THE

CHAPTER XIII.

STEWART PERIOD. (A.D. 1603-16SS.)

I. FROM THE ACCESSION OF JAMES I. TO THE PASSING

OF THE PETITION OF RIGHT.

sion.

JAMES I. came to the English throne at a critical period JAMES I. 1603-1625. of our history. The reactionary movement towards des- Tendency of potism, which began under Henry VI., reached its climax political and religious under Henry VIII., and had since been slowly receding thought at before the reviving spirit of freedom. During the latter his accesyears of Elizabeth the Puritan party had become organized The Puritan and powerful. Whilst the old Queen lived, they were, for party. the most part, content to postpone the active assertion of the rights of the people against the Crown. They looked forward with hope to the advent of her successor, in the expectation of voluntary concessions; but were determined in any case to carry out further reforms in the ecclesiastical system, and to insist upon all the ancient privileges of Parliament, and all the legal liberties of the subject. Violent changes were not, however, generally desired. Although there was a party hostile to the hierarchy, the bulk of the Puritans had no desire to abolish episcopacy, and would have been fully satisfied with a dispensation from certain ceremonies which too forcibly reminded them of the religion they had renounced. The Presbyterian education of James Effect of had led them to anticipate a ready acquiescence in such a James's Presmoderate measure of reform. But the king's experience of education. the Presbyterian clergy had, in fact, been productive of prejudices the very opposite to what the English Puritans

byterian

His political antipathy to nonconfor

mity.

had expected.

The Scotch clergy,' observes Mr. Brodie, full of the highest ambition, had converted the pulpit into a theatre for political declamation; and James had imbibed the bitterest hostility to everything which approached to the Presbyterian form of ecclesiastical establishment, declaring that under it Jack and Tom and Dick and Will presu med to instruct him in affairs of State.' Under the tuition of the celebrated George Buchanan, James had acquired more learning than he had understanding to digest. Puffed up with literary pride and self-sufficiency, he imagined himself possessed of supereminent wisdom, while in reality lacking the judgment of a man of ordinary abilities. The Duc de Sully called him the wisest fool in Europe, a phrase which epigrammatically sums up the peculiarities of the king's intellect.

The avowed antipathy of James to every kind of Protestant nonconformity, was based on political, rather than on religious, reasoning. The presbytery,' he said, 'agreeth as well with monarchy as God with the devil.' He was convinced that the hierarchy was the firmest support of the Crown, and that where there was no bishop there would soon be no king. He determined, therefore, to allow not the slightest toleration to Nonconformists, a resolution in which he was confirmed by the fulsome flattery of the prelates, some of whom, at the Hampton Court Conference, did not hesitate to ascribe to him immediate inspiration from Heaven.

1 Brodie, Hist. Brit. Emp. i. 332.

On his journey to London, the Puritan clergy presented to the King what is commonly called the Millenary Petition,' because it purported to proceed from more than 1000 ministers,' though the actual number of those who signified their assent to it is said not to have exceeded 825. It contained nothing inconsistent with the established hierarchy; but the petitioners prayed for a reformation in the church service, ministry, livings, and discipline.' In order to obtain further information on the points in dispute, James summoned the famous conference at Hampton Court between the Archbishop of Canterbury, eight bishops, five deans and two doctors on the one side, and Dr. Reynolds and three other Puritan divines on the other. At the conference, which was held before the King on the 14th, 15th, and 16th of January, 1603-4, instead of acting as moderator, James, eager to display his theological learning, assumed the part of advocate for the Church. Transported with admiration, the primate exclaimed that his majesty spoke by the special assistance of

While sternly repressing the nonconforming Protestants, James at the same time showed an inclination to grant some partial indulgence to the Roman Catholics,—a policy which excited disgust and jealousy throughout the kingdom, and thus strengthened the hands of the Puritan faction.1

The civil government of James was no less impolitic and Arbitrary arbitrary than his ecclesiastical. At a time when the nature of his civil govern growing spirit of freedom, the general diffusion of know- ment. ledge, and the revived study of Greek and Roman authors' had caused a republican tendency to manifest itself in Parliament, and among the people, this alien King,-who, having been legally excluded from the English throne by the testament of Henry VIII., had no title to it but such as he derived from the will of the English people,-was constantly asserting, in the most offensive form, the novel and monstrous theory of his divine right to absolute and irresponsible sovereignty. This doctrine had already been Theory of divine right. advanced by him some years before in Scotland, in a treatise on the 'True Law of Free Monarchies.' Adopted

God's spirit;' and the Bishop of London said his heart melted within him to hear a king, the like of whom had not been since the time of Christ.' (Howell's State Trials, ii. 86, 87.) Some slight alterations in the Book of Common Prayer were made after the Conference; but ten of the men who had presented the Millenary Petition were committed to prison, the judges having declared in the Star Chamber that it was an offence finable at discretion, and very near to treason and felony, as it tended to sedition and rebellion.' Hallam, Const. Hist. i. 298.

James soon found it necessary, in order to free himself from the imputation of Papistry with which the Puritans assailed him, to cause the penal laws against the Catholics to be put into execution. After the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot additional severity was added to the statutes in force by two Acts containing more than seventy articles inflicting penalties on the Catholics in all their several capacities of masters, servants, husbands, parents, children, heirs, executors, patrons, barristers, and physicians.' (3 James I. c. 4, 'For the better discovering and repressing of Popish recusants; and 3 James I. c. 5, To prevent and avoid dangers which grow by Popish recusants.' See also 7 James I. c. 2 and c. 6.)

