The New World: A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, Volume II (The Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading Series)

A great political and religious crisis was overhanging England. Already in King James’s time Parliament had begun to take the lead, not only in levying taxes but increasingly in the conduct of affairs, and especially in foreign policy. It is remarkable to see how far-reaching was the interest shown by the educated part of the English nation in Europe; and as they thought and moved so did the great mass of the people behind them. Events in Prague or Ratisbon seemed as important to Englishmen as what happened in York or Bristol. The frontiers of Bohemia, the conditions in the Palatinate, ranked as high as many domestic questions. This wide outlook was no longer due, as in the days of the Plantagenets, to dynastic claims of Continental sway. The furious winds of religious strife carried men’s thoughts afar. The English people felt that their survival and their salvation were bound up for ever with the victory of the Reformed Faith, and they watched with straining, vigilant eyes every episode which marked its advance or misfortune. An intense desire for England to lead and champion the Protestant cause wherever it was assailed drove forward the Parliamentary movement with a force far greater than would ever have sprung merely from the issues which were now opening at home. Lord Acton declares that “the progress of the world towards self-government would have been arrested but for the strength afforded by the religious motive in the seventeenth century.”

The secular issues were nevertheless themselves of enormous weight. Tudor authority had been accepted as a relief from the anarchy of the Wars of the Roses, and had now ceased to fit either the needs or the temper of a continually growing society. Men looked back to earlier times. Great lawyers like Coke and Selden had directed their gaze to the rights which they thought Parliament had possessed under the Lancastrian kings. Ranging farther, they spoke with pride of the work of Simon de Montfort, of Magna Carta, and even of still more ancient rights in the mists of Anglo-Saxon monarchy. From these studies they derived the conviction that they were the heirs of a whole structure of fundamental law inherent in the customs of the Island, and now most apt and vital to their immediate problems. The past seemed to them to provide almost a written Constitution, from which the Crown was now threatening to depart. But the Crown also looked back, and found many precedents of a contrary character, especially in the last hundred years, for the most thorough exercise of the Royal Prerogative. Both King and Parliament had a body of doctrine upon which they dwelt with sincere conviction. This brought pathos and grandeur to the coming struggle.

A society more complex than that of Tudor England was coming into existence. Trade, both foreign and internal, was expanding. Coal mining and other industries were rapidly developing. Larger vested interests were in being. In the van stood London, ever-glorious champion of freedom and progress; London, with its thousands of lusty, free-spoken prentices and its wealthy City guilds and companies. Outside London many of the landed gentry, who supplied numerous Members to Parliament, were acquiring close connections with new industry and trade. In these years the Commons were not so much seeking to legislate as trying to wring from the Crown admissions of ancient custom which would prevent before it was too late all this recent growth from falling under an autocratic grip.

The men at the head of this strenuous and, to our time, invaluable movement were notable figures. Coke had taught the later Parliaments of James I the arguments upon which they could rest and the methods by which they might prevail. His knowledge of the Common Law was unique. He unearthed an armoury of precedents, and set many to work upon their furbishing and sharpening. Two country gentlemen stand with him: one from the West, Sir John Eliot, a Cornishman; the other, Thomas Wentworth, a Yorkshire squire. Both these men possessed the highest qualities of force and temper. For a time they worked together; for a time they were rivals; for a time they were foes. By opposite paths both reached the extremity of sacrifice. Behind them at this time, lacking nothing in grit, were leaders of the Puritan gentry, Denzil Holles, Arthur Hazelrigg, John Pym—Pym was eventually to go far and to carry the cause still farther. He was a Somerset man, a lawyer, strongly anti-High-Church, and with an interest in colonial ventures. Here was a man who understood every move in the political game, and would play it out remorselessly.

