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

KING JAMES OF SCOTLAND WAS THE ONLY SON OF MARY QUEEN OF Scots. He had been subjected from his youth to a rigid Calvinist upbringing which was not much to his taste. With little money and strict tutors he had long coveted the throne of England, but till the last moment the prize had seemed elusive. The struggle for power and favour between Essex and Robert Cecil might always have provoked Elizabeth, whom he knew only by intermittent correspondence, into some swift decision which would lose him the crown. But now all appeared settled. Cecil was his ally and skilful manager in the tense days after the Queen died. James was proclaimed King James I of England without opposition, and in April 1603 began a leisurely journey from Holyrood to London.

He was a stranger and an alien, and his qualifications for governing England were yet to be tested. “So ignorant,” says Trevelyan, was James “of England and her laws that at Newark he ordered a cut-purse caught in the act to be hanged without a trial at a word from his royal mouth.” The execution did not take place. James detested the political ideas of his Calvinist mentors. He had fixed ideas about kingship and the divine right of monarchs to rule. He was a scholar with pretensions to being a philosopher, and in the course of his life published numerous tracts and treatises, ranging from denunciations of witchcraft and tobacco to abstract political theory. He came to England with a closed mind, and a weakness for lecturing. But England was changing. The habit of obedience to a dynasty had died with the last of the Tudors. Spain was no longer a threat, and the Union of the Crowns deprived foreign enemies of an ally, or even a foothold, in the Island. The country gentlemen on whom the Tudors relied to maintain a balance against the old nobility, and on whom they had devolved the whole business of local government, were beginning to feel their strength. England was secure, free to attend to her own concerns, and a powerful class was now eager to take a hand in their management. On the other hand, James’s title to the crown was not impeccable, and the doctrine of Divine Right, originally devised to justify the existence of national sovereignties against a universal Church or Empire, was called in to fortify his position. But how to reconcile a king claiming to rule by Divine Right and a Parliament with no other basis than ancient custom?

Over these deep-cutting issues there loomed a fiscal crisis of the first magnitude. The importation of precious metals from the New World had swelled the rise in prices, and throughout Europe inflation reigned; every year the fixed revenues of the Crown were worth less and less. By extreme frugality Elizabeth had postponed a conflict. But it could not be averted, and bound up with it was a formidable constitutional problem. Who was to have the last word in the matter of taxation? Hitherto everyone had accepted the medieval doctrine that “The King may not rule his people by other laws than they assent unto, and therefore he may set upon them no imposition, i.e., tax, without their assent.” But no one had analysed it, or traced out its implications in any detail. If this were the fundamental law of England, did it come from the mists of antiquity or from the indulgence of former kings? Was it the inalienable birthright of Englishmen, or a concession which might be revoked? Was the King beneath the law or was he not? And who was to say what the law was? The greater part of the seventeenth century was to be spent in trying to find answers, historical, legal, theoretical, and practical, to such questions. Lawyers, scholars, statesmen, soldiers, all joined in this great debate. Relief at an undisputed succession gave the new sovereign a loyal, and even enthusiastic, reception. But James and his subjects were soon at odds about this and other topics.

His first Parliament at once raised the question of Parliamentary privilege and Royal Prerogative. In dutiful but firm language the Commons drew up an Apology reminding the King that their liberties included free elections, free speech, and freedom from arrest during Parliamentary sessions. “The prerogative of princes,” they protested, “may easily and daily grow, while the privileges of the subject are for the most part at an everlasting stand. . . . The voice of the people . . . in the things of their knowledge is said to be as the voice of God.” James, like his son after him, treated these expressions of national grievance contemptuously, brushing them aside as personal insults to himself and mere breaches of good manners.

Hitherto James had been straitened; now he thought he was rich. The “beggarly Scotsmen” who had come South with him also enriched themselves. The expenses of the Court increased at an alarming rate. To his surprise James very soon found himself pressed for money. This meant frequent Parliaments. Frequent Parliaments gave Members the opportunity to organise themselves, and James neglected to control Parliamentary sessions through his Privy Counsellors, as Elizabeth had done. Robert Cecil, now Earl of Salisbury, had no direct contact with the Commons. The King indulged his taste for lecturing, and frequently reminded them of his Divine Right to rule and their solemn duty to supply his needs.

