the new writs money in lieu of counties; to be enforced by process; "an supply of all occasions ;" 3 ship-money to the inland counties: "For since that all the kingdom is interested both in the honour, safety, and profit, it is just and reasonable that they should all put to their helping hands." The new writs issued on the 4th of August were demanded therefore directed to the sheriffs of every county in England and Wales, commanding each to provide a warship for the ships of all king's service of a given tonnage and equipment; and along with each writ were sent instructions to the sheriff to levy upon his county instead of a ship, a given sum of money, the collection of which he was to enforce, if necessary, by compulsory compulsory process, in order that it might be promptly paid to the treasurer of the navy.2 From the terms of these writs it clearly appeared that they were not intended to meet any sudden emergency, but were to stand as a permanent source of taxation for war purposes; they were to be, as Clarendon tells us, "a spring and magazine that should have no bottom, and for an everlasting everlasting supply of all occasions." This startling proposition to set aside the fundamental principle of the constitution, which declared that things for the common good of all must be provided for in parliament, by the common consent of all, was first resisted in the hundred of Bloxham, in Oxfordshire, where the chief constables replied to the sheriff's warrant that they had "no authority to assess or tax any man," nor did the warrant, in their judgment, give "them any power so to do." After similar difficulties had arisen in Essex and Devonshire,1 the judges the judges were consulted through Finch, in December, and they soon replied, in substance, that where the good and safety of the kingdom in general is concerned, and the whole kingdom in danger, of which his majesty is the only judge, there the charge of the defence ought to be borne by all the kingdom in general. Even in the face of such a declaration, Chambers the indomitable Chambers, who had so resolutely resisted the the matter payment of tonnage and poundage, appealed to the king's bench as a court for a formal judgment. But the judges refused even to permit the question of right to be argued, for the reason assigned by Berkeley, "that there was a rule of law and resisted first in Oxfordshire; gave answers favorable to the king; presents in the king's bench; 1 Rushworth, vol. ii. p. 294. 2 Fadera, vol. xix. p. 658 et seq. 3 Hist. Rebellion, vol. i. p. 68. 4 State Papers, Dom., cccii. 87, 90; Ibid., ccci. 96. 5 Rushworth, vol. ii. p. 355; Bramston's Autobiography (Camden Soc.), See Gardiner, vol. vii. pp. 92– p. 66. 94. refused to question of ship writs sustained a rule of government, and that many things which might not judges be done by the rule of law might be done by the rule of gov- permit the ernment,' "1—the jure divino doctrine announced in Bate's case. right to be Thus encouraged and sustained by the servile judges, who had argued; before their eyes the fate of Coke and Crew, Charles, as a final indication that ship-money, which produced an annual income of more than £200,000, was to become a permanent tax, issued on October 9, 1636, another set of ship writs to all the the realm.2 In reply to this fresh demand it was that Danby, an of 1636; old servant of the crown, boldly advised the king, rather than assert such a claim so opposed to the fundamental laws of the kingdom, to summon a parliament.3 The only response was again a fresh appeal to the judges, who, in February, 1637, again by the answered more formally than before, in favor of the crown.4 judges in 1637; The time had now come when the constitution was to find a resolute defender, in the person of John Hampden, a gentle- John Hampden; man of the inland county of Buckingham, the bosom friend of Eliot and Pym, and a cousin of Oliver Cromwell, who was determined, no matter what the result should be, that the great question of ship-money should be argued in open court by famous advocates, who could thus be heard by the nation as a whole. With that end in view, Hampden resisted the pay- resisted ment of the 20 s. assessed on his lands at Great Missenden, pay 5 payment, and when proceedings were instituted against him in the ex- demurred chequer for his refusal to pay, he appeared and demurred to writs in the the writ as insufficient in law. The issue thus fairly raised exchequer ; was argued in November and December, 1637, for twelve days, case argued before a full bench, by Oliver St. John and Holborne for ber and Hampden, and by the attorney and solicitor-general on behalf December; of the crown. The essence of the argument made for Hampden was that the sum in question was a tax imposed for the argument purpose of raising extraordinary revenue, which could not be against the levied except by parliament, whose exclusive right so to levy 1 Rushworth, vol. ii. p. 323. 2 Fadera, vol. xx. p. 56. 8 Correr to the Doge, December 2; Ven. MSS., cited in Gardiner, vol. viii. p. 201. 4 State Papers, Dom., cccxlvi. pp. 11, 14; Rushworth, vol. ii. p. 352. The answer of the judges was then recorded in the star chamber, in chancery, in the king's bench, common pleas, and exchequer, and an intimation was given 5 He was also assessed 31 s. 6 d. on to the in Novem essence of the writs; their validity sustained seven in 1638 by judges against five; only two of the five held with had been confirmed by many statutes, notably by the Great Charter, De tallagio non concedendo, and the recent Petition of Right. The counter argument made for the crown was sustained by seven of the judges, who delivered their judg ments at intervals during the year 1638. Chief Justice Finch, in summing up the opinions of his brethren, said boldly that "Acts of parliament to take away his [the king's] royal power in the defence of his kingdom are void. . . . 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." 