CHAPTER XXXIII--ENGLAND UNDER CHARLES THE FIRST
Baby Charles became KING CHARLES THE FIRST, in the twenty-fifth year ofhis age. Unlike his father, he was usually amiable in his privatecharacter, and grave and dignified in his bearing; but, like his father,he had monstrously exaggerated notions of the rights of a king, and wasevasive, and not to be trusted. If his word could have been relied upon,his history might have had a different end.
His first care was to send over that insolent upstart, Buckingham, tobring Henrietta Maria from Paris to be his Queen; upon which occasionBuckingham--with his usual audacity--made love to the young Queen ofAustria, and was very indignant indeed with CARDINAL RICHELIEU, theFrench Minister, for thwarting his intentions. The English people werevery well disposed to like their new Queen, and to receive her with greatfavour when she came among them as a stranger. But, she held theProtestant religion in great dislike, and brought over a crowd ofunpleasant priests, who made her do some very ridiculous things, andforced themselves upon the public notice in many disagreeable ways.Hence, the people soon came to dislike her, and she soon came to dislikethem; and she did so much all through this reign in setting the King (whowas dotingly fond of her) against his subjects, that it would have beenbetter for him if she had never been born.
Now, you are to understand that King Charles the First--of his owndetermination to be a high and mighty King not to be called to account byanybody, and urged on by his Queen besides--deliberately set himself toput his Parliament down and to put himself up. You are also tounderstand, that even in pursuit of this wrong idea (enough in itself tohave ruined any king) he never took a straight course, but always took acrooked one.
He was bent upon war with Spain, though neither the House of Commons northe people were quite clear as to the justice of that war, now that theybegan to think a little more about the story of the Spanish match. Butthe King rushed into it hotly, raised money by illegal means to meet itsexpenses, and encountered a miserable failure at Cadiz, in the very firstyear of his reign. An expedition to Cadiz had been made in the hope ofplunder, but as it was not successful, it was necessary to get a grant ofmoney from the Parliament; and when they met, in no very complyinghumour, the King told them, 'to make haste to let him have it, or itwould be the worse for themselves.' Not put in a more complying humourby this, they impeached the King's favourite, the Duke of Buckingham, asthe cause (which he undoubtedly was) of many great public grievances andwrongs. The King, to save him, dissolved the Parliament without gettingthe money he wanted; and when the Lords implored him to consider andgrant a little delay, he replied, 'No, not one minute.' He then began toraise money for himself by the following means among others.
He levied certain duties called tonnage and poundage which had not beengranted by the Parliament, and could lawfully be levied by no otherpower; he called upon the seaport towns to furnish, and to pay all thecost for three months of, a fleet of armed ships; and he required thepeople to unite in lending him large sums of money, the repayment ofwhich was very doubtful. If the poor people refused, they were pressedas soldiers or sailors; if the gentry refused, they were sent to prison.Five gentlemen, named SIR THOMAS DARNEL, JOHN CORBET, WALTER EARL, JOHNHEVENINGHAM, and EVERARD HAMPDEN, for refusing were taken up by a warrantof the King's privy council, and were sent to prison without any causebut the King's pleasure being stated for their imprisonment. Then thequestion came to be solemnly tried, whether this was not a violation ofMagna Charta, and an encroachment by the King on the highest rights ofthe English people. His lawyers contended No, because to encroach uponthe rights of the English people would be to do wrong, and the King coulddo no wrong. The accommodating judges decided in favour of this wickednonsense; and here was a fatal division between the King and the people.
