Volume Iii Part 41 (2/2)
The shade of Buckingham was no longer cast between Charles the First and the commons. And yet we find that ”their dread and dear sovereign” was not allowed any repose on the throne.
A new demon of national discord, Religion, in a metaphysical garb, reared its distracted head. This evil spirit had been raised by the conduct of the court divines, whose political sermons, with their attempts to return to the more solemn ceremonies of the Romish church, alarmed some tender consciences; it served as a masked battery for the patriotic party to change their ground at will, without slackening their fire. When the king urged for the duties of his customs, he found that he was addressing a committee sitting for religion. Sir John Eliot threw out a singular expression. Alluding to some of the bishops, whom he called ”masters of ceremonies,” he confessed that some ceremonies were commendable, such as ”that we should stand up at the repet.i.tion of the creed, to testify the resolution of our hearts to defend the religion we profess, and in some churches they did not only stand upright, but _with their swords drawn_.” His speech was a spark that fell into a well-laid train; scarcely can we conceive the enthusiastic temper of the House of Commons at that moment, when, after some debate, they entered into _a vow_ to preserve ”the articles of religion established by parliament in the _thirteenth year of our late Queen Elizabeth_!” and this _vow_ was immediately followed up by a pet.i.tion to the king for _a fast_ for the increasing miseries of the reformed churches abroad. Parliaments are liable to have their pa.s.sions! Some of these enthusiasts were struck by a panic, not perhaps warranted by the danger, of ”Jesuits and Armenians.” The king answered them in good-humour; observing, however, on the state of the reformed abroad; ”that fighting would do them more good than fasting.” He granted them their fast, but they would now grant no return; for now they presented ”a Declaration” to the king, that tonnage and poundage must give precedency to religion! The king's answer still betrays no ill temper. He confessed that he did not think that ”religion was in so much danger as they affirmed.” He reminds them of tonnage and poundage; ”I do not so much desire it out of greediness of the thing, as out of a desire to put an end to those questions that arise between me and some of my subjects.”
Never had the king been more moderate in his claims, or more tender in his style; and never had the commons been more fierce, and never, in truth, so utterly inexorable! Often kings are tyrannical, and sometimes are parliaments! A body corporate, with the infection of pa.s.sion, may perform acts of injustice equally with the individual who abuses the power with which he is invested. It was insisted that Charles should give up the receivers of the customs, who were denounced as capital enemies to the king and kingdom; while those who submitted to the duties were declared guilty as accessories. When Sir John Eliot was pouring forth invectives against some courtiers--however they may have merited the blast of his eloquence--he was sometimes interrupted and sometimes cheered, for the stinging personalities. The timid Speaker, refusing to put the question, suffered a severe reprimand from Selden: ”If you will not put it, we must sit still, and thus we shall never be able to do anything!” The house adjourned in great heat; the dark prognostic of their next meeting, which Sir Symonds D'Ewes has remarked in his Diary as ”the most gloomy, sad, and dismal day for England that happened for five hundred years!”