The Parliaments of James, and now those of Charles, were for war and intervention in Europe. They sought to use the money-power, of which they were the masters, to induce the King and his Ministers to tread these dangerous paths. They knew well, among other things, that the stresses of war would force the Crown to come to them. They saw that their power would grow with the adoption of their policy, which was also their faith. The pacifism of James I, often ignominious, had upon the whole avoided this trap. But King Charles and Buckingham were high-spirited men in the ardour of youth. The King was affronted by the manner in which his father’s overtures for a Spanish match, and he himself, had been slighted in Madrid. He was for war with Spain. He even wished to call Parliament together without issuing writs for the new election consequent upon a demise of the Crown. He at once carried through his marriage with the French princess, Henrietta Maria. Her arrival at Dover surrounded by a throng of French Papists and priests was the first serious shock to Charles’s popularity. The new Parliament granted supplies against Spain; but their purpose to review the whole question of indirect taxation was plain when they resolved that the customs duties of tonnage and poundage without which the King could not live, even in peace, should for the first time for many reigns be voted, not for the King’s life, but only for one year. This restriction galled and wounded Charles, but did not deter him from the war. Thus at the very outset of his reign he placed himself in a position of exceptional dependence upon Parliament, while resenting its increasing claims.

The war with Spain went badly. Buckingham led an expedition to Cadiz in an attempt to emulate the feats of Queen Elizabeth’s days, but it accomplished nothing. On his return Parliament resolved to unseat the glittering, profuse, incompetent Minister. “We protest,” the Commons told Charles, “that until this great person be removed from intermeddling with the great affairs of State any money we shall or can give will through his misemployment be turned rather to the hurt and prejudice of this your kingdom than otherwise.” Buckingham was impeached, and to save his friend the King hastily dissolved Parliament.

A new complication was now added to the scene. Charles had hoped to conclude an alliance with France against the Habsburg rulers of Spain and the Empire. But France showed no desire to fight for the recovery of the Palatinate on England’s behalf. Disputes also arose over the fulfilment of Charles’s treaty of marriage with Queen Henrietta Maria, and the breach was widened by the cause of the Huguenots. The new, powerful French Minister, Cardinal Richelieu, was determined to curb the independence of the Huguenots in France, and in particular to reduce their maritime stronghold of La Rochelle. English sympathies naturally lay with these French Protestants whom they had helped to sustain in the days of Henry of Navarre, and the two countries drifted into war. In 1627 a considerable force was despatched under Buckingham to help the Rochelais. It landed off the coast in the Île de Ré, failed to storm the citadel, and withdrew in disorder. Thus Buckingham’s military efforts were once more marked by waste and failure. At home the billeting of soldiers brought an acute grievance into thousands of cottage homes. This was aggravated by the arbitrary decisions of martial law, which was used to settle all disputes between soldiers and civilians.

The King was torn between the grinding need of finding money for the war and the danger that Parliament would again impeach his friend. In his vexation, and having the war on his hands, he resorted to dubious methods of raising money. He demanded a forced loan; and when many important persons refused to pay he threw them into prison. Five of these prisoners, known as the Five Knights, appealed against these proceedings. But King’s Bench ruled that habeas corpus could not be used against imprisonments “by special command of the King.” From the agitation this aroused sprang the famous Petition of Right.

Forced loans could not suffice to replenish the Treasury, and having secured a promise that the impeachment of Buckingham would not be pursued the King agreed to summon Parliament. The country was now in a ferment. The election returned men pledged to resist arbitrary exactions. The Parliament which assembled in March 1628 embodied the will of the natural leaders of the nation. It wished to support the war, but it would not grant money to a King and Minister it distrusted. The nobility and gentry, Lords and Commons alike, were resolute in defence of property, and also of its twin cause at this time, liberty. The King used the threat of despotic action. He must have “such supply as to secure ourselves and save our friends from imminent ruin. . . . Every man must now do according to his conscience, wherefore if you (which God forbid) should not do your duties in contributing what this State at this time needs I must . . . use those other means which God hath put into my hands to save that which the follies of other men may otherwise hazard to lose. Take not this as threatening, for I scorn to threaten any but my equals, . . . but as an admonition.”

It must not be supposed that all the wrongdoing was on one side. Parliament, which had approved the wars, was playing a hard game with the King, confronting him with the shame to his princely honour of deserting the Huguenots, or else yielding the Prerogative his predecessors had so long enjoyed. Their tactics were artful, and yet justified by their convictions and by the facts. They offered no fewer than five subsidies, amounting to £300,000, all to be paid within twelve months. Here was enough to carry on the war; but before they would confirm this in a Bill they demanded their price.