For all this, it became necessary to call another Parliament. Thepeople, sensible of the danger in which their liberties were, chose forit those who were best known for their determined opposition to the King;but still the King, quite blinded by his determination to carryeverything before him, addressed them when they met, in a contemptuousmanner, and just told them in so many words that he had only called themtogether because he wanted money. The Parliament, strong enough andresolute enough to know that they would lower his tone, cared little forwhat he said, and laid before him one of the great documents of history,which is called the PETITION OF RIGHT, requiring that the free men ofEngland should no longer be called upon to lend the King money, andshould no longer be pressed or imprisoned for refusing to do so; further,that the free men of England should no longer be seized by the King'sspecial mandate or warrant, it being contrary to their rights andliberties and the laws of their country. At first the King returned ananswer to this petition, in which he tried to shirk it altogether; but,the House of Commons then showing their determination to go on with theimpeachment of Buckingham, the King in alarm returned an answer, givinghis consent to all that was required of him. He not only afterwardsdeparted from his word and honour on these points, over and over again,but, at this very time, he did the mean and dissembling act of publishinghis first answer and not his second--merely that the people might supposethat the Parliament had not got the better of him.
That pestilent Buckingham, to gratify his own wounded vanity, had by thistime involved the country in war with France, as well as with Spain. Forsuch miserable causes and such miserable creatures are wars sometimesmade! But he was destined to do little more mischief in this world. Onemorning, as he was going out of his house to his carriage, he turned tospeak to a certain Colonel FRYER who was with him; and he was violentlystabbed with a knife, which the murderer left sticking in his heart. Thishappened in his hall. He had had angry words up-stairs, just before,with some French gentlemen, who were immediately suspected by hisservants, and had a close escape from being set upon and killed. In themidst of the noise, the real murderer, who had gone to the kitchen andmight easily have got away, drew his sword and cried out, 'I am the man!'His name was JOHN FELTON, a Protestant and a retired officer in the army.He said he had had no personal ill-will to the Duke, but had killed himas a curse to the country. He had aimed his blow well, for Buckinghamhad only had time to cry out, 'Villain!' and then he drew out the knife,fell against a table, and died.
The council made a mighty business of examining John Felton about thismurder, though it was a plain case enough, one would think. He had comeseventy miles to do it, he told them, and he did it for the reason he haddeclared; if they put him upon the rack, as that noble MARQUIS OF DORSETwhom he saw before him, had the goodness to threaten, he gave thatmarquis warning, that he would accuse _him_ as his accomplice! The Kingwas unpleasantly anxious to have him racked, nevertheless; but as thejudges now found out that torture was contrary to the law of England--itis a pity they did not make the discovery a little sooner--John Feltonwas simply executed for the murder he had done. A murder it undoubtedlywas, and not in the least to be defended: though he had freed Englandfrom one of the most profligate, contemptible, and base court favouritesto whom it has ever yielded.
A very different man now arose. This was SIR THOMAS WENTWORTH, aYorkshire gentleman, who had sat in Parliament for a long time, and whohad favoured arbitrary and haughty principles, but who had gone over tothe people's side on receiving offence from Buckingham. The King, muchwanting such a man--for, besides being naturally favourable to the King'scause, he had great abilities--made him first a Baron, and then aViscount, and gave him high employment, and won him most completely.
A Parliament, however, was still in existence, and was _not_ to be won.On the twentieth of January, one thousand six hundred and twenty-nine,SIR JOHN ELIOT, a great man who had been active in the Petition of Right,brought forward other strong resolutions against the King's chiefinstruments, and called upon the Speaker to put them to the vote. Tothis the Speaker answered, 'he was commanded otherwise by the King,' andgot up to leave the chair--which, according to the rules of the House ofCommons would have obliged it to adjourn without doing anything more--whentwo members, named Mr. HOLLIS and Mr. VALENTINE, held him down. A sceneof great confusion arose among the members; and while many swords weredrawn and flashing about, the King, who was kept informed of all that wasgoing on, told the captain of his guard to go down to the House and forcethe doors. The resolutions were by that time, however, voted, and theHouse adjourned. Sir John Eliot and those two members who had held theSpeaker down, were quickly summoned before the council. As they claimedit to be their privilege not to answer out of Parliament for anythingthey had said in it, they were committed to the Tower. The King thenwent down and dissolved the Parliament, in a speech wherein he mademention of these gentlemen as 'Vipers'--which did not do him much goodthat ever I have heard of.
