A Student's History of England Volume II Part 9

17. =Breach between the King and the Commons. 1629.=--No compromise could be found, and on March 2 a fresh order for adjournment was given. When Finch, the Speaker, rose to announce it, two strong young members, Holles and Valentine, pushed him back into his chair whilst Eliot read three resolutions to the effect that whoever brought in innovations in religion, or introduced opinions differing from those of the true and orthodox church; whoever advised the levy of Tonnage and Poundage without a grant by Parliament; and whoever voluntarily paid those duties, was an enemy to the kingdom and a betrayer of its liberties. A wild tumult arose. A rush was made to free the Speaker, and another rush to hold him down. One member, at least, laid his hand on his sword. The doors were locked, and, amidst the hubbub, Holles repeated the resolutions, which were accepted with shouts of 'Aye, aye.' Then the doors were opened, and the members poured out. The king at once dissolved Parliament, and for eleven years no Parliament met again in England.

18. =The Const.i.tutional Dispute. 1629.=--The const.i.tutional system of the Tudor monarchy had practically broken down. The nation had, in the sixteenth century, entered upon a struggle for national independence. Henry VIII. and Elizabeth had headed it in that struggle, and the House of Commons had but represented the nation in accepting Henry VIII. and Elizabeth as supreme rulers. The House of Commons now refused to admit that Charles was its supreme ruler, because he could neither head the nation, nor understand either its wants or its true needs. Yet the House had not as yet shown its capacity for taking his place. It had criticised his methods of government effectively, but had displayed its own intolerance and disregard for individual liberty. Yet, till it could learn to respect individual liberty, it would not be likely to gain the sovereignty at which it aimed. A king becomes powerful when men want a strong government to put down enemies abroad or petty tyrants at home. A Parliament becomes powerful when men want to discuss political questions, and political discussion cannot thrive when voices disagreeable to the majority are silenced. The House of Commons had thought more of opposing the king than of laying a wide basis for its own power, and now it was, for a time at least, silenced.

19. =The Victory of Personal Government. 1629-1632.=--Charles was now to show whether he could do better than the Commons. He had gained one great convert soon after the end of the first session of the last Parliament. Wentworth, satisfied, it is to be supposed, with the Pet.i.tion of Right, and dissatisfied with the claim to sovereignty put forward by the Commons, came over to his side and was made first a baron and then a viscount, after which before the end of =1628= he was made President of the Council of the North (see p. 397). Wentworth was no Puritan, and the claim of the Commons, in the second session, to meddle with religion no doubt strengthened him in his conviction that he had chosen the right side. Before the end of =1629= he became a Privy Councillor. The most influential member of Charles's Council, however, was Weston, the Lord Treasurer. Peace was made with France in =1629=, and with Spain in =1630=. To bring the finances into order, the king insisted on collecting the customs without a Parliamentary grant, and Chambers, a merchant who refused to pay, was summoned before the Council, and then fined 2,000_l._ and imprisoned for saying that merchants were more wrung in England than they were in Turkey. The leading members who had been concerned in the disturbance at the last meeting of Parliament were imprisoned, and three of them, Eliot, Holles, and Valentine, were charged before the King's Bench with riot and sedition. They declined to plead, on the ground that the judges had no jurisdiction over things done in Parliament. The judges held that riot and sedition must be punished somewhere, and that as Parliament was not always sitting it must be punished by themselves. As the accused still refused to plead they were fined and imprisoned. Eliot died of consumption in the Tower in =1632=. Charles had refused to allow him to go into the country to recover his health, and after his death he refused to allow his children to dispose of his body.

Eliot was the martyr, not of individual liberty, but of Parliamentary supremacy. Charles hated him because he regarded him as the factious accuser of Buckingham.

