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which the unheard-of demand at once provoked, the king promptly revoked the order, and thus suspended the new device until a later day. In the midst of such desperate efforts to raise revenue, the council did not neglect to issue commissions to compound with recusants for a suspension of the penal laws, while soldiers and sailors whose pay was in arrears were billeted upon counties, where their conduct was often scandalous. But in spite of all such expedients, Charles was at last forced to give way. The ignominious failure of Buckingham's expedition for the relief of Rochelle, the broken fragments of which landed at Portsmouth and Plymouth in November, 1627, and the pressing need for more money to carry on the war with France, compelled the king to yield to the inevitaforced the ble, and on the 30th of January, 1628, orders were given that writs should issue for a new parliament. As an attempt at parliament; conciliation, seventy-six persons, who had either been impris oned or banished to counties other than their own for having refused to pay the forced loan, were permitted to return to their homes; and of that number twenty-seven, including Sir Thomas Wentworth, were at once elected to the house, which imprisoned proved itself to be more determined even than the last to the house. resist all assaults upon the liberties of the nation.

pressing need for money

calling of

a new

twentyseven of

those lately

returned to

Third parliament

17, 1628;

3

4. Just how pressing was the need which forced Charles to met March call together his third parliament, which met on March 17, 1628, was clearly disclosed when it was known that the council of war had sent in an estimate of nearly £600,000 for the army and navy during the coming year, besides an immediate demand of nearly £700,000 for munitions and repairs.1 While the king never dared to ask for the entire sum required, he opened the session with a threatening speech, in which he speech; said, "There is none here but knows that common danger is the cause of this parliament, and that supply at this time is the chief end of it. . . . Every man must do according to his conscience; wherefore, if you (which God forbid) should not do your duties in contributing what the state at this time needs, I must, in discharge of my conscience, use those other

Charles'

threatening

land to £173,000, see State Papers,
Dom., xcii. 88, 93.

1 Court and Times, vol. i. pp. 322,
324; Gardiner, vol. vi. p. 227.

2 See State Papers, Dom., xcii. 85.

8 The release of prisoners was ordered on January 2. Cf. State Papers, Dom., xci. 52.

4 State Papers, Dom., xcviii. 1; Estimate, March 22.

leaders

should

ment bill

means, which God hath put into my hands to save that which the follies of some particular men may otherwise hazard to lose." In anticipation of the coming storm the leaders of popular the popular party had gathered, a few days before parliament resolved met, at the house of Sir Robert Cotton, where it was resolved that redress of grievthat before any supplies whatever were granted, the king ances should be forced to promise, not only to vindicate the rights of precede supply; his subjects which he had so ruthlessly violated, but also to remedy the maladministration caused by the incompetency and greed of Buckingham.2 The active work of the session began with expositions, by the popular orators, of the particular grievances for which they demanded immediate and practical redress. The great lawyers of the opposition were Sir Edward Coke and Selden, and the former, in order to deprive the Coke's imprisoncrown of the right of arbitrary imprisonment so lately asserted in the case of the five knights, introduced on March 21 an imprisonment bill, which provided that no person, not under sentence, could be held without trial for more than two months, if he could give bail, or for more than three months if he could not; and at a later day he made a statement of his view of the law, in which the right of the crown to commit without naming the cause was sharply controverted. In reply Shilton, the solicitor-general, overwhelmed Coke for the mo- attacked ment, not only by referring to the apparently adverse opinion solicitorcontained in the Reports of Chief Justice Anderson, but also general; by producing a resolution arrived at in the king's bench, in 1615, in which Coke himself had approved the doctrine that the cause of imprisonment need not be stated when an offender was committed by an order in council. But after Coke had found a means of escape by putting his own construction upon a report of Anderson's opinion, in his own handwriting, brought forward by the heirs of the chief justice during the debate, the house passed three resolutions, in which it was passed as declared that no freeman should be committed without cause to the right shown; that every one, however committed, had a right to corps;

1 Lords' Journals, vol. iii. p. 687; Parl. Hist., vol. vii. p. 339.

"Went

2 Foster's Sir J. Eliot, vol. ii. 3 Harl. MSS., 4771, fol. 15. State Trials, vol. iii. p. 81. worth came to Coke's rescue with a few sarcastic words. Mr. Solicitor,'

he said, 'hath done that which belongs
to his place, but not so ingeniously as
he might."
Gardiner, vol. vi. p. 243,
citing Harl. MSS., 4771, 45 b.

6 Anderson's Reports, vol. i. p. 298.
For Hallam's comments on Anderson's
judgment, see Const. Hist., vol. i. p. 387.

by the

resolutions

to habeas

his habeas corpus, and that, if a legal cause of imprisonment did not appear, he was to be either delivered or bailed. Some days before that conclusion was reached, however, Eliot, after forward the denouncing the whole system of illegal and arbitrary taxation