As they refused to gain their liberty by saying they were sorry for whatthey had done, the King, always remarkably unforgiving, never overlookedtheir offence. When they demanded to be brought up before the court ofKing's Bench, he even resorted to the meanness of having them moved aboutfrom prison to prison, so that the writs issued for that purpose shouldnot legally find them. At last they came before the court and weresentenced to heavy fines, and to be imprisoned during the King'spleasure. When Sir John Eliot's health had quite given way, and he solonged for change of air and scene as to petition for his release, theKing sent back the answer (worthy of his Sowship himself) that thepetition was not humble enough. When he sent another petition by hisyoung son, in which he pathetically offered to go back to prison when hishealth was restored, if he might be released for its recovery, the Kingstill disregarded it. When he died in the Tower, and his childrenpetitioned to be allowed to take his body down to Cornwall, there to layit among the ashes of his forefathers, the King returned for answer, 'LetSir John Eliot's body be buried in the church of that parish where hedied.' All this was like a very little King indeed, I think.
And now, for twelve long years, steadily pursuing his design of settinghimself up and putting the people down, the King called no Parliament;but ruled without one. If twelve thousand volumes were written in hispraise (as a good many have been) it would still remain a fact,impossible to be denied, that for twelve years King Charles the Firstreigned in England unlawfully and despotically, seized upon his subjects'goods and money at his pleasure, and punished according to his unbridledwill all who ventured to oppose him. It is a fashion with some people tothink that this King's career was cut short; but I must say myself that Ithink he ran a pretty long one.
WILLIAM LAUD, Archbishop of Canterbury, was the King's right-hand man inthe religious part of the putting down of the people's liberties. Laud,who was a sincere man, of large learning but small sense--for the twothings sometimes go together in very different quantities--though aProtestant, held opinions so near those of the Catholics, that the Popewanted to make a Cardinal of him, if he would have accepted that favour.He looked upon vows, robes, lighted candles, images, and so forth, asamazingly important in religious ceremonies; and he brought in animmensity of bowing and candle-snuffing. He also regarded archbishopsand bishops as a sort of miraculous persons, and was inveterate in thelast degree against any who thought otherwise. Accordingly, he offeredup thanks to Heaven, and was in a state of much pious pleasure, when aScotch clergyman, named LEIGHTON, was pilloried, whipped, branded in thecheek, and had one of his ears cut off and one of his nostrils slit, forcalling bishops trumpery and the inventions of men. He originated on aSunday morning the prosecution of WILLIAM PRYNNE, a barrister who was ofsimilar opinions, and who was fined a thousand pounds; who was pilloried;who had his ears cut off on two occasions--one ear at a time--and who wasimprisoned for life. He highly approved of the punishment of DOCTORBASTWICK, a physician; who was also fined a thousand pounds; and whoafterwards had _his_ ears cut off, and was imprisoned for life. Thesewere gentle methods of persuasion, some will tell you: I think, they wererather calculated to be alarming to the people.