The following four resolutions were passed unanimously: that no freeman ought to be restrained or imprisoned unless some lawful cause was expressed; that the writ of habeas corpus ought to be granted to every man imprisoned or restrained, even though it might be at the command of the King or of the Privy Council; that if no legal cause for imprisonment were shown the party ought to be set free or bailed; that it was the ancient and undoubted right of every freeman to have a full and absolute property in his goods and estate, and that no tax, loan, or benevolence ought to be levied by the King or his Ministers without common consent by Act of Parliament.

At Coke’s prompting the Commons now went on to frame the Petition of Right. Its object was to curtail the King’s Prerogative. The Petition complained against forced loans, imprisonment without trial, billeting, and martial law. These and others of the King’s proceedings were condemned “as being contrary to the rights and liberties of the subject, and the laws and statutes of the nation.” Unless the King accepted the Petition he would have no subsidies, and must face the wars to which Parliament had incited him as best he could. Charles, resorting to manœuvre, secretly consulted the judges, who assured him that even his consent to these liberties would not affect his ultimate Prerogative. He was none too sure of this; and when his first evasive answer was delivered in the House of Lords a howl went up, not only from the Commons, but from the great majority of all assembled. He therefore fell back upon the opinion of the judges and gave full consent que droict soit fait comme il est désiré, while making mental reservation. “Now,” said the King,

We reach here, amid much confusion, the main foundation of English freedom. The right of the Executive Government to imprison a man, high or low, for reasons of State was denied; and that denial, made good in painful struggles, constitutes the charter of every self-respecting man at any time in any land. Trial by jury of equals, only for offences known to the law, if maintained, makes the difference between bond and free. But the King felt this would hamper him, and no doubt a plausible case can be advanced that in times of emergency dangerous persons must be confined. The terms “protective arrest” and “shot while trying to escape” had not yet occurred to the mind of authority. We owe them to the genius of a later age.

At the back of the Parliamentary movement in all its expressions lay a deep fear. Everywhere in Europe they saw the monarchies becoming more autocratic. The States-General, which had met in Paris in 1614, had not been summoned again; it was not indeed to be summoned until the clash of 1789. The rise of standing armies, composed of men drilled in firearms and supported by trains of artillery, had stripped alike the nobles and the common people of their means of independent resistance. Rough as the times had been in the earlier centuries, “bills and bows” were a final resource which few kings had cared to challenge. But now on the Parliamentary side force as yet was lacking.

Both sides pressed farther along their paths. The King, having got his money, dwelt unduly upon the assurances he had received from the judges that his Prerogative was intact. The Commons came forward with further complaints against the growth of Popery and Arminianism (the form of High Church doctrine most directly opposed to Calvinism), about the mismanagement of the war, and about injury to trade and commerce from naval weakness in the Narrow Seas. They renewed their attack on Buckingham, asking the King whether it was consistent with his safety, or the safety of the realm, that the author of so many calamities should continue to hold office or remain near his sacred person. But now the King and Buckingham hoped that a second and successful expedition would relieve the Huguenots in La Rochelle. Charles dismissed the Houses. Before he had need of them again he and his cherished Minister would present them with a military or diplomatic result in which all could rejoice. Far better to rescue Protestants abroad than to persecute Catholics at home. A King who had delivered La Rochelle could surely claim the right to exercise indulgence even to Papists in his own land. This was not a discreditable position to take up; but Fate moved differently.

Buckingham himself was deeply conscious of the hatreds of which he was the object, and it is clear that in putting himself at the head of a new expedition to La Rochelle he hoped to win again for himself some national backing, which would at least divide his pursuers. But at the moment when his resolves were at their highest, as he was about to embark at Portsmouth, commander-in-chief of a formidable armament, with new engines for breaking the boom which Richelieu had built across the beleaguered harbour, he was stabbed to death by a fanatical naval lieutenant.

