Volume V Part 11 (1/2)
[Sidenote: Its rejection.]
The Liturgy and Canons had been Laud's own handiwork; in their composition the General a.s.sembly had neither been consulted nor recognized; and taken together they formed the code of a political and ecclesiastical system which aimed at reducing Scotland to an utter subjection to the Crown. To enforce them on the land was to effect a revolution of the most serious kind. The books however were backed by a royal injunction, and Laud flattered himself that the revolution had been wrought. But the patience of Scotland found an end at last. In the summer of 1637, while England was waiting for the opening of the great cause of s.h.i.+p-money, peremptory orders from the king forced the clergy of Edinburgh to introduce the new service into their churches. On the 23rd of July the Prayer-Book was used at the church of St. Giles. But the book was no sooner opened than a murmur ran through the congregation, and the murmur grew into a formidable riot. The church was cleared, and the service read; but the rising discontent frightened the judges into a decision that the royal writ enjoined the purchase, not the use, of the Prayer-Book, and its use was at once discontinued. The angry orders which came from England for its restoration were met by a shower of protests from every part of Scotland. The ministers of Fife pleaded boldly the want of any confirmation of the book by a General a.s.sembly. ”This Church,” they exclaimed, ”is a free and independent Church, just as this kingdom is a free and independent kingdom.” The Duke of Lennox alone took sixty-eight pet.i.tions with him to the Court; while ministers, n.o.bles, and gentry poured into Edinburgh to organize a national resistance.
[Sidenote: The temper of England.]
The effect of these events in Scotland was at once seen in the open demonstration of discontent south of the border. The prison with which Laud had rewarded Prynne's dumpy quarto had tamed his spirit so little that a new tract, written within its walls, denounced the bishops as devouring wolves and lords of Lucifer. A fellow-prisoner, John Bastwick, declared in his ”Litany” that ”h.e.l.l was broke loose, and the devils in surplices, hoods, copes, and rochets were come amongst us.”
Burton, a London clergyman silenced by the High Commission, called on all Christians to resist the bishops as ”robbers of souls, limbs of the beast, and factors of Antichrist.” Raving of this sort might well have been pa.s.sed by, had not the general sympathy with Prynne and his fellow-pamphleteers, when Laud dragged them in 1637 before the Star Chamber as ”trumpets of sedition,” shown how fast the tide of general anger against the Government was rising. The three culprits listened with defiance to their sentence of exposure in the pillory and imprisonment for life; and the crowd who filled Palace Yard to witness their punishment groaned at the cutting off of their ears, and ”gave a great shout” when Prynne urged that the sentence on him was contrary to law. A hundred thousand Londoners lined the road as they pa.s.sed on the way to prison; and the journey of these ”Martyrs,” as the spectators called them, was like a triumphal progress. Startled as he was at the sudden burst of popular feeling, Laud remained dauntless as ever.
Prynne's entertainers, as he pa.s.sed through the country, were summoned before the Star Chamber, while the censors.h.i.+p struck fiercer blows at the Puritan press. But the real danger lay not in the libels of silly zealots, but in the att.i.tude of Scotland, and in the effect which was being produced in England at large by the trial of Hampden. Wentworth was looking on from Ireland with cool insolence at the contest between a subject and the Crown. ”Mr. Hampden,” he wrote, ”is a great brother; and the genius of that faction of people leads them always to oppose, both civilly and ecclesiastically, all that ever authority ordains.” But England looked on with other eyes. ”The eyes of all men,” owns Clarendon, ”were fixed upon him as their _Pater Patriae_ and the pilot who must steer the vessel through the tempests and storms that threatened it.” In November and December 1637 the cause of s.h.i.+p-money was solemnly argued for twelve days before the full bench of judges. It was proved that the tax in past times had been levied only in cases of sudden emergency, and confined to the coast and port towns alone, and that even the show of legality had been taken from it by formal statute, and by the Pet.i.tion of Right.
[Sidenote: The judgement on s.h.i.+p-money.]
The case was adjourned, but its discussion told not merely on England, but on the temper of the Scots. Charles had replied to their pet.i.tions by a simple order to all strangers to leave the capital. But the Council at Edinburgh was unable to enforce his order; and the n.o.bles and gentry before dispersing to their homes pet.i.tioned against the bishops, resolved not to own the jurisdiction of their courts, and named in November 1637 a body of delegates, under the odd t.i.tle of ”the Tables.”
These delegates carried on through the winter a series of negotiations with the Crown. The negotiations were interrupted in the spring of 1638 by a renewed order for their dispersion, and for the acceptance of a Prayer-Book; while the judges in England delivered in June their long-delayed decision on Hampden's case. Two judges only p.r.o.nounced in his favour; though three followed them on technical grounds. The majority, seven in number, laid down the broad principle that no statute prohibiting arbitrary taxation could be pleaded against the king's will.
”I never read or heard,” said Judge Berkeley, ”that lex was rex, but it is common and most true that rex is lex.” Finch, the Chief-Justice, summed up the opinions of his fellow-judges. ”Acts of Parliament to take away the king's royal power in the defence of his kingdom are void,” he said: ”they are void Acts of Parliament to bind the king not to command the subjects, their persons, and goods, and I say their money too, for no Acts of Parliament make any difference.”