It was an ancient and obstinate belief that the King should “live of his own,” and that the traditional revenues from the Crown lands and from the customs should suffice for the upkeep of the public services. Parliament normally voted customs duties to each monarch for life, and did not expect to have to provide more money except in emergencies. To meet his needs James had to stress and revive the prerogative rights of taxation of the medieval kings, and he soon irritated a House which remembered its recent victory over Elizabeth upon monopolies. Fortunately the judges ruled that the ports were under the King’s exclusive jurisdiction and that he could issue a “book of rates”—that is, impose extra customs duties—as he thought fit. This gave James a revenue that, unlike the old feudal grants, rose with the increasing national wealth and the higher prices. The Commons questioned the judges’ ruling, and James made matters worse by turning the argument into a technical one about Royal Prerogative. Here, but only for a time, the matter rested.

The King had decided views on religion. He was greeted upon his accession with a petition from the Puritans, whose organisation Elizabeth had broken in the 1590’s. The opponents of the episcopal State Church now hoped that the new King from Calvinist Scotland would listen to their case; a milder party would have been satisfied with some modification of ceremony. But James had had enough of the Kirk. He realised that Calvinism and monarchy would quarrel in the long run and that if men could decide for themselves about religion they could also decide for themselves on politics. In 1604 he held a conference at Hampton Court between the Puritan leaders and those who accepted the Elizabethan system. His prejudice was soon manifest. In the middle of the debate he accused the Puritans of aiming “at a Scottish presbytery which agreeth as well with the monarch as God and the Devil. . . . Then Jack and Tom and Will and Dick shall meet and at their pleasure censor me and my Council and all our proceedings. Then Will shall stand up and say, ‘It must be thus’; then Dick shall reply and say, ‘Nay, marry, but we will have it thus.’ . . . Stay, I pray you, for one seven years before you demand that from me, and if then you find me pursy and fat, and my wind-pipes stuffed, I will perhaps hearken to you; for let that Government be once up, I am sure I shall be kept in breath; then shall we all of us have work enough, both our hands full.” James made it clear there would be no changes in the Elizabethan Church Settlement. His slogan was “No Bishop, no King.”

The Catholics were also anxious and hopeful. After all, the King’s mother had been their champion. Their position was delicate. If the Pope would allow them to give their secular allegiance to the King, James might let them practise their own religion. But the Pope would not yield. He forbade allegiance to a heretical sovereign. Upon this there could be no compromise. A European controversy was raging about the nature of obedience and James plunged into the argument. The Jesuits who had assailed Elizabeth were all-powerful at Rome, and replied with many volumes attacking his right to the throne. The air seemed charged with plots. James, although inclined to toleration, was forced to act. Catholics were fined for refusing to attend the services of the Established Church and their priests were banished.

Disappointment and despair led a small group of Catholic gentry to an infernal design for blowing up James and his whole Parliament by gunpowder while they were in session at Westminster. They hoped that this would be followed by a Catholic rising and that in the confusion a Catholic regime might be re-established with Spanish help. The chief plotter was Robert Catesby, assisted by Guy Fawkes, a veteran of the Spanish wars against the Dutch. One of their followers warned a relative who was a Catholic peer. The story reached Cecil, and the cellars of Parliament were searched. Fawkes was taken on the spot, and there was a storm of excitement in the City. James went down to open Parliament, and made an emotional speech upon what an honourable end it would have been to die with his faithful Commons. Kings, he said, were exposed to perils beyond those of ordinary mortals; only his own cleverness had saved them all from destruction. The House displayed an incomprehensible indifference, and, turning to the business of the day, discussed the petition of a Member who had asked to be relieved of his Parliamentary duties owing to an attack of gout. The conspirators were hunted down, tortured and executed. So novel and so wholesale a treason exposed the Catholic community to immediate and severe persecution and a more persistent and widespread detestation. The Thanksgiving Service for the deliverance of November 5 was not removed from the Prayer Book till 1854; and the anniversary, which even now is celebrated by bonfires and fireworks, was marred and enlivened until modern times by anti-Popery demonstrations.