20. =Star Chamber Sentences. 1630-1633.=--The first years of unparliamentary government were, on the whole, years of peace and quiet. The Star Chamber, which under Henry VII. had put down the old n.o.bility, was now ready to put down the opponents of the king. Its numbers had grown with its work, and all of the Privy Councillors were now members of it, the only other members being two judges. It was therefore a mere instrument in the king's hands. In =1630= Alexander Leighton was flogged and mutilated by order of the Star Chamber for having written a virulent libel against the bishops; in which he blamed them for all existing mischiefs, including the extravagance of the dress of the ladies, and ended by advising that they should be smitten under the fifth rib. In =1633= the same court fined Henry Sherfield for breaking a church window which he held to be superst.i.tious. The bulk of Englishmen were not touched by these sentences, and there was more indignation when, in order to pay off debts contracted in time of war, Charles ordered the enforcement of fines upon all men holding by military tenure lands worth 40_l._ a year who had neglected to be knighted. The Court of Exchequer held that the fines were legal; but the whole system of military tenure was obsolete, and those who suffered regarded themselves as wronged through a mere technicality.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Sir Edward and Lady Filmer: from their bra.s.s at East Sutton, Kent, showing armour and dress worn about 1630.]

21. =Laud's Intellectual Position. 1629-1633.=--For all matters relating to the Church Charles's princ.i.p.al adviser was William Laud, now Bishop of London. As far as doctrine was concerned Laud carried on the teaching of Cranmer and Hooker. He held that the basis of belief was the Bible, but that the Bible was to be interpreted by the tradition of the early church, and that all doubtful points were to be subjected, not to heated arguments in the pulpits, but to sober discussion by learned men. His mind, in short, like those of the earlier English reformers, combined the Protestant reliance on the Scriptures with reverence for ancient tradition and with the critical spirit of the Renascence. Laud's difficulty lay, as theirs had lain, in the impossibility of gaining over any large number of his fellow-countrymen. Intelligent criticism and intelligent study were only for the few. Laud, as he himself plaintively declared, was in danger of being crushed between the upper and lower mill-stones of Puritanism and the Papacy.

22. =Laud as the Upholder of Uniformity.=--In all this there was nothing peculiar to Laud. What was peculiar to him was his perception that intellectual religion could not maintain itself by intellect alone. Hooker's appeals to Church history and to the supremacy of reason had rolled over the heads of men who knew nothing about Church history, and who did not reason. Laud fell back upon the influence of ceremonial. "I laboured nothing more," he afterwards said, "than that the external public worship of G.o.d--too much slighted in most parts of the kingdom--might be preserved, and that with as much decency and uniformity as might be; being still of opinion that unity cannot long continue in the Church when uniformity is shut out of the Church door." He, like Eliot and the Parliamentarians, was convinced that there could be but one Church in the nation. As they sought to retain their hold on it by the enforcement of uniformity of doctrine, Laud sought to retain his hold on it by enforcing uniformity of worship. To do this he attempted to put in force the existing law of the Church as opposed to the existing practice. What he urged men to do he believed to be wholly right. He himself clung with all his heart to the doctrine of the divine right of episcopacy, of the efficacy of the Sacraments, and to the sobering influence of appointed prayers and appointed ceremonies. What he lacked was broad human sympathy and respect for the endeavour of each earnest man to grow towards perfection in the way which seems to him to be best. Men were to obey for their own good, and to hold their tongues. The king was the supreme governor, and with his authority, as exercised in the Courts of Star Chamber and High Commission, Laud hoped to rescue England from Pope and Puritan.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Archbishop Laud: from a copy in the National Portrait Gallery by Henry Stone, from the Van Dyck at Lambeth.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Silver-gilt tankard made at London in 1634-35, now belonging to the Corporation of Bristol.]

