Volume V Part 8 (2/2)

struggle Eliot was released. But his release was only a prelude to the close of the Parliament. ”Not one moment,” the king replied to the prayer of his Council for delay; and a final remonstrance in which the Commons begged him to dismiss Buckingham from his service for ever was met on the sixteenth of June by their instant dissolution. The remonstrance was burnt by royal order; Eliot was deprived of his Vice-Admiralty; and on the old pretext alleged by James for evading the law, the pretext that what it forbade was the demand of forced loans and not of voluntary gifts to the Crown, the subsidies which the Parliament had refused to grant till their grievances were redressed were levied in the arbitrary form of benevolences.

[Sidenote: The Forced Loan.]

But the tide of public resistance was slowly rising. Refusals to give anything ”save by way of Parliament” came in from county after county.

When the subsidy-men of Middles.e.x and Westminster were urged to comply, they answered with a tumultuous shout of ”A Parliament! a Parliament!

else no subsidies!” Kent stood out to a man. In Bucks the very justices neglected to ask for the ”free gift.” The freeholders of Cornwall only answered that, ”if they had but two kine, they would sell one of them for supply to his Majesty--in a Parliamentary way.” The failure of the voluntary benevolence forced Charles to pa.s.s from evasion into open defiance of the law. He met it in 1627 by the levy of a forced loan. It was in vain that Chief Justice Crewe refused to acknowledge that such loans were legal. The law was again trampled under foot, as in the case of his predecessor, c.o.ke; and Crewe was dismissed from his post.

Commissioners were named to a.s.sess the amount which every landowner was bound to lend, and to examine on oath all who refused. Every means of persuasion, as of force, was resorted to. The pulpits of the Laudian clergy resounded with the cry of ”pa.s.sive obedience.” Dr. Mainwaring preached before Charles himself, that the king needed no Parliamentary warrant for taxation, and that to resist his will was to incur eternal d.a.m.nation. Soldiers were quartered on recalcitrant boroughs. Poor men who refused to lend were pressed into the army or navy. Stubborn tradesmen were flung into prison. Buckingham himself undertook the task of overawing the n.o.bles and the gentry. Among the bishops, the Primate and Bishop Williams of Lincoln alone resisted the king's will. The first was suspended on a frivolous pretext, and the second was disgraced. But in the country at large resistance was universal. The northern counties in a ma.s.s set the Crown at defiance. The Lincolns.h.i.+re farmers drove the Commissioners from the town. Shrops.h.i.+re, Devon, and Warwicks.h.i.+re ”refused utterly.” Eight peers, with Lord Ess.e.x and Lord Warwick at their head, declined to comply with the exaction as illegal. Two hundred country gentlemen, whose obstinacy had not been subdued by their transfer from prison to prison, were summoned before the Council; and John Hampden, as yet only a young Buckinghams.h.i.+re squire, appeared at the board to begin that career of patriotism which has made his name dear to Englishmen. ”I could be content to lend,” he said, ”but fear to draw on myself that curse in Magna Charta, which should be read twice a year against those who infringe it.” So close an imprisonment in the Gate House rewarded his protest ”that he never afterwards did look like the same man he was before.”

[Sidenote: Charles and France.]

The fierce energy with which Buckingham pressed the forced loan was no mere impulse of angry tyranny. Never was money so needed by the Crown.

The bl.u.s.tering and blundering of the favourite had at last succeeded in plunging him into war with his own allies. England had been told that the friends.h.i.+p of France, a friends.h.i.+p secured by the king's marriage with a French princess, was the basis on which Charles was building up his great European alliance against Spain. She now suddenly found herself at war with Spain and France together. The steps by which this result had been brought about throw an amusing light on the capacity of the young king and his minister. The occupation of the Palatinate had forced France to provide for its own safety. Spain already fronted her along the Pyrenees and the border of the Netherlands; if the Palatinate was added to the Spanish possession of Franche-Comte, it would close France in on the east as well as the north and the south. War therefore was being forced on the French monarchy when Charles and Buckingham sought its alliance against Spain; and nothing hindered an outbreak of hostilities but a revolt of the Protestant town of Roch.e.l.le. Lewis the Thirteenth pleaded the impossibility of engaging in such a struggle so long as the Huguenots could rise in his rear; and he called on England to help him by lending s.h.i.+ps to blockade Roch.e.l.le into submission in time for action in the spring of 1625. The Prince and Buckingham brought James to a.s.sent; but Charles had no sooner mounted the throne than he shrank from sending s.h.i.+ps against a Protestant city, and secretly instigated the crews to mutiny against their captains on an order to sail. The vessels, it was trusted, would then arrive too late to take part in the siege. Unluckily for this intrigue they arrived to find the city still in arms, and it was the appearance of English s.h.i.+ps among their enemies which forced the men of Roch.e.l.le to submit. While Englishmen were angered by the use of English vessels against Protestantism, France resented the king's attempt to evade his pledge.