In the money part of the putting down of the people's liberties, the Kingwas equally gentle, as some will tell you: as I think, equally alarming.He levied those duties of tonnage and poundage, and increased them as hethought fit. He granted monopolies to companies of merchants on theirpaying him for them, notwithstanding the great complaints that had, foryears and years, been made on the subject of monopolies. He fined thepeople for disobeying proclamations issued by his Sowship in directviolation of law. He revived the detested Forest laws, and took privateproperty to himself as his forest right. Above all, he determined tohave what was called Ship Money; that is to say, money for the support ofthe fleet--not only from the seaports, but from all the counties ofEngland: having found out that, in some ancient time or other, all thecounties paid it. The grievance of this ship money being somewhat toostrong, JOHN CHAMBERS, a citizen of London, refused to pay his part ofit. For this the Lord Mayor ordered John Chambers to prison, and forthat John Chambers brought a suit against the Lord Mayor. LORD SAY,also, behaved like a real nobleman, and declared he would not pay. But,the sturdiest and best opponent of the ship money was JOHN HAMPDEN, agentleman of Buckinghamshire, who had sat among the 'vipers' in the Houseof Commons when there was such a thing, and who had been the bosom friendof Sir John Eliot. This case was tried before the twelve judges in theCourt of Exchequer, and again the King's lawyers said it was impossiblethat ship money could be wrong, because the King could do no wrong,however hard he tried--and he really did try very hard during thesetwelve years. Seven of the judges said that was quite true, and Mr.Hampden was bound to pay: five of the judges said that was quite false,and Mr. Hampden was not bound to pay. So, the King triumphed (as hethought), by making Hampden the most popular man in England; wherematters were getting to that height now, that many honest Englishmencould not endure their country, and sailed away across the seas to founda colony in Massachusetts Bay in America. It is said that Hampdenhimself and his relation OLIVER CROMWELL were going with a company ofsuch voyagers, and were actually on board ship, when they were stopped bya proclamation, prohibiting sea captains to carry out such passengerswithout the royal license. But O! it would have been well for the Kingif he had let them go! This was the state of England. If Laud had beena madman just broke loose, he could not have done more mischief than hedid in Scotland. In his endeavours (in which he was seconded by theKing, then in person in that part of his dominions) to force his ownideas of bishops, and his own religious forms and ceremonies upon theScotch, he roused that nation to a perfect frenzy. They formed a solemnleague, which they called The Covenant, for the preservation of their ownreligious forms; they rose in arms throughout the whole country; theysummoned all their men to prayers and sermons twice a day by beat ofdrum; they sang psalms, in which they compared their enemies to all theevil spirits that ever were heard of; and they solemnly vowed to smitethem with the sword. At first the King tried force, then treaty, then aScottish Parliament which did not answer at all. Then he tried the EARLOF STRAFFORD, formerly Sir Thomas Wentworth; who, as LORD WENTWORTH, hadbeen governing Ireland. He, too, had carried it with a very high handthere, though to the benefit and prosperity of that country.
Strafford and Laud were for conquering the Scottish people by force ofarms. Other lords who were taken into council, recommended that aParliament should at last be called; to which the King unwillinglyconsented. So, on the thirteenth of April, one thousand six hundred andforty, that then strange sight, a Parliament, was seen at Westminster. Itis called the Short Parliament, for it lasted a very little while. Whilethe members were all looking at one another, doubtful who would dare tospeak, MR. PYM arose and set forth all that the King had done unlawfullyduring the past twelve years, and what was the position to which Englandwas reduced. This great example set, other members took courage andspoke the truth freely, though with great patience and moderation. TheKing, a little frightened, sent to say that if they would grant him acertain sum on certain terms, no more ship money should be raised. Theydebated the matter for two days; and then, as they would not give him allhe asked without promise or inquiry, he dissolved them.
But they knew very well that he must have a Parliament now; and he beganto make that discovery too, though rather late in the day. Wherefore, onthe twenty-fourth of September, being then at York with an army collectedagainst the Scottish people, but his own men sullen and discontented likethe rest of the nation, the King told the great council of the Lords,whom he had called to meet him there, that he would summon anotherParliament to assemble on the third of November. The soldiers of theCovenant had now forced their way into England and had taken possessionof the northern counties, where the coals are got. As it would never doto be without coals, and as the King's troops could make no head againstthe Covenanters so full of gloomy zeal, a truce was made, and a treatywith Scotland was taken into consideration. Meanwhile the northerncounties paid the Covenanters to leave the coals alone, and keep quiet.
We have now disposed of the Short Parliament. We have next to see whatmemorable things were done by the Long one.