At this time a splendid and lasting monument was created to the genius of the English-speaking peoples. All the Puritan demands had been rejected, but towards the end of the Hampton Court conference a Puritan divine, Dr John Reynolds, President of the Oxford College of Corpus Christi, had asked, seemingly on the spur of the moment, if a new version of the Bible could be produced. The idea appealed to James. Till now the clergy and laity had relied on a number of different translations—Tyndal’s, Coverdale’s, the Geneva Bible, the “Bishop’s Bible” of Queen Elizabeth. Their texts varied. Some were disfigured by marginal notes and glosses upholding and advocating partisan interpretations of Scripture and extremist theories of ecclesiastical organisation. Each party and sect used the version which best suited its own views and doctrines. Here, thought James, was the chance to rid the Scriptures of propaganda and produce a uniform version which could be entrusted to all. Within a few months committees or “companies” were set up, two each in Oxford, Cambridge, and Westminster, comprising in all about fifty scholars and divines. They were selected for this work without regard to their theological or ecclesiastical bias. Directions were issued with speed. Each committee was assigned a portion of the text, and their draft was to be scrutinised by all the other committees and finally revised by a committee of twelve. Tendentious renderings were forbidden, and marginal notes or glosses were prohibited except for cross-references or to explain the meaning of Greek or Hebrew words which were difficult to translate. About three years passed in preliminary research, and the main work did not get under way till 1607, but it was then accomplished with remarkable swiftness. In an age without an efficient postal service or mechanical methods of copying and duplicating texts, the committees, though separated by considerable distances, finished their task in 1609. Nine months sufficed for the scrutiny of the supervisory committee, and in 1611 the Authorised Version of the Bible was produced by the King’s Printer.

It won an immediate and lasting triumph. Copies could be bought for as little as five shillings, and even with the inflated prices of to-day can still be purchased for this sum. It superseded all other versions. No new revision was deemed necessary for nearly three hundred years. In the crowded emigrant ships which sailed to the New World of America there was little room for baggage. If the adventurers took books with them they took the Bible, Shakespeare, and later The Pilgrim’s Progress, and the Bible they mostly took was the Authorised Version of King James I. About ninety million complete copies are thought to have been published in the English language alone. It has been translated into more than seven hundred and sixty tongues. The Authorised Version is still the most popular in England and the United States. This may be deemed James’s greatest achievement, for the impulse was largely his. The Scottish pedant built better than he knew. The scholars who produced this masterpiece are mostly unknown and unremembered. But they forged an enduring link, literary and religious, between the English-speaking peoples of the world.

James and his Parliaments grew more and more out of sympathy as the years went by. The Tudors had been discreet in their use of the Royal Prerogative and had never put forward any general theory of government, but James saw himself as the schoolmaster of the whole island. In theory there was a good case for absolute monarchy. The whole political development of the sixteenth century was on his side. He found a brilliant supporter in the person of Francis Bacon, the ambitious lawyer who had dabbled in politics with Essex and crept back to obedience when his patron fell. Bacon held a succession of high legal offices, culminating in the Lord Chancellorship. He maintained that the absolute and enlightened rule of the King with the help of his judges was justified by its efficiency, but his theories were unreal and widely unpopular.

The subsequent conflict centred on the nature of the Royal Prerogative and the powers of an Act of Parliament. The modern view had not yet emerged that an Act of Parliament was supreme and unalterable unless repealed or amended, and that the sovereign power of the State could be exercised in no other way. The Tudor statutes had indeed been the instruments of profound changes in Church and State, and there seemed little they could not do. But statutes required both the assent of Parliament and the approval of the King. No Parliament could meet without the summons of the King, or sit after he had dismissed it. Little else but financial necessity could compel the King to call a Parliament. If money could be raised elsewhere he might govern for years at a time without one. Moreover, a certain undefined prerogative power the King assuredly had; the exigencies of government required it. Who was to say what he could and could not do? If the King chose, on grounds of public interest, to make an ordinance dispensing with a statute, who could say he was acting illegally?

