as to rights in such nounced against him. On account of Cranfield's bitter complaint of the rule which denied him the assistance of counsel, order made the lords made an order that in all future impeachments the by the lords accused should upon demand be allowed that privilege, and of accused that he should also be furnished with copies of the depositions cases; for and against him.1 During a period of fourteen years no new statute had come into existence; and among those now passed the most important was a declaratory "Act concerning an act Monopolies, and Dispensations with Penal Laws and the For- regulating feitures thereof," 2 which, after excepting some of the principal lies; monopolies then in existence, and after providing for the enjoyment for a limited time of monopolies by those who might make new inventions, declared all others utterly void as contrary to the ancient and fundamental laws of the realm. On the 1st of October, 1624, James prorogued his last parliament,3 James died and on March 27, 1625, he died. monopo March 27, 1625. stitutional during his one of settlement. From the statement which has now been made of the pro- An outline gress of the constitutional conflict between the conciliar and of the conparliamentary systems during the reign of James I., it appears conflict that while the drift was in favor of the nation as against the reign; crown, the result was inconclusive. The period was one of the period assertion and not of settlement. James, assuming the divine assertion right of kings, advanced the claims of the conciliar system and not of which he had inherited from the Tudors to a point never before known. Not only did he attempt to depress the influence of parliament by dispensing as far as possible with its aid in the administration of government, but also by denying its right to deliberate upon all matters of national concern when its assistance was invoked. Out of that abnormal condition of things arose the necessity for reviving and exaggerating those taxative, legislative, and judicial functions of the council which the growth of the law courts and the parliament were supposed to have paralyzed. In that way it was that James was driven to levy illegal impositions and benevolences, to employ 2 1 Lords' Journals, pp. 307-383, 418. 21 Jac. I. c. 3. The act declared that its provisions "shall not extend to letters patent & grants of privilege for the term of fourteen years and under, thereafter to be made, of the sole working or making of any manner of new manufactures within this realm, to the true & first inventor or inventors 8 For the proclamation, see Fœdera, with a fresh severity the inquisitorial powers of the star chamber, to give to proclamations the force of law, to exact every vexatious feudal right annexed to the crown, to call for forced loans, to foster monopolies, and to sell offices and honors. Only by such unconstitutional means could the conciliar system be made to produce the necessary revenue; and in order to make that system more responsive than ever to the king's personal will, James revived the detested influence represented by court favorites. When parliament attempted to counteract these evil tendencies by reasserting its natural and legitimate influence, the privileges which upheld its independence were assailed by the king's contention that such privileges, including the freedom of speech, were matters purely of royal favor and not of right; that the crown was perfectly competent to punish any member, as well during the sitting of parliament as after, for his public conduct, a doctrine often roughly enforced by actual imprisonments. When the law courts in their turn at tempted to uphold the rights of the nation against the crown, the judges were threatened and browbeaten before the council; and finally when Chief Justice Coke refused to pledge himself to uniform subserviency, he was punished by dismissal from office. And yet in the face of all such extreme assertions of the royal authority, the undaunted parliament boldly restated its claims to every right which the nation had enjoyed in earlier and better times. It firmly maintained that its privileges were inherent by right of inheritance, that its right to freedom of speech was incontestable, that its right of deliberation extended to all matters of national concern, including the "mysteries of state," that the levy of impositions and benevolences was an incroachment upon its exclusive right to authorize taxation, that the issuance of proclamations was an infringement of its exclusive right of legislation, that it possessed the exclusive right to determine contested election, and that the ancient right of impeachment was to be revived as a weapon of parliamentary warfare not only against private individuals, but also against the king's ministers. Over the vital issues thus made up there was no arbiter, and the result was that the conflict continued with increasing warmth, until in the succeeding reign they were submitted as a last resort to the arbitrament of the sword. CHAPTER II. CHARLES I. AND THE CONSTITUTIONAL CONFLICT. school in Bucking trained; I. THE result of James' "kingcraft" was not only to break The result down the influence of the trained administrators, who even in "kingthe Tudor time had stood as a constitutional check upon the craft;" royal prerogative, but also to infuse into a system already too despotic the exaggerated ideas of absolutism embodied in his theory of the divine right of kings. In that extreme and arti- extreme ficial school, in which court favorites were an acknowledged which force, both Buckingham and Charles were trained, and from Charles and the time the actual direction of affairs passed into their hands ham were they were united by a singleness of purpose that had for its aim the extension of the political system in which they had been reared. While Charles was thus forced by circumstance and education into a continuance of the constitutional conflict which had existed between his father and the popular party for more than twenty years, he intensified of his own accord Charles' the