1 Of the five judges who sided with Hampden, three based their judgments on purely technical grounds, leaving only two who held with him on the merits. Crooke, speaking in his behalf, said in plain words: "This writ is illegal, not being by authority of parliament. It is against the common law, as appears by the fact that it is the first since the Conquest sent to any inland town to prepare a ship."2 The practical effect of this judicial victory, which Charles won by the smallest majority possible, Hampden was to exalt Hampden into a national leader, who dared "on his own charge, to support the liberty and prosperity of the kingdom;" his case was no longer looked upon, as Clarendon tells us, "as the case of one man, but the case of the kingdom, nor as an imposition laid upon them by the king, but by the judges, which they thought themselves bound in conscience to the public justice not to submit to." The magistrates whom James and Charles had robbed of their sacred independence possessed no longer the power to convince the nation that their judgments were the law. Hampden on the merits; thus became a national leader. Charles' two great ministers; Wentworth as a leader of the popular party; Throughout the eleven years of personal rule during which Charles was driving the conciliar system on to its doom, he was zealously supported by two able ministers, who stood firmly by his side until first one and then the other was stricken down by "that two-handed engine at the door, ready to smite once, and smite no more.' In the parliament of 1614 Sir Thomas Wentworth, a young Yorkshire gentleman of fortune, appeared for the first time as the representative of the great "4 1 R. v. Hampden (case of shipmoney), 13 Car. I. 1637, State Trials, vol. iii. pp. 825-1316. 2 See Denman's Broom's Const. Law, pp. 338-355; Thomas' Leading Cases in Const. Law, pp. 21, 22. 8 Hist. Rebellion, vol. i. p. 69 et seq. 4 Milton's Lycidas. in 1627; of the county of the north, and so zealous did he become in the popular cause that he was put upon the penal list of sheriffs appointed in order to insure their absence from Charles' second parliament, which met in February, 1626.1 While there is no evidence to prove that he favored the impeachment of Buckingham which then took place, the fact remains that in the following July he was abruptly dismissed as justice of the dismissed peace, and the office of custos rotulorum bestowed upon as justice his of the hated rival in the county, Sir John Savile. Aroused by such peace; an insult, he became more resolute than ever in his opposition as a member of the country party, suffering imprisonment in imprisoned 1627 for his refusal to pay the forced loan demanded in that year.2 2 Thus it was that he was able to grasp the leadership in the first session of Charles' third parliament, which began in March, 1628, and whose labors ended in the adoption of the Petition of Right, which drew its substance from Wentworth real author and its form from Coke. But with that great event ended Petition his connection with the popular cause. On the 26th of June of Right; the first session was prorogued, and on July 22 Wentworth was his convercreated a peer and entered into the royal favor. And yet the othe master of the history of that epoch claims that he was neither the crown; deserter nor apostate; that having removed through the Petition of Right all abuses which he regarded as prejudicial to good government, he took his place naturally at Charles' side because in his eyes "Presbyterianism in the church and Parliamentarism in the state would seem to be two forms of one disease of the error which sought to control the government of the wise few by the voice of the ignorant many." As a maintainer of the constitution in its Tudor form, Wentworth is he is said said to have been for a time "with the opposition, but not of been "with it." 4 Whatever his real motives for change may have been, the oppothis born administrator was certainly steadfast to the last in the cause of his master, and scornful of all private ends in the desperate struggle which he waged to build up in England, as Richelieu was building up in France, a system of despotism whose organization was to be "thorough." In August, 1628, the dagger of Felton removed Buckingham from his path, and 1 See above, p. 258. 2 See above, p. 264. 8 See above, p. 268. 4 Gardiner, vol. vi. p. 335; vol. vii. pp. 137, 152. sion to cause of to have sition, but not of it;" made president of the the North, then lord Ireland; in the following December he was made president of the Council of the North, the first great object of his ambition. Not Council of until November, 1629, was he sworn of the privy council, about the time from which his close alliance with Laud is said to have begun. In January, 1632, he was appointed lord deputy deputy for for Ireland, but he did not enter Dublin until July of the following year. Before the six years of despotic rule which then began had drawn to a close, Wentworth was able to write to Laud that "the king is as absolute here as any prince in the with Laud. world can be;"1 and when in February, 1637, the judges for the second time expressed themselves in favor of the legality of ship-money, he wrote: "This decision of the judges will therefore make the king absolute at home and formidable abroad. Let him only abstain from war a few years, that he may habituate his subjects to the payment of this tax, and in the end he will find himself more powerful and respected than any of his predecessors." 2 his correspondence Laud made primate in August, 1633; his career prior to that time; It was natural that Wentworth should thus pour his political aspirations into the sympathetic ear of Laud, who, on the 6th of August, 1633, only a few days after the lord deputy's arrival in Ireland, had been raised by Charles to the primacy of the kingdom. A brief statement has already been made as to Laud's career prior to that time, including a summary of the leading dogmas which he, as the chief of the Arminian element, proposed to substitute for the Calvinistic tenets so firmly engrafted by the Puritan clergy upon the doctrines of the state church. His first serious effort in that direction was made when, as bishop of London, he urged the king in the Thirty- December, 1628, to reissue the Thirty-nine Articles, prefaced Articles to by a royal Declaration that they should be accepted and be accepted expounded by all only "in the literal and grammatical sense," literal and a blow at Puritan interpretation which was fiercely resented grammatical sense;" by that party in the resolutions adopted by the house in the stormy session which occurred at the close of Charles' third nine "in the 1 In the course of this confidential correspondence the word "thorough or "through was familiarly used to describe the general policy of which they were both advocates. 2 Strafford Papers, vol. ii. p. 61. For his views upon Hampden's conduct in resisting ship-money, see Ibid., pp. 136, 156. 8 See above, p. 254. 4 The Declaration, which every new minister was bound to read, was set as a preface to the edition of the articles of 1628, and is still printed in the Book of Common Prayer. |