Eliot

brought

religious

question;

outlined the

of the

Petition

up of

by the

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as practised by the crown, had warned the nation against “that false party in religion, which to their Romish idol sacrifice all other interests and respects;"1 and in order to make a practical application of that statement, Phelips had boldly censured the political sermons recently pronounced by Sibthorpe and Manwaring. Side by side with Eliot, Coke, and Phelips now Wentworth stood Sir Thomas Wentworth, who did yeoman's service in the substance popular cause in a great oration in which, after reviewing all the questions in controversy, except those involving the subject of Right; of religion, he demanded that there should be no more forced loans, no more illegal imprisonments, no more compulsory employments abroad, no billeting of soldiers without the assent of the householder, thus outlining the substance of the great statute, afterwards known as the Petition of Right, which summing derived its form from Coke.2 In order to give its official sancgrievances tion to the leading subject of debate, the house on March 26 passed a resolution denouncing all taxation without parliamentary consent, which, together with the three resolutions adopted a week later on the subject of illegal imprisonments, embodied a statement of nearly all the grievances against which the popular party was contending. The commons thus made clear their intention to consider the subject of grievances before that of supply, but at the king's request they consented to consider the two together, and as an evidence of their willingness to be liberal when their petitions should be answered, they voted five subsidies in committee on April 4, which, however, were not reported to the house. This course was taken committee; at the suggestion of Wentworth, who, while desiring above all things to reconcile the nation with the king, was determined that no grant should be actually made to him until he should agree to guarantee the liberties of the subject. The whole difficulty consisted of the unwillingness of Charles to give satisfactory assurances. After a long contention between the

house;

five

subsidies voted in

1 Foster's Sir J. Eliot, vol. ii. p. 8.
2 "If Coke was finally to give to the
Petition its form, Wentworth was the

originator of its substance." - Gardiner, vol. vi. p. 237.

Great

should be

houses on that subject, the king finally offered to pledge his Charles pledged royal word that the Great Charter and six other statutes by his word which it had been construed in earlier times should be ob- that the served; every freeman was to have "a fundamental property Charter in his goods, and a fundamental liberty of his person," and all observed; were to enjoy "the just freedom of their persons and safety of their estates, according to the laws and statutes of the realm." 1 The house, however, unwilling to accept such a general assurance, resolved to restate in a bill prepared by Coke the substance of the old statutes as then understood; 2 and in order to make it easier for Charles to consent to such a measure, Wentworth proposed a similar bill of his own, in which the original proposals were somewhat modified. Not until an earnest effort to come to terms upon these measures had failed did Coke remove the difficulty arising out of the apparent refusal to accept Charles' word by proposing on May 6 a petition of right, house whereby the king could "speak by record and in particulars, that he and not in general." Coke said, "Let us put up a Petition of "speak by Right; not that I distrust the King, but that I cannot take and in his trust, save in a parliamentary way." The famous docu- and not in ment then drawn up by a sub-committee, and which is usually gene compared with the Great Charter because it attempted to curb end was the power of the Tudor monarchy inherited by the Stuarts, Petition as the earlier document had attempted to curb the Angevin which monarchy as it existed in the days of John, embraced four subject matters, which may be summarized as follows: —

4

demanded

a record

particulars,

general;"

with that

framed the

of Right,

which

all forms

I. Addressing itself first to the all-important question in- forbade volved in the imposition of certain forms of royal taxation, of illegal "not sett by common consent in parliament," the petition taxation, after referring to the statute De tallagio non concedendo, wherein it was provided "that no tallage or ayde should be layd or levyed by the king or his heires in this realme" without parliamentary authority; to a statute passed in the 25th Edw. III., wherein it was provided "that from thence forth

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arbitrary imprisonments without due

process of law,

billeting of soldiers and mariners,

no person should be compelled to make any loanes to the king against his will;" and to the famous statute1 of Richard I. against benevolences - prayed "that no man hereafter be compelled to make or yield any guift, loane, benevolence, taxe,2 or such like charge, without common consent by act of parliament; and that none be called to make answere or take such oath, or to give attendance, or be confined, or otherwise molested or disquieted concerning the same or for refusall thereof."

2. Next, after referring to the Great Charter wherein it was declared "that no freeman may be taken or imprisoned or be disseised of his freehold or liberties, or his free customes, or be outlawed or exiled or in any manner destroyed, but by the lawfull judgment of his peeres, or by the law of the land; "3 to the statute of 28 Edw. III. c. 3, wherein it was declared "that no man, of what state or condition that he be, should be put out of his land or tenements, nor taken, nor imprisoned, nor disherited, nor put to death, without being brought to answere by due process of lawe;" and then after reciting the fact that in violation of such statutes, “and other good lawes and statutes of your realme to that end provided," "divers of your subjects have of late been imprisoned without any cause shewed; and when for their deliverance they were brought before your justices by your Majestie's writts of habeas corpus, there to undergoe and receive as the court should order, and their keepers commaunded to certifie the causes of their detayner, no cause was certified, but that they were deteined by your Majestie's speciall commaund, signified by the lords of your Privie Councell, and yet were returned backe to sev erall prisons, without being charged with anything to which they might make answere according to the lawe," the peti tion prayed "that no freeman, in any such manner as is before mencioned, be imprisoned or deteined."

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3. Then, after reciting that "of late great companies of souldiers and marriners have been dispersed into divers counties of the realme, and the inhabitants against their wills have been compelled to receive them into their houses, and

1 1 Rich. III. c. 2.

2 No express mention was made of the customs revenue, an omission that afterwards became important.

8

9 Hen. III. c. 29.

4 Cf. 37 Edw. III. c. 18; 38 Edw. III. c. 9; 42 Edw. III. c. 3; 17 Rich. II. c. 6.

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