The murderer, John Felton, seems to have been impaled by nature upon all those prongs of dark resolve which make such deeds possible. He had the private sting of being passed over for promotion. He was embittered by the favouritism shown to officers who had never fought. But the documents which he left behind him proved him a slave of larger thoughts. Parliament’s remonstrations to the King against Buckingham’s lush splendour and corrupt methods had sunk into his soul. He held that the welfare of the people is the highest law, and that “God Himself has enacted this law, that whatsoever is for the profit or benefit of the Commonwealth should be accounted to be lawful.” After the deed he mingled in the crowd, but when he heard men denouncing the villain who had slain the noble Duke he came forward, saying, “No villain did it, but an honourable man. I am the man.” A lean man he was, with red hair and dark, melancholy features. He flung at the crowd who shouted at him, “In your hearts you rejoice in my deed.” On some of the ships the sailors cheered his name. Afterwards, in the grey approach of doom, he became convinced that he had been wrong. He accepted the view “that the common good could no way be a pretence to a particular mischief.” He asked to be allowed to testify to this before his execution.

The death of Buckingham was a devastating blow to the young King. He never forgave Eliot, to whose accusing speeches he ascribed Felton’s act. At the same time it immensely relieved his public difficulties, for much of the anger of the Parliament died with the favourite; and it brought for the first time a unity into his married life. Hitherto he had been morally and mentally dominated by “Steenie,” the beloved friend of his boyhood and youth, to whom he confided his inmost thoughts. For three years he had lived in cold estrangement from the Queen. It was even said that the marriage had never been consummated; and he had distressed her by dismissing all her French attendants. The death of Buckingham was the birth of his love for his wife. Little but storm lay before them, but henceforth they faced it together.

Though the Commons had granted the five subsidies they held tonnage and poundage in reserve. When the year lapsed for which this had been voted the Parliamentary party throughout the country were angered to find that the King continued to collect the tax by his officers, as had been the custom for so many reigns. Distraint and imprisonment were used against those who refused to pay. In all this was seen the King’s contempt for the Petition of Right, and his intention to escape from the assent he had given to it. When copies of the Petition were printed it was found that the King’s first evasive answer was appended, and not his later plain acceptance in the ancient form. The expedition to La Rochelle, which had sailed under another commander, miscarried. Cardinal Richelieu succeeded in maintaining his boom against the English ships and appliances, and eventually the Huguenots in despair surrendered the city to the King of France. This collapse caused shock and grief throughout England.

Thus when Parliament met again at the beginning of 1629 there was no lack of grievances both in foreign and domestic policy. Yet it was upon questions of religion that the attack began. The Commons showed themselves to be in a most aggressive mood, and worked themselves into passion by long debates upon the indulgence and laxity with which the laws against Popery were enforced. This brought the great majority of them together; and the zealots, who, however intolerant, were ardent to purify what they deemed a corrupt Church, joined with the patriots who were laying the foundations of English freedom. Just as the Moslem, defending his native soil, fortifies himself with the Koran, just as the rhinoceros trusts to his horn or the tiger to his claws, so these harassed Parliamentarians found in the religious prejudices of England a bond of union and eventually a means of war.

In a comprehensive resolution the Commons declared that whoever furthered Popery or Arminianism, whoever collected or helped to collect tonnage and poundage before it was granted, or even paid it, was a public enemy. The personal censures formerly heaped on Buckingham were now transferred to the Lord Treasurer, Richard Weston, who was denounced as a Papist, if not indeed a Jesuit, engaged in exacting taxes illegally. All this was embodied in a single Remonstrance. The Speaker, who had been gained to the King’s side, announced on March 2 that the King adjourned the House till the 10^th, thus frustrating the carrying of the Remonstrance. A wave of wrath swept through the assembly. When the Speaker rose to leave he was forced back and held down on his chair by two resolute and muscular Members, Holles and Valentine. The doors were barred against Black Rod, and the Remonstrance, recited from memory by Holles, was declared carried by acclamation. The doors were then opened and the Members poured forth tumultuously. It was a long time before any of them met in their Chamber again. It had become plain to all that King and Commons could not work together on any terms. The next week Parliament was dissolved and the period of King Charles’s Personal Rule began.