the con ference at Court, which, after several postponements, finally began at Hampton Hampton Court, on January 14, 1604. During the debate, which proceeded with great acrimony, the king seems to have borne himself with reasonable patience until Reynolds, president of an Oxford college, and one of the Puritan champions, in advocating the restoration of "Prophesyings," ventured to suggest that all disputed questions presented by them should be referred to the bishop and his presbyters. At that hated name the king, with Melville's words burning in his ears, fired up as against the he answered that, "If you aim at a Scottish presbytery, it in which James declared Puritan party within the church; idea of agreeth as well with monarchy as God with the Devil. Then Jack, and Tom, and Will, and Dick, shall meet, and at their pleasure censure me and my council, and all our proceedings. Then Will will stand up and say, 'It must be thus;' then Dick shall reply, 'Nay, marry, but we will have it thus ;' and therefore here I must once more reiterate my former speech and say, Le Roi s'avisera." Thus it was that James declared himself against the adoption of any material part of the Puritan system, while he clearly manifested in his various speeches made during the conference that he was not imbued with that Bacon's broad spirit of toleration with which Bacon had attempted to toleration; impress him by the dedication of a treatise, in which the great thinker had earnestly advocated spiritual freedom under the guardianship of law as the true panacea for existing evils.1 Every important request made by the Puritan clergy was refused; and the conference was closed by a declaration from declaration; James, who felt that he had vanquished his opponents by his logical prowess, that "If this be all they have to say, I shall make them conform themselves, or I will hurry them out of the land, or else do worse." 2 The one good and practical outcome of the conference, which thus ended angrily between James and the most aggressive element in the realm, resulted from the prompt acceptance by the king of a motion made the making by Reynolds for a revision of the Bible, which gave to the of the "Au- English-speaking world the famous "Authorized Version." James' intolerant thorized Version." The confusion that arose from the fact that there were three versions then in use-the "Great Bible" of Henry VIII.; the 2 Gardiner, Hist. Eng., vol. i. p. 1 See Bacon's Letters and Life, vol. iii. p. 103: "Certain Considerations touching the Better Pacification and Edification of the Church of England." 157. 8 Caldwell's Conf., p. 187. 'Bishops' Bible," revised under the direction of Parker; and the "Geneva Bible," prepared in that city by Whittingham and others during the Marian persecution made it highly desirable that there should be "one uniform translation." And thus after five or six years of systematic labor by the greatest scholars of the time was finally published that version which, for more than two centuries and a half, has charmed all lovers of pure and melodious English prose.1 and the While the Puritans were persuading themselves that James' James Calvinistic education would prompt him to lift from their catholics; necks the yoke of the Elizabethan church, the catholics were hoping that the unwavering support they had given to his mother's cause would induce him to lighten the pressure of the persecuting statutes under which they were then suffering. And for a time their hopes were greatly encouraged. A week he hears a deputation before his coronation, which took place on the 25th of July, a week the king heard a deputation of the leading catholics, in the pre- before his sence of the council, and in reply to their petition he assured them that while he could not tolerate their worship, he would his tolerant remit the fines for recusancy so long as they demeaned them- response; selves as loyal subjects.2 As a result of the toleration thus extended, it is said that within the nine months which followed Elizabeth's death, one hundred and forty priests landed in England, through whose conversions the number of the catho- increase in lic population was considerably increased. This condition the catholic of things so offended the Puritan party, which was already accusing the king of papistry, that he was compelled to return driven hastily to the old methods of repression. Measures were at Puritans once adopted for the discovery and presentment of recusants; to the old the magistrates were ordered to put the penal laws into imme- methods of diate execution; and on the 22d of February, 1604, a proclamation was issued ordering the banishment of all priests by March 19, the day fixed for the meeting of James' first parliament.* 5. The stern rebukes which the king thus administered, first to the Puritans at Hampton Court and then to the catholics, were emphasized in his opening speech to the two houses by 1 For a full statement, see Blount, Reform. of the Church of Eng., vol. ii. PP. 472-478. 2 Jardine's Gunpowder Plot, p. 10; Gardiner, Hist. Eng., vol. i. p. 115. 8 December 13, Roman Transcripts, R. O.; Gardiner, Hist. Eng., vol. i. p. 142. + Lingard, Hist. Eng., vol. vii. p. 37. population; by the return repression; proclamation for the banishment of priests. James' 1604: open ing speech rebuked both Puri tans and catholics; made an angry the declarations that he was averse to the former, not because they differed from him in opinion, but because they were "ever discontented with the present government, and impatient to suffer any superiority, which maketh their sect unable to be suffered in any well-governed commonwealth;" and that the clergy of the latter could not be permitted to remain in the kingdom so long as they held to the doctrine that the pope possessed "an imperial civil power over all kings and emperthe former ors." In reply to the imputation made against them, the Puritans, who are said to have composed three fourths 1 of the response; house, were quick to remind the king, in the answer made by the speaker to the address, that "new laws could not be instituted, nor imperfect laws reformed, nor inconvenient laws abrogated, by any other power than that of the high court of parliament, that is, by the agreement of the commons, the accord of the lords, and the assent of the sovereign: that to him belonged the right either negatively to frustrate, or affirmatively to ratify, but that he could not institute; every bill must pass the two houses before it could be submitted to his pleasure." In this angry spirit it was that the