religious conflict by the espousal of certain ecclesiastical relation ideas which the Puritan element in the nation considered as religious conflict; both offensive and reactionary. The statement has heretofore been made that at an early stage of the English Reformation the influence of Luther was forced to yield to that of Calvin, who, about the time of the fall of Cromwell, became the great intellectual light of the protestant world.1 His tri- creed of the umphant theology it was that inspired that element in the element national church which came to be known as Puritan, and within the which, during the reign of Elizabeth, ventured to attack the religious settlement that she had made by proposing through the mouth of Cartwright, a divinity professor at Cambridge, the abolition of the episcopal in favor of the presbyterian system. The counterblast that came from that division of the national church which rejected the narrow dogmatism of the 1 See above, p. 168. 2 See above, p. 171. to the Puritan church; opposing element known as Abbott leader of Laud of the latter; conflict between them; ans. Puritan was embodied in Hooker's "Ecclesiastical Polity,"1 which finally gave color and form to the opposing elements Arminians; that grouped themselves loosely under the name of ArminiWhile James upheld the tenets of that faction to the extent of maintaining that the episcopal office was inseparable from kingship, he gave support to their opponents by appointing Abbott instead of Andrewes to Canterbury when the pri matial see was made vacant by the death of Bancroft in 1611. During the primacy of Abbott, who became the recognized became the leader of the Puritan party within the church, the Arminian the former, element gathered under the leadership of Laud, who contended, in opposition to the dominant Calvinism first, that ordination to the priesthood was absolutely necessary at the hands of the episcopacy, which he regarded as a divine institution; second, that a return to high doctrine concerning the sacraments was indispensable; third, that a strict adherence to the ritualistic system as set forth in the Book of Common Prayer was imperative. When in May, 1611, Laud was chosen president of St. John's College, Oxford, Abbott attempted to override the election by reporting to the king that he was "at least a papist in heart, and cordially edicted into popery.' But after hearing an exposition of his views, James not only confirmed his election, but made him one of his chaplains; in 1616 he was given the deanery of Gloucester; and in 1621 the bishopric of St. David's. As soon as Charles ascended the throne, Bishop Laud gained his ear and his confidence to such an extent that he was called upon to furnish a list of the clergy worthy of promotion, which resulted in a long catalogue of his own followers, from which the Puritans were severely his rapid excluded. In 1627 Laud was made a privy councillor, and after the departure of Buckingham for Rochelle, chief minister; in 1628 he became bishop of London; and upon Abbott's death in August, 1633, primate of the kingdom. Although Abbott thus lingered on in office until Charles' reign was well advanced, his influence died with its beginning; from Charles' accession Laud became his ecclesiastical guide and councillor. The distrust of the young king which thus arose out of his Laud gained at once the confidence of Charles; promotion; 1 See above, p. 172. "3 3 See Heylin's Life of Laud, pp. 56, 2 Cf. Blount, Reform. of the Church 61, 62. of Eng., vol. ii. p. 489. 4 Gardiner, Hist. Eng., vol. v. p. 364. distrust of by his with agreement alliance with those whom the Puritans regarded as papists at Puritan heart, as traitors in their own ranks, was greatly heightened Charles by his union with the French princess, Henrietta Maria, with increased whom he had made a marriage contract at the end of his marriage father's reign, shortly after the failure of the negotiation for Henrietta the hand of the infanta. Although both James and Charles Maria; had assured parliament that there should be no article in that contract in favor of English catholics, Richelieu firmly insisted that the dignity of his sovereign required even greater concessions in their favor than had been made under like circumstances to the king of Spain.1 The result was a secret the secret agreement, in which James promised to make serious conces- th sions to the recusants, who for the future were not to be France; molested on account of the private and peaceable exercise of their worship. Subject to that heavy condition, Charles drew to his side the despotic and imperious princess, who at the critical moment spurred him on to his fatal struggle against English liberty, and whose religious influence, fatal at last to the house of Stuart, lived on in the spirit of her sons. To all these adverse circumstances that predestined Charles to continue the conflict with the popular party must be added the dogged obstinacy of his natural temper, upon which neither obstinacy arguments nor current events seemed to have any influence temper; whatever. Even in his youth the courtiers about him predicted that "if he were in the wrong, he would prove the most wilful king that ever reigned," while of himself he once said, “I cannot defend a bad, nor yield in a good cause."8 Instead of the power to yield honestly at the critical moment, after the manner of the Tudor princes, Charles possessed only the power to dissemble, a fatal defect, of which at the begin- his ning of his reign the nation seems to have been profoundly ignorant. of Charles' duplicity. first 2. Despite the presence of the plague then raging in Lon- Charles' don, there was an unusually large attendance of members at parliament the meeting of Charles' first parliament on the 18th of June. met June To the expectant assembly, anxious both as to the conduct of 1 Carlisle and Kensington to Conway, August 7, 1624, State Papers, France. 2 This agreement, called a private engagement, was executed apart from the treaty signed by the ambassadors 8 Laud's Diary, February 1, 1623. 18, 1625; |