[Sidenote: The Covenant.]
The case was ended; and Charles looked for the Puritans to give way. But keener eyes discerned that a new spirit of resistance had been stirred by the trial. The insolence of Wentworth was exchanged for a tone of angry terror. ”I wish Mr. Hampden and others to his likeness,” the Lord Deputy wrote bitterly from Ireland, ”were well whipt into their right senses.” Amidst the exultation of the Court over the decision of the judges, Wentworth saw clearly that Hampden's work had been done. Legal and temperate as his course had been, he had roused England to a sense of the danger to her freedom, and forced into light the real character of the royal claims. How stern and bitter the temper even of the n.o.blest Puritans had become at last we see in the poem which Milton produced at this time, his elegy of ”Lycidas.” Its grave and tender lament is broken by a sudden flash of indignation at the dangers around the Church, at the ”blind mouths that scarce themselves know how to hold a sheephook,”
and to whom ”the hungry sheep look up, and are not fed,” while ”the grim wolf” of Rome ”with privy paw daily devours apace, and nothing said!”
The stern resolve of the people to demand justice on their tyrants spoke in his threat of the axe. Strafford and Laud, and Charles himself, had yet to reckon with ”that two-handed engine at the door” which stood ”ready to smite once, and smite no more.” But stern as was the general resolve, there was no need for immediate action, for the difficulties which were gathering in the north were certain to bring a strain on the Government which would force it to seek support from the people. The king's demand for immediate submission, which reached Scotland while England was waiting for the Hampden judgement, in the spring of 1638, gathered the whole body of remonstrants together round ”the Tables” at Stirling; and a protestation, read at Edinburgh, was followed, on Johnston of Warriston's suggestion, by a renewal of the Covenant with G.o.d which had been drawn up and sworn to in a previous hour of peril, when Mary was still plotting against Protestantism, and Spain was preparing its Armada. ”We promise and swear,” ran the solemn engagement at its close, ”by the great name of the Lord our G.o.d, to continue in the profession and obedience of the said religion, and that we shall defend the same, and resist all their contrary errors and corruptions, according to our vocation and the utmost of that power which G.o.d has put into our hands all the days of our life.”
[Sidenote: Charles and Scotland.]
The Covenant was signed in the churchyard of the Greyfriars at Edinburgh on the first of March, in a tumult of enthusiasm, ”with such content and joy as those who, having long before been outlaws and rebels, are admitted again into covenant with G.o.d.” Gentlemen and n.o.bles rode with the doc.u.ment in their pockets over the country, gathering subscriptions to it, while the ministers pressed for a general consent to it from the pulpit. But pressure was needless. ”Such was the zeal of subscribers that for a while many subscribed with tears on their cheeks”; some were indeed reputed to have ”drawn their own blood and used it in place of ink to underwrite their names.” The force given to Scottish freedom by this revival of religious fervour was seen in the new tone adopted by the Covenanters. The Marquis of Hamilton, who came as Royal Commissioner to put an end to the quarrel, was at once met by demands for an abolition of the Court of High Commission, the withdrawal of the Books of Canons and Common Prayer, a free Parliament, and a free General a.s.sembly. He threatened war; but the threat proved fruitless, and even the Scotch Council pressed Charles to give fuller satisfaction to the people. ”I will rather die,” the king wrote to Hamilton, ”than yield to these impertinent and d.a.m.nable demands”; but it was needful to gain time. ”The discontents at home,” wrote Lord Northumberland to Wentworth, ”do rather increase than lessen”; and Charles was without money or men.
It was in vain that he begged for a loan from Spain on promise of declaring war against Holland, or that he tried to procure two thousand troops from Flanders, with which to occupy Edinburgh. The loan and troops were both refused, and some contributions offered by the English Catholics did little to recruit the Exchequer.
[Sidenote: The Scotch Revolution.]
Charles had directed the Marquis to delay any decisive breach till the royal fleet appeared in the Forth; but it was hard to equip a fleet at all. Scotland in fact was sooner ready for war than the king. The Scotch volunteers who had been serving in the Thirty Years War streamed home at the call of their brethren; and General Leslie, a veteran trained under Gustavus, came from Sweden to take the command of the new forces.
A voluntary war tax was levied in every s.h.i.+re. Charles was so utterly taken by surprise that he saw no choice but to yield, if but for the moment, to the Scottish demands. Hamilton announced that the king allowed the Covenant, the service book was revoked; a pledge was given that the power of the bishops should be lessened; a Parliament was promised for the coming year; and a General a.s.sembly summoned at once.
The a.s.sembly met at Glasgow in November 1638; it had been chosen according to the old form which James had annulled, and its 144 ministers were backed by 96 lay elders amongst whom all the leading Covenanters found a place. They had hardly met when, at the news of their design to attack the Bishops, Hamilton declared the a.s.sembly dissolved. But the Church claimed its old freedom of meeting apart from any licence from kings; and by an almost unanimous vote the a.s.sembly resolved to continue its session. Its acts were an undoing of all that the Stuarts had done. The two books of Canons and Common Prayer, the High Commission, the Articles of Perth, were all set aside as invalid.