Its Court resented yet more the hesitation which Charles showed in face of his Parliament in fulfilling the promise he had given in the marriage-treaty of tolerating Catholic wors.h.i.+p; and its resentment was embittered by an expulsion from the realm of the French attendants on the new Queen, a step to which Charles was at last driven by their insolence and intrigues. On the other hand, French statesmen were offended by the seizure of French s.h.i.+ps charged with carrying materials of war to the Spaniards, and by an attempt of the English sovereign to atone for his past attack on Roch.e.l.le by const.i.tuting himself mediator of a peace on behalf of the Huguenots.

[Sidenote: The siege of Roch.e.l.le.]

But though grounds of quarrel multiplied every day, the French minister, Richelieu, had no mind for strife. He was now master of the Catholic faction which had fed the dispute between the Crown and the Huguenots with the aim of bringing about a reconciliation with Spain; he saw that in the European conflict which lay before him the friends.h.i.+p or the neutrality of England was all but essential; and though he gathered a fleet in the Channel and took a high tone of remonstrance, he strove by concession after concession to avert war. But on war Buckingham was resolved. Of policy in any true sense of the word the favourite knew nothing; for the real interest of England or the balance of Europe he cared little; what he saw before him was the chance of a blow at a power he had come to hate, and the chance of a war which would make him popular at home. The mediation of Charles in favour of Roch.e.l.le had convinced Richelieu that the complete reduction of that city was a necessary prelude to any effective intervention in Germany. If Lewis was to be master abroad, he must first be master at home. But it was hard for lookers-on to read the Cardinal's mind or to guess with what a purpose he resolved to exact submission from the Huguenots. In England, where the danger of Roch.e.l.le seemed a fresh part of the Catholic attack upon Protestantism throughout the world, the enthusiasm for the Huguenots was intense; and Buckingham resolved to take advantage of this enthusiasm to secure such a triumph for the royal arms as should silence all opposition at home. It was for this purpose that the forced loan was pushed on; and in July 1627 a fleet of a hundred vessels sailed under Buckingham's command for the relief of Roch.e.l.le. But imposing as was his force, Buckingham showed himself as incapable a soldier as he had proved a statesman. The troops were landed on the Isle of Rhe, in front of the harbour; but after a useless siege of the Castle of St.

Martin, the English soldiers were forced in October to fall back along a narrow causeway to their s.h.i.+ps, and two thousand fell in the retreat without the loss of a single man to their enemies.

[Sidenote: The Parliament of 1628.]