On this fatal day,[321] the Speaker still refusing to put the question, and announcing the king's command for an adjournment, Sir John Eliot stood up! The Speaker attempted to leave the chair, but two members, who had placed themselves on each side, forcibly kept him down--Eliot, who had prepared ”a short declaration,” flung down a paper on the floor, crying out that it might be read! His party vociferated for the reading--others that it should not. A sudden tumult broke out; Coriton, a fervent patriot, struck another member, and many laid their hands on their swords.[322] ”Shall we,” said one, ”be sent home as we were last sessions, turned off like scattered sheep?” The weeping, trembling Speaker, still persisting in what he held to be his duty, was dragged to and fro by opposite parties; but neither he nor the clerk would read the paper, though the Speaker was bitterly reproached by his kinsman, Sir Peter Hayman, ”as the disgrace of his country, and a blot to a n.o.ble family.” Eliot, finding the house so strongly divided, undauntedly s.n.a.t.c.hing up the paper, said, ”I shall then express that by my tongue which this paper should have done.” Denzil Holles a.s.sumed the character of Speaker, putting the question: it was returned by the acclamations of the party. The doors were locked and the keys laid on the table. The king sent for the serjeant and mace, but the messenger could obtain no admittance--the usher of the black rod met no more regard. The king then ordered out his guard--in the meanwhile the protest was completed. The door was flung open, the rush of the members was so impetuous that the crowd carried away among them the serjeant and the usher in the confusion and riot. Many of the members were struck by horror amidst this conflict, it was a sad image of the future! Several of the patriots were committed to the Tower. The king on dissolving this parliament, which was the last till the memorable ”Long Parliament,” gives us, at least, his idea of it:--”It is far from me to judge all the House alike guilty, for there are there as dutiful subjects as any in the world; it being but some few vipers among them that did cast this mist of undutifulness over most of their eyes.”[323]
Thus have I traced, step by step, the secret history of Charles the First and his early Parliaments. I have entered into their feelings, while I have supplied new facts, to make everything as present and as true as my faithful diligence could repeat the tale. It was necessary that I should sometimes judge of the first race of our patriots as some of their contemporaries did; but it was impossible to avoid correcting these notions by the more enlarged views of their posterity. This is the privilege of an historian and the philosophy of his art. There is no apology for the king, nor any declamation for the subject. Were we only to decide by the final results of this great conflict, of which what we have here narrated is but the faint beginning, we should confess that Sir John Eliot and his party were the first fathers of our political existence; and we should not withhold from them the inexpressible grat.i.tude of a nation's freedom! But human infirmity mortifies us in the n.o.blest pursuits of man; and we must be taught this penitential and chastising wisdom. The story of our patriots is involved; Charles appears to have been lowering those high notions of his prerogative, which were not peculiar to him, and was throwing himself on the bosom of his people. The severe and unrelenting conduct of Sir John Eliot, his prompt eloquence and bold invective, well fitted him for the leader of a party. He was the lodestone, drawing together the looser particles of iron. Never sparing, in the monarch, the errors of the man, never relinquis.h.i.+ng his royal prey, which he had fastened on, Eliot, with Dr.
Turner and some others, contributed to make Charles disgusted with all parliaments. Without any dangerous concessions, there was more than one moment when they might have reconciled the sovereign to themselves, and not have driven him to the fatal resource of attempting to reign without a parliament![324]
FOOTNOTES:
[286] From ma.n.u.script letters of the times.
[287] Sloane MSS. 4177. Letter 317.
[288] The king had said in his speech to parliament, ”I must let you know I will not allow any of my servants to be questioned among you, much less such as are of eminent place, and near unto me;” hence the security of Buckingham, who showed the most perfect contempt for the speakers who thus violently attacked him.
[289] Our printed historical doc.u.ments, Kennett, Frankland, &c., are confused in their details, and facts seem misplaced for want of dates. They all equally copy Rushworth, the only source of our history of this period. Even Hume is involved in the obscurity. The king's speech was on the _eleventh_ of May. As Rushworth has not furnished dates, it would seem that the two orators had been sent to the Tower _before the king's speech_ to the lords.
[290] The king attended the House of Lords to explain his intentions verbally, taking the minister with him, though under impeachment.
”Touching the matters against him,” said the king, ”I myself can be a witness to clear him in every one of them.”
[291] They decided on stopping all business till satisfaction was given them, which ended in the release of Digges and Eliot in a few days.
[292] Frankland, an inveterate royalist, in copying Rushworth, inserts ”their _pretended_ liberties;” exactly the style of catholic writers when they mention protestantism by ”la religion _pretendue reformee_.” All party writers use the same style!
[293] The strength of the popular hatred may be seen in the articles on Buckingham and Felton in vol. ii. Satires in ma.n.u.script abounded, and by their broad-spoken pungency rendered the duke a perfect _bete noir_ to the people.
[294] Ma.n.u.script letter.
[295] Rushworth, i. 400. Hume, vi. 221, who enters widely into the views and feelings of Charles.
[296] The Radicals of that day differed from ours in the means, though not in the end. They at least referred to their Bibles, and rather more than was required; but superst.i.tion is as mad as atheism! Many of the puritans confused their brains with the study of the Revelations; believing Prince Henry to be prefigured in the Apocalypse, some prophesied that he should overthrow ”the beast.”
