of Com ence of by the of Fuller An opportunity to abolish that security, and at the same time to get rid of the troublesome and influential chief justice who relied upon it, was given to James in 1616 by the "Case of the "Case Commendams," heard in the exchequer chamber in that year mendams;" before the twelve judges, wherein the general prerogative of the king to grant a living to be held in commendam, that is, along with a bishopric, was argued by counsel in connection with the special points of the case. When, in 1607, Fuller as independcounsel for two Puritans had disputed the power of the high the bar commission to fine and imprison, he was punished by that assailed court for having slandered the king's authority; and when, punishment in 1613, Whitelocke, a lawyer who had denounced impositions and Whitein James' first parliament, gave a private opinion to his client locke; that a commission issued by the king to inquire into the state of the navy was illegal, he was committed to the Fleet, and then censured in the star chamber. Equally regardless of the independence of the judges, the king now directed the attorneygeneral to write a letter to those who were charged with the decision of the "Case of Commendams," in which they were instructed not to proceed to judgment until after consultation. with him. The judges then replied collectively to the king that as the attorney-general's letter was illegal, they had proceeded with the case on the appointed day. When, however, in the the judges were subjected to censure by the king and council, Commenthey all finally gave way but Coke, who maintained that the dams" delay demanded was contrary to law and to their oaths. To judges the abstract question whether in a like case in future he would consult with the king before rendering judgment, in the event except his majesty should consider himself interested, nothing more could be drawn from him than the statement that when such a case should arise, he would do what was fitting for a judge to do.5 For this noble declaration, Coke, after suspension from office and censure by the council, was dismissed from the chief wood in 1572, see Foss, Judges, vol. V. p. 321. 1 It was afterwards held by the twelve judges that Fuller's contempt was punishable by the common law courts and not the ecclesiastical. Rep. 41. 12 33-40, 113-118; June 12, Council Re- 8 Bacon first wrote to Coke alone 2 Whitelocke's Liber Famelicus, pp. 44, ii. 5 Carte, vol. iv. p. 35. "Case of all the yielded to pressure Coke; from the dismissed justiceship in November, 1616.1 The Tudor system of governchief ment still survived, but the policy employed by the Tudors in justiceship its administration was now completely at an end. Not only had James destroyed that oneness of aim, that singleness of purpose, which had united the parliament to the monarchs of that house, but he had at last overthrown the sacred independence of the judges which they had to a great extent upheld. November, 1616. Somerset superseded ingham, In the year preceding the dethronement of Coke from the by Buck- kingship of the common law, Somerset, who had risen so rapidly to giddy heights of political power, was suddenly eclipsed by the rise of a fresh favorite, the son of a Leicestershire knight, whose personal beauty was as great as his own. In the fall of 1614, George Villiers, at the age of twenty-two, first presented himself to James, and so rapid was his rise that, upon the overthrow of Somerset in the next year, he was able to take his place as evidence of the fact that the rule of personal dependents was to become in England, as it had been in Scotland, a matter of settled policy. Before the close of 1616, Villiers was raised to the peerage as Viscount Villiers; during the two following years he was made first earl and then marquis of Buckingham; in 1619 he was made lord high admiral;2 for whom and in 1623 the king revived the title of duke, which had been in abeyance since the execution of Norfolk, in order to bestow upon the favorite the highest honor in the gift of an English sovereign. To the rising fortunes of Buckingham Bacon promptly attached himself, and in June, 1616, he became a privy councillor ; 4 in the next year he was made lord keeper;5 Bacon and in January, 1618, he became lord chancellor, an honor to chancellor which was soon added a place in the peerage as Lord Veruin 1618; lam.6 Such were the two leading statesmen, of strangely different temper, who were called upon to look into the king's finances in 1617, when it was found that his debts amounted to £726,000. Bacon had always counselled economy, and the the title of duke was revived in 1623; made lord 1 Bacon's Letters and Life, vol. vi. "Since Norfolk's execution, there 5 On March 3 Chancellor Brackley resigned, and on the 7th the great seal was given to Bacon with the inferior title of lord keeper. 6 A name which posterity has ig nored. See Spedding's Letters and Life of Bacon, vol. vi. p. 316. The council to the king, September 27, 1617. State Papers, Dom., xciii. 99. surveyor of the king now consented to a policy of retrenchment, the carrying out of which was committed to Cranfield, who had been appointed1 Cranfield surveyor-general of the customs. While Cranfield reduced general expenditures on the one hand, the income was growing upon customs, the other through a rapid increase in English trade. In that way, without any additional tax upon the consumer, the great customs, which at the king's accession had produced less than £86,000, were now leased for £140,000, the duties on wine which greatly having increased from £4,400 to £15,900.2 While such acces-ncrease sions gave encouragement for the moment, they became of no with the consequence when the king was confronted with the prospect trade. of a foreign war, which the drift of affairs upon the Continent soon put before him. growth of palatine; of the Protestant When, in May, 1561, Queen Elizabeth joined the Lutheran James' daughter states in their refusal to send delegates to the council of Trent, married to England, after long hesitation, definitely espoused the cause the elector of the Reformation; and the Elizabethan tradition, that the German protestants should not be abandoned in any fresh struggle with the house of Austria, which Cecil brought to the council board of James, was greatly strengthened when, in 1612, that minister arranged the marriage of the king's