The first result of the failure at Rhe was the summoning of a new Parliament. Overwhelmed as he was with debt and shame, Charles was forced to call the Houses together again in the spring of 1628. The elections promised ill for the Court. Its candidates were everywhere rejected. The patriot leaders were triumphantly returned. To have suffered in the recent resistance to arbitrary taxation was the sure road to a seat. It was this question which absorbed all others in men's minds. Even Buckingham's removal was of less moment than the redress of personal wrongs; and some of the chief leaders of the Commons had not hesitated to bring Charles to consent to summon Parliament by promising to abstain from attacks on Buckingham. Against such a resolve Eliot protested in vain. But on the question of personal liberty the tone of the Commons when they met in March was as vehement as that of Eliot. ”We must vindicate our ancient liberties,” said Sir Thomas Wentworth in words soon to be remembered against himself: ”we must reinforce the laws made by our ancestors. We must set such a stamp upon them, as no licentious spirit shall dare hereafter to invade them.” Heedless of sharp and menacing messages from the king, of demands that they should take his ”royal word” for their liberties, the House bent itself to one great work, the drawing up a Pet.i.tion of Right. The statutes that protected the subject against arbitrary taxation, against loans and benevolences, against punishment, outlawry, or deprivation of goods, otherwise than by lawful judgement of his peers, against arbitrary imprisonment without stated charge, against billeting of soldiery on the people or enactment of martial law in time of peace, were formally recited. The breaches of them under the last two sovereigns, and above all since the dissolution of the last Parliament, were recited as formally. At the close of this significant list, the Commons prayed ”that no man hereafter be compelled to make or yield any gift, loan, benevolence, tax, or such like charge, without common consent by Act of Parliament. And that none be called to make answer, or to take such oaths, or to be confined or otherwise molested or disputed concerning the same, or for refusal thereof. And that no freeman may in such manner as is before mentioned be imprisoned or detained. And that your Majesty would be pleased to remove the said soldiers and mariners, and that your people may not be so burthened in time to come. And that the commissions for proceeding by martial law may be revoked and annulled, and that hereafter no commissions of like nature may issue forth to any person or persons whatsoever to be executed as aforesaid, lest by colour of them any of your Majesty's subjects be destroyed and put to death, contrary to the laws and franchises of the land. All which they humbly pray of your most excellent Majesty, as their rights and liberties, according to the laws and statutes of the realm. And that your Majesty would also vouchsafe to declare that the awards, doings, and proceedings to the prejudice of your people in any of the premisses shall not be drawn hereafter into consequence or example. And that your Majesty would be pleased graciously for the further comfort and safety of your people to declare your royal will and pleasure, that in the things aforesaid all your officers and ministers shall serve you according to the laws and statutes of this realm, as they tender the honour of your Majesty and the prosperity of the kingdom.”

[Sidenote: The Pet.i.tion of Right.]

It was in vain that the Lords strove to conciliate Charles by a reservation of his ”sovereign power.” ”Our pet.i.tion,” Pym quietly replied, ”is for the laws of England, and this power seems to be another power distinct from the power of the law.” The Lords yielded, but Charles gave an evasive reply; and the failure of the more moderate counsels for which his own had been set aside called Eliot again to the front. In a speech of unprecedented boldness he moved the presentation to the king of a Remonstrance on the state of the realm. But at the moment when he again touched on Buckingham's removal as the preliminary of any real improvement the Speaker of the House interposed. ”There was a command laid on him,” he said, ”to interrupt any that should go about to lay an aspersion on the king's ministers.” The breach of their privilege of free speech produced a scene in the Commons such as St.

Stephen's had never witnessed before. Eliot sate abruptly down amidst the solemn silence of the House. ”Then appeared such a spectacle of pa.s.sions,” says a letter of the time, ”as the like had seldom been seen in such an a.s.sembly: some weeping, some expostulating, some prophesying of the fatal ruin of our kingdom, some playing the divines in confessing their sins and country's sins which drew these judgements upon us, some finding, as it were, fault with those that wept. There were above an hundred weeping eyes, many who offered to speak being interrupted and silenced by their own pa.s.sions.” Pym himself rose only to sit down choked with tears. At last Sir Edward c.o.ke found words to blame himself for the timid counsels which had checked Eliot at the beginning of the Session, and to protest ”that the author and source of all those miseries was the Duke of Buckingham.” Shouts of a.s.sent greeted the resolution to insert the Duke's name in the Remonstrance. But at this moment the king's obstinacy gave way. A fresh expedition, which had been sent to Roch.e.l.le, returned unsuccessful; and if the siege was to be raised far greater and costlier efforts must be made. And that the siege should be raised Buckingham was still resolved. All his energies were now enlisted in this project; and to get supplies for his fleet he bent the king to consent in June to the Pet.i.tion of Right. As Charles understood it, indeed, the consent meant little. The one point for which he really cared was the power of keeping men in prison without bringing them to trial or a.s.signing causes for their imprisonment. On this he had consulted his judges; and they had answered that his consent to the Pet.i.tion left his rights untouched; like other laws, they said, the Pet.i.tion would have to be interpreted when it came before them, and the prerogative remained unaffected. As to the rest, while waiving all claim to levy taxes not granted by Parliament, Charles still reserved his right to levy impositions paid customarily to the Crown, and amongst these he counted tonnage and poundage. Of these reserves however the Commons knew nothing. The king's consent won a grant of subsidy, and such a ringing of bells and lighting of bonfires from the people ”as were never seen but upon his Majesty's return from Spain.”

[Sidenote: Death of Buckingham.]