Episcopacy was abjured, the bishops were deposed from their office, and the system of Presbyterianism re-established in its fullest extent.
[Sidenote: The Scotch War.]
Scotland was fighting England's battle as well as her own. The bold a.s.sertion of a people's right to frame its own religion was a practical carrying out of the claim which had been made by the English Parliament of 1629. But Charles was as resolute to resist it now as then. He was firm in his resolve of war, and the strong remonstrances of his Scotch councillors against it were met by a fierce pressure from Wentworth and Laud. Both felt that the question had ceased to be one for Scotland only; they saw that a concession to the Scots must now be fatal to the political and ecclesiastical system they had built up in Ireland and England alike. In both countries those who opposed the Government were looking to the rising in the North. They were suspicious of correspondence between the Puritans in England and the Scotch leaders; and whether these suspicions were true or no, of the sympathy with which the proceedings at Edinburgh were watched south of the Border there could be little doubt. It was with the conviction that the whole Stuart system was at stake that the two ministers pressed for war. But angered as he was, Charles was a Scotchman, and a Scotch king; and he shrank from a march with English troops into his hereditary kingdom. He counted rather on the sympathy of the northern clans and of Huntly, on the impression produced by the appearance of Hamilton with a fleet in the Forth, and by the suspension of trade with Holland, than on any actual force of arms from the South. The 20,000 men he gathered at York were to serve rather as a demonstration, and to protect the border, than as an invading force. But again his plans broke down before the activity and resolution of the Scots. The news that Charles was gathering an army at York, and reckoning for support on the clans of the north, was answered in the spring of 1639 by the seizure of Edinburgh, Dumbarton, and Stirling; while 10,000 well-equipped troops under Leslie and the Earl of Montrose entered Aberdeen, and brought the Earl of Huntly a prisoner to the south. Instead of overawing the country, the appearance of the royal fleet in the Forth was the signal for Leslie's march with 20,000 men to the Border. Charles had hardly pushed across the Tweed, when the ”old little crooked soldier,” encamping on the hill of Dunse Law, a few miles from Berwick, fairly offered him battle.
[Sidenote: Scotland and France.]
The king's threats at once broke down. Charles had a somewhat stronger force than Leslie, but his men had no will to fight; and he was forced to evade a battle by consenting to the gathering of a free a.s.sembly and of a Scotch Parliament. But he had no purpose of being bound by terms which had been wrested from him by rebel subjects. In his eyes the pacification at Berwick was a mere suspension of arms; and the king's summons of Wentworth from Ireland was a proof that violent measures were in preparation. The Scotch leaders were far from deceiving themselves as to the king's purpose; and in the struggle which they foresaw they sought aid from a power which Scotch tradition had looked on for centuries as the natural ally of their country. The jealousy between France and England had long been smouldering, and only the weakness of Charles and the caution of Richelieu had prevented its bursting into open flame. In the weary negotiations which the English king still carried on for the restoration of his nephew to the Palatinate, he had till now been counting rather on the friendly mediation of Spain with the Emperor than on any efforts of France or its Protestant allies. At this moment however a strange piece of fortune brought about a sudden change in his policy. A Spanish fleet, which had been attacked by the Dutch in the Channel, took refuge under the guns of Dover; and Spain appealed for its protection to the friends.h.i.+p of the king. But Charles saw in the incident a chance of winning the Palatinate without a blow. He at once opened negotiations with Richelieu. He offered to suffer the Spanish vessels to be destroyed, if France would pledge itself to restore his nephew. Richelieu on the other hand would only consent to his restoration if Charles would take an active part in the war. But the negotiations were suddenly cut short by the daring of the Dutch. In spite of the king's threats they attacked the Spanish fleet as it lay in English waters, and drove it broken to Ostend. Such an act of defiance could only embitter the enmity which Charles already felt towards France and its Dutch allies; and Richelieu grasped gladly at the Scotch revolt as a means of hindering England from joining in the war. His agents opened communications with the Scottish leaders; and applications for its aid were forwarded by the Scots to the French court.
[Sidenote: The Short Parliament.]
The discovery of this correspondence roused anew the hopes of the king.
He was resolved not to yield to rebels; and the proceedings in Scotland since the pacification of Berwick seemed to him mere rebellion. A fresh General a.s.sembly adopted as valid the acts of its predecessor. The Parliament only met to demand that the council should be responsible to it for its course of government. The king prorogued both that he might use the weapon which fortune had thrown into his hand. He never doubted that if he appealed to the country English loyalty would rise to support him against Scottish treason. He yielded at last to the counsels of Wentworth. Wentworth was still for war. He had never ceased to urge that the Scots should be whipped back to their border; and the king now avowed his concurrence in this policy by raising him to the earldom of Strafford, and from the post of Lord Deputy to that of Lord Lieutenant.