daughter Elizabeth with the heir of the Elector Palatine Frederick IV., the leading prince in that Protestant Union which formation had been formed in 1608 for mutual protection, when the Calvinistic states found themselves begirt on every side but one by met by catholic opponents. In 1609 the formation of the Protestant organizaUnion was met by the organization of the Catholic League Catholic under the leadership of Maximilian, duke of Bavaria, who found League in it convenient to appeal to Spain as the champion of catholicism, a quarter from which he received a promise of aid, provided he should be named as director of the league. After the death of Cecil had made James his own minister, he con- attempt ceived the idea that by a union with Spain, with which he had to control made peace shortly after his accession, he could protect the through German protestants by controlling the action of the league influence; 1 Through Buckingham's influence, in 1615. See Dowell, Hist. of Taxation, vol. i. pp. 189–191. Gardiner, Hist. Eng., vol. iii. p. 196; and to the same effect, Dowell, vol. i. p. 189. 8 See above, p. 159. 4 For the terms of the treaty to which James swore in August, 1604, see Fœdera, vol. xvi. p. 617. Union in tion of 1609; James' the league Spanish proposal of marriage made to Spain in 1614; through Spain's influence with every catholic power. James' interest in that design was greatly strengthened when his friendly disposition was encouraged by a hint from Spain of an alliance1 between his son and the infanta, in whose great prospective dowry he saw a hope of relief from appeals to parliament. In 1614 James proposed such a marriage to Spain, and in 1617, by the formal opening of negotiations, the nation became alarmed at the prospect of a catholic queen, a catholic heir to the throne, and consequent concessions in favor of their co-religionists within the realm.2 In 1619 Ferdinand, that member of the house of Austria who had not only proclaimed but carried out the policy of suppressing heresy by force in the countries he ruled, was elected emperor, and thus became the possessor of the whole Austrian heritage in Germany. In the hope of protecting her protestantism Frederick against the impending doom, Bohemia, after solemnly decreeV., chosen ing the deposition of Ferdinand, chose the young Elector king of Bohemia; Palatine Frederick V., the son-in-law of James, as her king. By the new conditions thus created, the value of James' diplomatic scheme for the control of the Catholic League through Spain's influence with the house of Austria was put to a practical test. The result was that in the spring of 1620 the spring Spain threw off the mask by taking an open part with the was driven emperor in military operations which not only sealed the fate dominions; of Bohemia, but resulted in the driving of James' son-in-law James as a fugitive to North Germany.5 Aroused by the cry for war resolved on that arose upon the reception of the news from the Palati James' and in from his war and demanded a benevolence. nate, the king finally promised aid to the princes of the union, and in the council, where his resolve was received with enthusiasm, a benevolence was agreed upon for the purpose of carrying on the war. Not, however, until it was ascertained that even the prevailing enthusiasm in the protestant cause was insufficient to make such an illegal method of taxation effective was the calling of parliament resolved upon, a conclusion 1 July, 1605. 2 For the whole story, see Gardiner, Hist. Eng., vol. i. p. 343; vol. ii. pp. 138, 252, 316 et seq. 3 See Bryce, The Holy Roman Em Taschenbuch, 1853, pp. 134, 220; Gardiner, vol. iii. p. 309. 5 The decisive struggle took place at Prague, October 29. 6 Contributions to the Palatinate, State Papers, Dom., cxvii. 21, 30, 64; 4 Voigt, in Raumer's Historisches cxix. 14. The actual collections were pire, pp. 323, 324. very small. which was announced in a proclamation issued on the 6th of November. parliament 30, 1621: subsidies granted in aid of the war; 7. To his third parliament, which thus met on the 30th1 A third of January, 1621, James, after giving a vague assurance that met English religion should suffer no detriment through the pend- January ing Spanish marriage, appealed for means to aid him in the recovery of the Palatinate, a cause in which, he said, he had already expended all that he could beg or borrow, not a penny having been received from the estates during a period of ten years. Under these circumstances, the houses unanimously agreed to grant two subsidies,2 not as a sum sufficient for the two expenses of the war, but as an earnest of their good intentions. Having thus discharged their religious duty, the popular party in the house, under the leadership of ex-Chief Justice Coke, who had returned to their ranks after an absence of many years, addressed itself with renewed zeal to the redress of national grievances. Despite the promises, first of Elizabeth, then of James, monopolies had continued to multiply until it now became necessary to check the abuses which arose from them by extraordinary means. During the preceding period of one impeachhundred and sixty-two years (1459-1621) there is no record of revived a parliamentary impeachment either in the rolls of parliament as a means of punishor in the lords' journals. No such proceeding had taken ing monopolists; place since Lord Stanley was impeached in 1459 for not sending his troops to the battle of Bloreheath. The long disuse of this great weapon of parliamentary warfare finds its most probable explanation in the fact that the popular branch of parliament was in no position to initiate such aggressive measures during the period of depression which was coëxtensive with the reign of the house of Tudor, whose princes found it far more convenient to execute either justice or vengeance through bills of attainder, or through judgments rendered in the star chamber. However that may be, the fact remains impeachthat the next regular impeachment to Lord Stanley's in 1459 Mompeswas that of Sir Giles Mompesson, who in the parliament of son, 16215 was impeached, together with Sir Francis Mitchell, and 1 Postponed from the 16th, the date named in the proclamation. 2 Equivalent to about £160,000. See Proceedings and Debates, vol. i. pp. 48, 50. 8 Sir J. F. Stephen, Hist. of the 5 Since that date fifty-four impeach- ment ment of Mitchell, |