Ball, our tailor, was this very prophet; and was so honest as to believe in his own prophecy. Osborn tells, that Ball put out money on adventure; _i.e._, to receive it back double or treble, when King James should be elected pope! So that though he had no money for a loan, he had to spare for a prophecy.
This Ball has been confounded with a more ancient radical, Ball, a priest, and a princ.i.p.al mover in Wat Tyler's insurrection. Our Ball must have been very notorious, for Jonson has noticed his ”admired discourses.” Mr. Gifford, without any knowledge of my account of this tailor-prophet, by his active sagacity has rightly indicated him.--See Jonson's Works, vol. v. p. 241.
[297] It is curious to observe that the Westminster elections, in the fourth year of Charles's reign, were exactly of the same turbulent character as those which we witness in our days. The duke had counted by his interest to bring in Sir Robert Pye. The contest was severe, but accompanied by some of those ludicrous electioneering scenes which still amuse the mob. Whenever Sir Robert Pye's party cried--”A Pye! a Pye! a Pye!” the adverse party would cry--”A pudding! a pudding! a pudding!” and others--”A lie! a lie! a lie!” This Westminster election of two hundred years ago ended as we have seen some others; they rejected all who had urged the payment of the loans; and, pa.s.sing by such men as Sir Robert Cotton, and their last representative, they fixed on a brewer and a grocer for the two members for Westminster.
[298] Extract from a ma.n.u.script letter:--”On Friday last I hear, but as a secret, that it was debated at the council-table whether our Ess.e.x men, who refused to take press-money, should not be punished by martial-law, and hanged up on the next tree to their dwellings, for an example of terror to others. My lord keeper, who had been long silent, when, in conclusion, it came to his course to speak, told the lords, that as far as he understood the law, _none were liable to martial law but martial men_. If these had taken press-money, and afterwards run from their colours, they might then be punished in that manner; but yet they were no soldiers, and refused to be. Secondly, he thought a subsidy, new by law, could not be pressed against his will for a foreign service; it being supposed, in law, the service of his purse excused that of his person, unless his own country were in danger; and he appealed to my lord treasurer, and my lord president, whether it was not so, who both a.s.sented it was so, though some of them faintly, as unwilling to have been urged to such an answer. So it is thought that proposition is dashed; and it will be tried what may be done in the Star-chamber against these refractories.”
[299] A member of the house, in James the First's time, called this race of divines ”Spaniels to the court and wolves to the people.”
Dr. Mainwaring, Dr. Sibthorpe, and Dean Bargrave were seeking for ancient precedents to maintain absolute monarchy, and to inculcate pa.s.sive obedience. Bargrave had this pa.s.sage in his sermon: ”It was the speech of a man renowned for wisdom in our age, that if he were _commanded_ to put forth to sea in a s.h.i.+p that had neither mast nor tackling, he would do it:” and being asked what wisdom that were, replied, ”The wisdom must be in him that hath power to command, not in him that conscience binds to obey.” Sibthorpe, after he published his sermon, immediately had his house burnt down. Dr. Mainwaring, says a ma.n.u.script letter-writer, ”sent the other day to a friend of mine, to help him to all the ancient precedents he could find, to strengthen his opinion (for absolute monarchy), who answered him he could help him in nothing but only to hang him, and that if he lived till a parliament, or, &c., he should be sure of a halter.”
Mainwaring afterwards submitted to parliament; but after the dissolution got a free pardon. The panic of popery was a great evil.
The divines, under Laud, appeared to approach to Catholicism; but it was probably only a project of reconciliation between the two churches, which Elizabeth, James, and Charles equally wished. Mr.
Cosins, a letter-writer, is censured for ”superst.i.tion” in this bitter style: ”Mr. Cosins has impudently made three editions of his prayer-book, and one which he gives away in private, different from the published ones. An audacious fellow, whom my Lord of Durham greatly admireth. I doubt if he be a sound protestant: he was so blind at even-song on Candlemas-day, that he could not see to read prayers in the minster with less than three hundred and forty candles, whereof sixty he caused to be placed about the high altar; besides he caused the picture of our Saviour, supported by two angels, to be set in the choir. The committee is very hot against him, and no matter if they trounce him.” This was Cosins, who survived the revolution, and returning with Charles the Second, was raised to the see of Durham: the charitable inst.i.tutions he has left are most munificent.
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