James I, his son and grandsons, were without doubt heirs of William the Conqueror, indeed, of Saxon Egbert. Whether the nation elected and recognized them or not, after the venerable form, was, according to the new theory, a matter of indifference: by right of birth alone, they claimed, and a great part of their subjects supported them in the claim, that they were Kings of England. Different though they were in character, the Stuarts have this negative trait in common, a failure to understand and respect the law of the land. Alongside of the constitution there had arisen, through Tudor encroachment, a scheme ready fitted to the hands of monarchs thus disposed. Parliament was the proper law-giving body; but side by side with this legislation stood now a system of royal ordinances, proceeding from the Sovereign alone. Only Parliament could legally grant money, following the ancient right recognized by Edward I and even in Magna Charta, that no man should be taxed unless he were represented in the body that imposed the tax. Now, however, there were customs, orders, fines, "tonnage and poundage," "coat and conduct-money," "ship-money," etc., - various ways by which a King could raise money without recourse to the Houses. Such abuses had been allowed to creep in in times of emergency under the specious pretext that prompt action was sometimes thwarted, if only constitutional ways could be employed. Precedents, however, had been established destined to make great trouble. Most threatening danger of all, by the side of the properly constituted courts, with sheriffs, justices of the peace, and juries, were fixed the courts of Star Chamber

and High Commission, with inquisition, torture, and summary procedure of every kind. This unconstitutional machinery for ruling the Stuarts proceeded to develop.

Parliament.

Charles I and

up- the Petition

of Right.

1628, to admit

Opposition, however, at once appeared on the part of the nation. "The slavish Parliament of Henry VIII, which had become the murmuring Opposition of Parliament of Elizabeth, and the mutinous Parliament of James I, became, under Charles I, the rebellious Parliament."1 At first, feeble and fitful, the opposition gathered force, developing under Charles I into a stern battle between the King and that conservative element of the people who were determined to hold the ancient ways. The King was forced by the Petition of Right,2 in that his arbitrary course was wrong. It was a profession of the lips, not the heart. A grant of subsidies having taken place as a consequence of the redress of grievances, Charles dissolved Parliament, not intending to keep his word, and with the resolve never to summon another Parliament. He was "ashamed that his cousins of France and Spain should have completed a work which he had scarcely begun." He commenced in March, 1629, a system of personal rule quite new in England, which continued for eleven years, during which time the people were not summoned to Westminster by their delegates. Never before since Earl Simon's time had the voice of the people been silenced for such an interval; only once before had there been 1 Bagehot: English Constitution, p. 281.

2 For the full text, see Appendix B.

Laud, Straf

an interval of half that length. His two main agents and advisers were Laud, Archford, and the bishop of Canterbury, and Thomas WentThorough." worth, Earl of Strafford; the two engines through which it was sought to bring to pass the King's will, to the supersession of that of the people, were, for spiritual affairs, the Court of High Commission, for secular affairs that of Star Chamber.

In defiance of the general sentiment of England, the reactionary Laud guided the Church, as the nation felt, perilously near to Romanism. Transubstantiation, auricular confession, preferment of celibate priests, restoration of image worship, adoration of the crucifix, minute attention to vestments, genuflections, vigils, pilgrimages, these, once discarded, were now revived. At the same time there sat at the King's right hand as Queen, the Catholic Henrietta of France, daughter of Henry IV, a princess inheriting her father's courage, enterprise, and wit, but drawing from her mother, Maria de' Medici, an Italian dexterity in intrigue, subservience to priestly advisers, and a complete devotion to the Church of Rome.

In secular matters, at the same time, the monarch's hand was carried ever higher and higher. It was no longer a series of isolated, arbitrary acts that the citizen beheld; but Laud and Strafford, pushing ever more strongly, developed the policy known as "Thorough," -a consistent, energetic system of rule going directly against popular liberty, even to the last bulwark, the right of taxation. In all points but one the government of England had become as despotic as that of France and Spain: as yet the King had at his command no standing army. Should this one obstacle

Ship-money.

block the path? It was resolved that such an army might be, and to meet the cost, recourse was to be had to ship-money. In former times, to meet foreign dangers, the Kings had exacted of the Cinque Ports and the maritime counties the maintaining of ships of war. Acting on these precedents, Charles now sought to levy a general tax, nominally ship-money, but the yield of which might be applied to any use. With this word, so memorable in the history of English-speaking men, let us turn aside for a while from the tale of the mad race of the Stuarts toward absolutism. Anglo-Saxon freedom was on the point of perishing. Precisely now, in the nick of time, became operative in its behalf a force from America, a force at first scarcely traceable, but destined in time to grow momentous.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE SETTLEMENT OF AMERICA.

66

1607-1700.

HORACE WALPOLE, an important figure in England in the eighteenth century, when the news of Burgoyne's surrender at Saratoga reached England, wrote to the Countess of Ossory, December 11, 1777 : 'Well, Madame, as I told Lord Ossory the other day, I am satisfied. Old England is safe, that is America, whither the true English retired under Charles I."1 What reason is there in such a statement as this? Horace Walpole asserts that America was more English than England herself, the true English having retired to America under Charles I.

Charters of the East In

dia and Vir

nies.

Just at the hour when the Tudors were giving place to the Stuarts, two events took place within about six years of each other, at the time regarded as having the slightest possible ginia Compa- significance, of which however the consequences have been of transcendent importance in the history of the world. These events were the granting of charters to two commercial companies, the one designing to engage in mercantile operations in the East Indies; the other, looking for its field of operations to the coast of America. The

1 Walpole's Letters.