Germans. Anstruther to Conway, Jan. 5, S. P. Denmark.
[522] Morgan to Conway, Jan. 25, S. P. Denmark.
[523] Anstruther to Conway; Morgan to Conway, May 3, ibid.
[524] Woodward to Windebank, May 21, S. P. Dom. civ. 47.
[525] Examinations of Ramboilleau and Le Brun, May 16. Denbigh, Palmer, and Weddell to Buckingham, June 2, S. P. Dom. civ. 2 i., 3 i., cvi. 11.
[526] The King to Denbigh, May 17, S. P. Dom. civ. 8.
[527] The date we learn from Contarini. The news, as we know from the examinations cited above, reached Plymouth and Dartmouth on the 16th.
[528] Fielding to Buckingham, May 20; Woodward to Windebank, May 21, S. P. Dom. civ. 34, 47. Contarini to the Doge, May 20⁄30. Ven. Transcripts, R. O.
[529] Denbigh to Buckingham, May 27, S. P. Dom. cv. 29.
[530] The Council to Buckingham, May 30, Rushworth, i. 587.
[531] The letters of Denbigh and Coke containing these details will be found in S. P. Dom. cv. and cvi.
[532] Parl. Hist. ii. 347.
[533] Ellis, ser. 2, iii. 250. The original copy of the questions and answers is in Hargrave MSS. 27, fol. 97.
[534] The first one in S. P. Dom. cv. 95. Others will be found in this and the following papers.
[535] Contarini’s Despatch, June 7⁄17.
[536] The part taken by the Council is gathered from the subsequent debates in the House of Lords.
[537] Lords’ Journals, iii. 835.
[538] Nicholas’s Notes. This, with the King’s answer, and a short note of Eliot’s second speech, is all that Nicholas gives us between May 26 and June 6. The invaluable Harleian report, too, deserts us at May 27; so that we are by no means so well informed about these later proceedings as about the earlier ones.
[539] Whether it was so or not, I cannot say; but the contrast between the spirit of the questions to the judges, and that of the answer adopted by the Council where Buckingham was supreme, is very suspicious.
[540] See Mr. Forster’s remarks on this speech (Sir J. Eliot, ii. 78). On one point I am almost inclined to go beyond him. He thinks that Eliot’s ‘fearless spirit could discern the safety that lay beyond the danger,’ as if he had expected to frighten the King into giving way. I fancy that, judging by past experience, he could have little hope of this, and if he spoke from a sheer sense of duty, without expectation of success, his conduct is all the more admirable.
[541] This contemptuous reference is to Willoughby’s fleet, which only reached the Bay of Biscay.
[543] Forster, Sir J. Eliot, ii. 79.
[544] Parl. Hist. ii. 388.
[545] Commons’ Journals, i. 909; and more fully in Harl. MSS. 6800, fol. 353.
[546] Except from a few words in Nethersole’s letter (S. P. Dom. cvi. 55) I know nothing of this debate.
[548] Parl. Hist. ii. 401. Rushworth, i. 605–610. Meade to Stuteville, June 15, Court and Times, i. 359. Meade is plainly mistaken in assigning Coke’s speech to the 4th.
[549] The words after “imaginations” are added by conjecture.
[550] The word ‘that’ is not in the MS.
[551] The report ends at “carriage.” The rest of the sentence is filled in from Bristol’s speech of the next day.
[552] Elsing’s Notes.
[553] Ibid.
[554] Parl. Hist. ii. 406. Nicholas’s Notes.
[555] “An assembly which I reverence,” is the periphrasis.
[556] Elsing’s Notes. Lords’ Journals, iii. 842.
[557] Lords’ Journals, iii. 843.
[558] Nethersole to the titular Queen of Bohemia, June 7; Conway to Coke, June 9, S. P. Dom. cvi. 55, 71.