But, like all the king's concessions, it came too late to effect the end at which he aimed. The Commons persisted in presenting their Remonstrance. Charles received it coldly and ungraciously; while Buckingham, who had stood defiantly at his master's side as he was denounced, fell on his knees to speak. ”No, George!” said the king as he raised him; and his demeanour gave emphatic proof that the Duke's favour remained undiminished. ”We will perish together, George,” he added at a later time, ”if thou dost.” He had in fact got the subsidies which he needed; and it was easy to arrest all proceedings against Buckingham by proroguing Parliament at the close of June. The Duke himself cared little for a danger which he counted on drowning in the blaze of a speedy triumph. He had again gathered a strong fleet and a fine body of men, and his ardent fancy already saw the harbour of Roch.e.l.le forced and the city relieved. No shadow of his doom had fallen over the brilliant favourite when he set out in August to take command of the expedition.

But a lieutenant in the army, John Felton, soured by neglect and wrongs, had found in the Remonstrance some imaginary sanction for the revenge he plotted; and, mixing with the throng which crowded the hall at Portsmouth, he stabbed Buckingham to the heart. Charles flung himself on his bed in a pa.s.sion of tears when the news reached him; but outside the Court it was welcomed with a burst of joy. Young Oxford bachelors, grave London Aldermen, vied with each other in drinking healths to Felton.

”G.o.d bless thee, little David,” cried an old woman, as the murderer pa.s.sed manacled by; ”the Lord comfort thee,” shouted the crowd, as the Tower gates closed on him. The very forces in the Duke's armament at Portsmouth shouted to the king, as he witnessed their departure, a prayer that he would ”spare John Felton, their sometime fellow-soldier.”

But whatever national hopes the fall of Buckingham had aroused were quickly dispelled. Weston, a creature of the Duke, became Lord Treasurer, and his system remained unchanged. ”Though our Achan is cut off,” said Eliot, ”the accursed thing remains.”

[Sidenote: The Laudian Clergy.]

It seemed as if no act of Charles could widen the breach which his reckless lawlessness had made between himself and his subjects. But there was one thing dearer to England than free speech in Parliament, than security for property, or even personal liberty; and that one thing was, in the phrase of the day, ”the Gospel.” The gloom which at the outset of this reign we saw settling down on every Puritan heart had deepened with each succeeding year. The great struggle abroad had gone more and more against Protestantism, and at this moment the end of the cause seemed to have come. In Germany Lutheran and Calvinist alike lay at last beneath the heel of the Catholic House of Austria. The fall of Roch.e.l.le, which followed quick on the death of Buckingham, seemed to leave the Huguenots of France at the feet of a Roman Cardinal. In such a time as this, while England was thrilling with excitement at the thought that her own hour of deadly peril might come again, as it had come in the year of the Armada, the Puritans saw with horror the quick growth of Arminianism at home. Laud was now Bishop of London as well as the practical administrator of Church affairs, and to the excited Protestantism of the country Laud and the Churchmen whom he headed seemed a danger more really formidable than the Popery which was making such mighty strides abroad. To the Puritans they were traitors, traitors to G.o.d and their country at once. Their aim was to draw the Church of England farther away from the Protestant Churches, and nearer to the Church which Protestants regarded as Babylon. They aped Roman ceremonies. Cautiously and tentatively they were introducing Roman doctrine. But they had none of the sacerdotal independence which Rome had at any rate preserved. They were abject in their dependence on the Crown. Their grat.i.tude for the royal protection which enabled them to defy the religious instincts of the realm showed itself in their erection of the most dangerous pretensions of the monarchy into religious dogmas. Their model, Bishop Andrewes, had declared James to have been inspired by G.o.d. They preached pa.s.sive obedience to the worst tyranny. They declared the person and goods of the subject to be at the king's absolute disposal. They were turning religion into a systematic attack on English liberty, nor was their attack to be lightly set aside.

Up to this time they had been little more than a knot of courtly parsons, for the ma.s.s of the clergy, like their flocks, were steady Puritans; but the well-known energy of Laud and the open patronage of the Court promised a speedy increase of their numbers and their power.

It was significant that upon the prorogation of 1628 Montague had been made a bishop, and Mainwaring, who had called Parliaments ciphers in the state, had been rewarded with a fat living. Instances such as these would hardly be lost on the ma.s.s of the clergy, and sober men looked forward to a day when every pulpit would be ringing with exhortations to pa.s.sive obedience, with denunciations of Calvinism and apologies for Rome.

[Sidenote: The Avowal.]

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