At this point the Common Lawyers, headed by Chief Justice Coke, stepped to the forefront of English history. Coke, one of the most learned of English judges, gave a blunt answer to these controversies. He declared that conflicts between Prerogative and statute should be resolved not by the Crown but by the judges. It was a tremendous assertion, for if the judges were to decide which laws were valid and which were not they would become the ultimate lawgivers in the State. They would form a Supreme Court, assessing the legality of both royal and Parliamentary enactments. Coke’s high claims were not without foundation. They rested on the ancient tradition that law declared in the courts was superior to law published by the central authority. Coke himself was reluctant to admit that law could be made, or even changed. It existed already, merely awaiting revelation and exposition. If Acts of Parliament conflicted with it they were invalid. Thus at the beginning of his career Coke was not fighting on the same side as Parliament. In England his main assertions on behalf of fundamental law were overruled. It was to be otherwise in the United States.

James had a very different view of the function of judges. They might have the duty of deciding between the conflicting claims of statute and Prerogative, but if so they were bound to decide in the Crown’s favour. Their business, as Bacon put it, was to be “lions under the throne.” As judges were appointed by the King and held office during his good pleasure, they should obey him like other royal servants. The controversy was embittered by personal rivalry between Bacon and Coke, who now found himself in an untenable position. No judge could be impartial about the King’s Prerogative if he were liable to instant dismissal on the King’s command. James first tried to muzzle Coke by promoting him from the Court of Common Pleas to the King’s Bench. Unsuccessful in this, he dismissed him in 1616. The remaining members of the Bench sided with James.

Their leadership was readily accepted. Few of the country gentlemen sitting in the Commons had any deep knowledge of Parliamentary history, or could produce any coherent theory to justify the claims of Parliament. They simply felt a smouldering injustice at the arbitrary conduct and jarring theories of the King. For all its stirring movements, this was an age of profound respect for precedents and constitutional forms. If the lawyers had remained solid for the Crown and the whole weight of legal opinion had been thrown into the royal scale the Commons’ task would have been much harder. With all the force of interpreted precedent against them, they would have had to break with the past and admit they were revolutionaries; but the adherence of the lawyers freed them from an agonising choice. Coke, Selden, and others, including Pym, who had read law at the Middle Temple even if he had not practised, formed a group of able leaders, who took and held the initiative. Learned in the law, and not always too scrupulous in the interpretations they twisted from it, they gradually built up a case on which Parliament could claim with conviction that it was fighting, not for something new, but for the traditional and lawful heritage of the English people. Thus were laid the foundations of the united and disciplined opposition which Pym was to lead against King Charles.

James had no sympathy with these agitations. He did not care for compromise; but, shrewder than his son, he saw when compromise would suit him best. It was only the need of money that forced him to deal with Parliament at all. “The House of Commons,” he once told the Spanish Ambassador, “is a body without a head. The Members give their opinions in a disorderly manner. At their meetings nothing is heard but cries, shouts, and confusion. I am surprised that my ancestors should ever have permitted such an institution to come into existence. I am a stranger, and found it here when I arrived, so that I am obliged to put up with what I cannot get rid of.”

James’s foreign policy perhaps met the needs of the age for peace, but often clashed with its temper. When he came to the throne England was still technically at war with Spain. With Cecil’s support hostilities were concluded and diplomatic relations renewed. In all the circumstances this may be deemed to have been a wise and prudent step. The main struggle had already shifted from the high seas to Europe. The house of Habsburg, at the head of the Holy Roman Empire, still dominated the Continent from Vienna. The territories of the Emperor and of his cousin the King of Spain now stretched from Portugal to Poland, and their power was backed by the proselytising fervour of the Jesuits. The Commons and the country remained vehemently hostile to Spain, and viewed with alarm and anxiety the march of the Counter-Reformation. But James was unmoved. He regarded the Dutch as rebels against the Divine Right of Kings. The Spanish Ambassador, Count Gondomar, financed a pro-Spanish party at the new Court; learning nothing from Tudor experience, James proposed not merely an alliance with Spain, but a Spanish match for his son.