commons turned to the right of the consideration of their exclusive right to try contested elections, a question which grew out of the fact that the king had directed, elections; in his proclamation2 calling upon the constituencies to send up members, that all returns should be made into chancery, where they might be rejected as unlawful, if any "should be found to be made contrary to the proclamation." The merits of the cases of Goodwin and Fortescue that thus arose have Fortescue; already been set forth at an earlier stage of this work, where freedom the freedom of members from arrest was also considered, — a vindicated privilege again vindicated by this parliament in the case of Sir in Sherley's Thomas Sherley, which brought about the enactment of 1 Jac. 1. c. 13, defining for the first time by statute the rights of the house, the duties of officers, and the rights of creditors in such cases. Having thus maintained its privileges, the house next exclusive commons to try contested cases of Goodwin and from arrest case; See Gardiner's qualification of that 2 See Fadera, vol. xvi. p. 561. curred Smalley's case (Hatsell, vol. i. p. 90), which was followed in the same reign by the case of Fitzherbert in 1592, and by that of Neale shortly thereafter. Hatsell, vol. i. p. 107; D'Ewes, pp. 518, 520; May, Parl. Practice, pp. 132, 133. Then came Sherley's case in 1604. element in religious refused to addressed itself to the consideration of the feudal survivals known as purveyance and wardship, under the first of which purveyance and the approach of the king's court carried terror into every diswardship; trict invaded, and under the last of which the lands of the greater landowners were liable at their deaths to undergo a temporary confiscation.1 In order to cut off once and for all these vexatious abuses, two bills were introduced, which offered to give to the crown as revenue sums larger than those derived Puritan either from purveyance or the court of wards. At the same the house time the Puritan element, smarting under the results of the revived the Hampton Court conference, revived the religious question question; through a motion made by Sir Francis Hastings, on April 16, for a committee to consider "of the confirmation and reëstablishing of the religion now established within this kingdom, as also of the settling, increasing, and maintaining a learned ministry." In reply to a suggestion from the king that they should first confer with convocation upon that subject, the house house distinctly refused, expressing their willingness, however, confer with to confer with the bishops as lords of parliament. The only result of discussion of these tangled questions was to delay all action upon the one subject upon which James had set his heart, the union of England and Scotland, a consummation union of which he had told the commons would enable him to leave at England! his death "one worship of God, one kingdom entirely governed, Scotland one uniformity of law."2 In order to advance that object, the king on May 30 called the commons to his presence and rated them sharply upon their proceedings, the result of which was that a bill was hurried through the house on June 2 naming twenty-eight commissioners, who were to confer upon the sub- commisject of union with a similar body to be appointed by the Scots, it being understood that parliament should meet in the following year to receive their report. Shortly before this, however, the commons had refused to assent to the proposal that James should immediately assume the title of King of Great Britain, upon the ground that there should first be some agreement as to the terms of the union. In order to bring about a better 1 See Blackstone, Com., vol. i. p. 262; vol. ii. p. 58. A good historical review of both rights, with a statement of all prior legislation affecting them, may also be found in Gardiner, Hist. Eng., 2 Commons' Journals, vol. i. p. 171. convoca tion; and projected; sioners commons present to the king "A Form of Apology and Satis faction; its grava men par understanding with the king, whose plans they were so often compelled to thwart, and in order to vindicate their motives, the commons prepared a protestation entitled "A Form of Apology and Satisfaction to be delivered to His Majesty," which was read in the house on the 20th of June. This document is of constitutional importance, from the fact that it set forth at the beginning of the conflict in a conservative and monarchical spirit all the grievances which the nation then called upon the crown to redress, with the assurance that "if Your Majesty shall vouchsafe at your best pleasure and leisure to enter into gracious consideration of our petitions for each of those burdens under which your whole people have long time mourned, hoping for relief by Your Majesty, then may you be assured to be possessed of their hearts forever, and if of their hearts, then of all they can do and have." Passing over the explanations made of their conduct as to the union with Scotland, and in reference to the bills introduced for the abolition of purveyance and wardship, the gravamen of the liamentary petition is found to consist of the definitions given of parliamentary privilege and of the demands made by the Puritans in the matter of religious reform. The commons assured the king, firstly, that it was a grave error to suppose that their privilege privileges were held not of right, but of grace only; they are, defined; they said, "of right and due inheritance no less than our very lands and goods;" secondly, that it was equally erroneous to suppose that they were no court of record, nor yet a court that can command view of records," not as a courtesy, but as a matter of right; and finally, that the gravest of all mistakes was embodied in the idea that the right to examine the returns of writs for knights and burgesses was without their "compass, and due to chancery." Such misconceptions, they said, tended "directly and apparently to the utter overthrow of the very fundamental privileges of our house, and therein of the rights. and liberties of the whole commons of the realm of England.' specifica- Upon the ecclesiastical question, the "Apology," after denying "that the kings of England have any absolute power in themfor religious selves either to alter religion, or to make any laws conreform; cerning the same, otherwise than in temporal causes by consent of parliament," frankly admits that no man from weakness of conscience "may be exempted after parliament from obedi privilege and religious reform; tion of demands |