On the powerful influence of the classical writings in the direction of liberty, see Lecky, Rationalism in Europe, ii. 218. Hobbes (born 15SS, died 1679) says in the Leviathan (ch. xxix.) 'Inter rebellionis causas maximas numerari potest librorum politicorum et historicorum quos scripserunt veteres Graeci et Romani lectio. . . . Mihi ergo monarchiis nihil videtur esse dam. nosius posse, quam permittere ut hujusmodi libri publice doceantur, nisi simul a magistris sapientibus quibus venenum corrigi possit remedia applicentur. Morbum hunc comparari libet cum hydrophobia,' &c.

3 King James's Works, p. 207.

by the hierarchy and the courtiers, the theory of divine right was later on elaborated into a system by Filmer, and became the distinctive badge of the more violent highchurchmen and Tories. It was gravely maintained that the Supreme Being regarded hereditary monarchy, as opposed to other forms of government, with peculiar favour; that the rule of succession in order of primogeniture was a Divine institution, anterior to the Christian, and even to the Mosaic dispensation; that no human power, not even that of the whole legislature, no length of adverse possession, though it extended to ten centuries, could deprive a legitimate prince of his rights; that the authority of such a prince was necessarily always despotic; that the laws, by which, in England and in other countries, the prerogative was limited, were to be regarded merely as concessions which the sovereign had freely made and might at his pleasure resume; and that any treaty which a king might conclude with his people was merely a declaration of his present intentions, and not a contract of which the performance could be demanded.'3

1 In 16c4, Convocation drew up a set of canons, 141 in number, which received the royal assent, but never having been sanctioned by Parliament are not legally binding upon the laity. Besides declaring every man to be excommunicated who should question the complete accordance of the Prayer Book with the Word of God; they denounce as erroneous a number of tenets believed to be hostile to royal government, and inculcate the duty of passive obedience to the King, in all cases without exception.

2 Sir Robert Filmer wrote his famous Patriarca' in the reign of Charles I., but it was not published till after the restoration of Charles II. He maintained that "All government is absolute monarchy. No man is born free; and, therefore, could never have the liberty to choose either governor or form of government. The father of a family governs by no laws but his own. Kings, in the right of parents, succeed to the exercise of supreme jurisdiction. They are above all laws. They have a divine right to absolute power, and are not answerable to human authority.'

3 Macaulay, Hist. Eng. i. 55. The sublime pretensions of James were rendered ludicrous, as well as irritating, by the contemptible demeanour of the King himself. 'His cowardice, his childishness, his pedantry, his ungainly person and manners, his provincial accent, made him an object of derision. Even in his virtues and accomplishments there was something eminently unkingly. Throughout the whole course of his reign, all the venerable associations by which the throne had long been fenced were gradually losing their strength. During two hundred years all the sovereigns who had ruled England, with the single exception of the unfortunate Henry the Sixth, had been strong-minded, high-spirited, courageous, and of princely bearing. Almost all had possessed abilities above the ordinary level. It was no light thing that, on

with the

inevitable.

Such being the ideas of the King on regal government, A conflict it was inevitable that he should speedily come into conflict House of with the House of Commons, a body fully aware of its Commons ancient rights and privileges, impressed with the duty of asserting and maintaining them, and strong in the consciousness that it represented the feelings and wishes of the great majority of all classes of the nation.1

aggressor.

The very first acts of James's reign were ominous of the James is the arbitrary manner in which he designed to rule his new kingdom. On his journey to London he ordered a thief, taken in the fact, to be executed without the formality of a trial; and in the proclamation summoning his first Parliament he was guilty of a daring infringement upon the privileges and independence of the House of ComHe took upon himself to specify the kind of men who were to be elected, and directed that all returns should be sent to his Court of Chancery, and that such as should be there found contrary to the Proclamation should be rejected as 'unlawful and insufficient.'3

mons.

liament,

James' first Parliament met on the 19th March, 1603-4. First ParIt was felt that a struggle with the Crown was at hand. A.D. 1603-4.

the very eve of the decisive struggle between our Kings and their Parliaments, royalty should be exhibited to the world stammering, slobbering, shedding unmanly tears, trembling at a drawn sword, and talking in the style alternately of a buffoon and of a pedagogue.' Id. p. 58. See also Mr. J. R. Green's 'Short History of the English People,' pp. 464-467.

Towards the end of the 16th, and during the earlier part of the 17th century, the House of Commons included among its members a large body of men of ability, recruited especially from amongst the lawyers who became known to the electors by the talent which they displayed at the bar. 'The services which this class of men rendered to the cause of freedom were incalculable. The learning of the ablest lawyers in the 16th century may have been small in comparison with the stores of knowledge which may be acquired in our own day; but, relatively to the general level of education, it stood far higher. A few years later a race of parliamentary statesmen would begin to arise from amongst the country gentlemen: but, as yet, almost all pretensions to statesmanship were confined to the council-table and its supporters. For the present, the burthen of the conflict in the Commons lay upon the lawyers, who at once gave to the struggle against the Crown that strong legal character which it never afterwards lost.-S. R. Gardiner, Hist. Eng. from 1603 to 1616, i. 178.

2 I hear our new king,' said Sir John Harrington, 'has hanged one man before he was tried; it is strangely done. Now, if the wind bloweth thus, why may not a man be tried before he has offended?'- Nuga Antiquæ, i. 180.

3 Parl. Hist. i. 967.