His daughter however was already in the opposite camp. The Princess Elizabeth had married one of the Protestant champions of Europe, Frederick, the Elector Palatine of the Rhine, and Frederick was soon projected into violent revolt against the Habsburg Emperor Ferdinand. Habsburg attempts to recover for the Catholic faith those areas in Germany which the law of the Empire had recognised as Protestant provoked the vehement opposition of the Protestant princes. The storm centre was Bohemia, where a haughty, resolute Czech nobility obstructed the centralising policy of Vienna both in religion and politics. In the fifteenth-century days of John Huss they had set up their own Church and fought both Pope and Emperor. Now they defied Ferdinand. In 1618 their leaders flung the Imperial envoys from the windows of the royal palace in Prague. This action, later known as the Defenestration, started a war which was to ravage Germany for thirty years. The Czechs offered Frederick the throne of Bohemia. Frederick accepted, and became the recognised leader of the Protestant revolt.

Although his daughter was now Queen of Bohemia, James showed no wish to intervene on her behalf. He was resolved to keep out of the conflict in Europe at all costs, and judged he could best help his son-in-law’s cause through friendship with Spain. Parliament was indignant and alarmed. He reminded them that these matters were beyond their scope. No taunts of personal timidity moved him. He stuck to his convictions and kept the peace. Whether this was wise and far-sighted is not easy to measure; it was certainly unpopular.

The Elector Frederick was soon driven out of Bohemia, and his hereditary lands were occupied by Habsburg troops. So short had been his reign that he is known to history as “the Winter King.” The House of Commons clamoured for war. Private subscriptions and bands of volunteers were raised for the defence of the Protestants. James contented himself with academic discussions upon Bohemian rights with the Spanish Ambassador. He clung to the belief that a matrimonial alliance between the royal families of England and Spain would ensure peace with the strongest Power. No convulsions on the Continent must impede this scheme. To pose as Protestant champion in the great war now begun might gain a fleeting popularity with his subjects, but would also deliver him into the hands of the House of Commons. Parliament would assuredly demand some control over the expenditure of the money it voted for arms, and was unlikely to be generous. Puritan forces in the country would make themselves heard in louder tones. Besides, the fortunes of war were notoriously uncertain. James seems genuinely to have believed in his mission as the Peacemaker of Europe, and also to have had a deep-rooted nervous dislike of fighting, founded in the tumultuous experiences of his youth in Scotland. He ignored the demand for intervention, and continued his negotiations for the Spanish match.

In the midst of these turmoils Sir Walter Raleigh was executed on Tower Hill to please the Spanish Government. Raleigh had been imprisoned at the beginning of the reign for conspiring to supplant James by his cousin, Arabella Stuart. This charge was probably unjust, and the trial was certainly so. Raleigh’s dream of finding gold on the Orinoco River, which had cheered his long confinement, ended in disaster in 1617. This last expedition of his, for which he was specially released from the Tower, had merely affronted the Spanish governors of South America. The old capital sentence was now revived against him. His death on October 29, 1618, was intended to mark the new policy of appeasement and prepare the way for good relations with Spain. This deed of shame sets a barrier for ever between King James and the English people. There are others.

