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of the

conflict

between

conciliar

mentary systems;

abnormal powers of the king in council should once more be beginning restored to the king in parliament. With the new life that entered into the national assembly as Elizabeth's reign drew to a close came the conviction that the two systems of gov and parlia- ernment were incompatible; that the Tudor system was fast becoming unequal to the task of governing a nation which had already entered upon a career of marvellous development. Although the first move was made, before the end of the great queen's reign, by the prosperous middle class, who had long administered the local affairs of the country, and who were fast becoming independent by reason of wealth acquired in commerce, manufactures, and daring adventure, the feeling seems to have been general that no real change of system should be enforced until after the installation of Elizabeth's successor. James and Charles, so far from accepting the mission of change and reform which thus naturally arose out of it by resist changed conditions, not only continued the system of governing reforms demanded ment by councils which the Tudors had bequeathed to them, conditions; but attempted to intensify its absolutism both in theory and

James and

Charles intensified

by changed

practice.1 What the constitution of the council was in the days of Elizabeth it remained down to the meeting of the Long Parliament, and during that period its powers were stretched to a greater extent than had ever before been known. Between the parliamentary system, animated by the new spirit of liberty which had entered into the commons, and the system of government by councils, animated by the new spirit of absolutism derived from James, a conflict was inevitable. That conflict was a long and bitter one. Not until after the completion of two revolutions was the English nation able finally to subject the conciliar system as organized by the Tudors and enforced by the Stuarts to the parliamentary system as it exists in modern times. The result of the transition was not to parliament; abolish the council, but to so reform, reorganize, and readjust it in its relations to the parliament as to make the national will substitution instead of the royal will its driving and directing force. The immediate task before us is to draw out the details of the royal will. constitutional conflict thus inaugurated from the accession of

not until after two revolutions

was the conflict finally

solved in favor of

of the

national

for the

1 "The Stuarts might have ruled with more skill. They might have been the leaders of a reform, instead of the victims of a revolution. No

policy, however, could have long averted some alteration in the government."Dicey, The Privy Council, p. 120.

James I. down to the beginning of the civil war, a period during which its battles were fought out in parliament and in the courts of common law.

his way to

was con

religious

and

4. After confirming Cecil and his fellow councillors in office James on until his arrival in England, James set out from Edinburgh on London April 5, 1603, holding court on the way at Berwick, Newcastle, and York successively. While thus engaged in the northern with the counties, the new king was brought face to face with the domi- question; nant ecclesiastical question then pressing for solution by the presentation of what is called the "Millenary Petition," be- the "Millenary cause it purported to have been signed by one thousand of Petition," the clergy of the Church of England, which then numbered its scope about ten thousand.1 The Puritans who thus came forward purpose; to ask a modification of the religious settlement that Elizabeth had made, and to which they were then outwardly conforming, did not demand the abolition of episcopacy and a reorganization of the church upon a presbyterian basis, but only a removal from the prayer-book of some usages which they considered superstitious, the amendment of the Thirtynine Articles by the addition of nine Calvinistic "assertions," the reformation of the church courts, a more rigorous observation of the Puritan Sabbath, and a provision for the training of a preaching clergy. Despite the fact that the petition, James' upon which no action was taken for the moment, was met by the protest warm and contemptuous protests from the two universities, of the unithe king informed them that he intended to accept the suggestion for the maintenance of a preaching clergy, and urged them to follow his example. Thus encouraged, the Puritan party. attempted to strengthen their views during the summer by obtaining signatures to petitions among the laity, an attempt that led to a proclamation forbidding all such demonstrations. In order to settle the pending questions in the forum of debate, the king ordered that a conference1 should be held in his presence between certain learned advocates of the two parties

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response to

versities;

the conference 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 3 for a revision of the Bible, which gave to the thorized English-speaking world the famous "Authorized 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.

James' intolerant

of the "Au

Version."

1 See Bacon's Letters and Life, vol. iii. p. 103: "Certain Considerations touching the Better Pacification and Edification of the Church of England."

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"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 before his coronation, which took place on the 25th of July, a week deputation the king heard a deputation of the leading catholics, in the pre-coronation; 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. 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

before his

the catholic

by the

lic population was considerably increased.3 This condition population; 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.1 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.

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.

37.

Lingard, Hist. Eng., vol. vii. p.

repression;

proclamation for the

banishment of priests.

James' first parliament met March 19,

1604: open

ing speech

rebuked

both Puri

tans and catholics;

the former 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 emperOrs." 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 I 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;

1 See Gardiner's qualification of that
statement, vol. i. p. 178.

2 See Fadera, vol. xvi. p. 561.
8 See vol. i. pp. 530, 331.
4 Commons' Journals, passim, from
March 22 to May 22, vol. i. pp. 149-222.
The great case of Ferrers (vol. i. p.
533) occurred in 1542. In 1575 oc-

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.

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