James was much addicted to favourites, and his attention to handsome young men resulted in a noticeable loss of respect for the monarchy. After the death of his wise counsellor, Robert Cecil, the Court had been afflicted by a number of odious scandals. One of his favourites, Robert Carr, created Earl of Somerset by the King’s caprice, was implicated in a murder by poison, of which his wife was undoubtedly guilty. James, who could deny Carr nothing, at first paid little attention to the storm raised by this crime; but even he found it impossible to maintain him in high office. Carr was succeeded in the King’s regard by a good-looking, quick-witted, extravagant youth, George Villiers, soon ennobled as Duke of Buckingham. This young man quickly became all-powerful at Court, and in the affections of James. He formed a deep and honourable friendship with Charles, Prince of Wales. He accepted unhesitatingly the royal policy of a Spanish marriage, and in 1623 staged a romantic journey to Madrid for the Prince and himself to view the bride. Their unorthodox behaviour failed to impress the formal and ceremonious Court of Spain. Moreover, the Spaniards demanded concessions for the English Catholics, which James knew Parliament would never grant. They refused to intercede with the Emperor for the restoration of the Palatinate lands to Frederick. In the end the King’s better feelings triumphed. “I like not,” he declared, “to marry my son with a portion of my daughter’s tears.” The negotiations with Spain foundered. Contrary winds delayed the return of the Prince of Wales and his companion, now disenchanted with all things Spanish. The English fleet which was to escort him remained weather-bound at Santander. England waited in a tremor; and when the news spread through the country that he was safely back at Portsmouth, unwedded to the Infanta, unseduced from the Protestant faith, a surge of joy arose among all classes. The overpowering wish and potent will of England was to resist, and if necessary to fight, Spain and all that Spain meant. Memories of the Armada and Good Queen Bess cheered men’s minds. The deadly sin of Papist idolatry, as they conceived it, terrified their souls. Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, first published in 1563, and still widely read, taught them the duty and the splendour of rising above all physical danger or suffering. The streets were crowded with wagons carrying faggots for the bonfires. The red glow of rejoicing was reflected in the London sky.

But the King and his Council had gone too far on this path not to be smitten and shaken by its sudden closing. The Council, deeply committed, told the King that Buckingham had spoiled the affair by his impatience and conceit. They made heavy case against Buckingham’s behaviour. They cleared the Spanish Court from the charge of discourtesy and justified the Spanish attitude towards the Palatinate. But Buckingham and Charles were now eager for war. James at first wavered. He was, he said, an old man who once knew something about politics. Now the two beings he loved best in the world urged him upon a course directly contrary to his judgment and past action.

In this sharp pinch Buckingham with remarkable agility turned himself from a royal favourite into a national, if short-lived, statesman. While using all his personal address to over-persuade the sovereign, he sought and obtained the support of Parliament and people. He took a number of steps which recognised, in a manner unknown since the days of the house of Lancaster, Parliamentary rights and power. Whereas all interference by Parliament in foreign affairs had been repelled by the Tudors, and hitherto by James, the Minister-Favourite now invited Lords and Commons to give their opinion. The answer of both Houses was prompt and plain. It was contrary, they said, to the honour of the King, to the welfare of his people, to the interest of his children, and to the terms of his former alliances to continue the negotiations with Spain. Upon this Buckingham did not conceal that he differed somewhat from his master. He said bluntly and publicly that he wished to tread only one path, whereas the King thought he could walk in two different paths at once. He would not be a mere flatterer; he must express his convictions or be a traitor.

Buckingham trimmed his sails and for the moment preserved his new Parliamentary prestige. This he used to break his rival, Lord Treasurer Cranfield. The Treasurer, now Earl of Middlesex, was one of the outstanding “new men” in the kingdom. He was a merchant who had risen to great wealth and high office. He was now dismissed and imprisoned by the Parliamentary engine of impeachment. This weapon had already been used against Bacon, who was found guilty of corruption in 1621, dismissed from the Chancellorship, fined and banished. It was never to be laid aside until many great issues, already alive, but little comprehended by Buckingham or by his dear friend Charles, had been settled once and for all.

No sooner was the Spanish match broken off than Buckingham turned to France for a bride for Charles. When he and the Prince of Wales had passed through Paris on their way to Madrid Charles had been struck by the charm of Marie de Médicis’ daughter, Henrietta Maria, sister of Louis XIII and then in her fourteenth year. Buckingham found the negotiations agreeable to the French Court, and especially to Queen Marie. A marriage with a Protestant princess would have united Crown and Parliament. But this was never the intention of the governing circle. A daughter of France seemed to them the only alternative to the Infanta. How could England face Spain alone? If we could not lean on Spain, it seemed that we must have France. The old King wanted to see his son married. He said he lived only for him. He ratified the marriage treaty in December 1624. Three months later the first King of Great Britain was dead.