23. =The Beginning of Laud's Archbishopric. 1633-1634.=--In =1633= Laud became Archbishop of Canterbury. He at once made his hand felt in every direction. By his advice, in consequence of an attempt of the judges to put an end to Sunday amus.e.m.e.nts, Charles republished the _Declaration of Sports_ which had been issued by his father, authorising such amus.e.m.e.nts under certain restrictions. Where, however, James had contented himself with giving orders, Charles insisted on having the Declaration read in church by all the clergy, and roused the resistance of those who regarded Sunday amus.e.m.e.nts as a breach of the Sabbath. Laud was also anxious to see the Communion table standing everywhere at the east end of the church. No doubt his anxiety came in part from his reverence of the holy sacrament for which it was set apart, but it also arose from his dislike to the base purposes for which it was often made to serve. Men often put their hats on it, or used it as a writing table. The canons, or laws of the Church, indeed, directed that the position of the table should, when not in use, be at the east end, though at the time of Communion it was to be placed in that part of the church or chancel from which the minister could best be heard. A case was brought before the king and the Privy Council in =1633=, and it was then decided that the bishop or other proper authority should settle what was the position from which the minister could best be heard. Of course the bishops settled that that place was the east end of the chancel.

24. =Laud and Prynne. 1633-1634.=--Amongst the most virulent opponents of Laud was William Prynne, a lawyer whose extensive study of theology had not tended to smooth away the asperities of his temper. He was, moreover, a voluminous writer, and had written books against drinking healths and against the wearing of long hair by men, in which these follies had been treated as equally blameworthy with the grossest sins. Struck by the immorality of the existing drama, he attacked it in a heavy work called _Histrio-mastix_, or The scourge of stage players, in which he held the frequenting of theatres to be the cause of every crime under the sun. He pointed out that all the Roman emperors who had patronised the drama had come to a bad end, and this was held by the courtiers to be a reflection on Charles, who patronised the drama. He inserted in the index a vile charge against all actresses, and this was held to be an insult to the queen, who was at the time taking part in the rehearsal of a theatrical representation. Accordingly in =1633= Prynne was sentenced by the Star Chamber to lose his ears in the pillory, to a heavy fine, and to imprisonment during the king's pleasure. In =1634= the sentence was carried out. Prynne's case, however, awakened no general sympathy, and the king does not appear to have as yet become widely unpopular. The young lawyers came to Whitehall to give a masque or dramatic representation in presence of the king and queen, in order to show their detestation of Prynne's conduct, whilst John Milton, the strictest and most pure-minded of poets, wrote a masque, _Comus_, to show how little sympathy he had with Prynne's sweeping denunciations. Yet, though Milton opposed Prynne's exaggeration, his own poetry was a protest against Laud's attempt to reach the mind through the senses. Milton held to the higher part of the Puritan teaching, that the soul is to lead the body, and not the body the soul. "So dear," he wrote in _Comus_,

to Heaven is saintly chast.i.ty, That, when a soul is found sincerely so, A thousand liveried angels lackey her, Driving far off each thing of sin and guilt,

And, in clear dream and solemn vision, Tell her of things that no gross ear can hear, Till oft converse with heavenly habitants Begin to cast a beam on the outward shape, The unpolluted temple of the mind, And turns it by degrees to the soul's essence, Till all be made immortal.

CHAPTER x.x.xIII

THE OVERTHROW OF THE PERSONAL GOVERNMENT OF CHARLES I. 1634-1641

LEADING DATES

The Reign of Charles I., 1625-1649

The Metropolitical Visitation 1634 First Ship-money Writ (to the port-towns) 1634 Second Ship-money Writ (to all the counties) 1635 Prynne, Burton, and Bastwick in the pillory 1637 Riot in Edinburgh 1637 Scottish National Covenant 1638 Judgment in Hampden's Case 1637-1638 First Bishops' War 1639 Short Parliament 1640 Second Bishops' War 1640 Meeting of the Long Parliament 1640 Execution of Strafford, and Const.i.tutional Reforms 1641

1. =The Metropolitical Visitation. 1634-1637.=--The antagonism which Laud had begun to rouse in the first months of his archbishopric became far more widely spread in the three years beginning in =1634= and ending in =1637=, in consequence of a Metropolitical Visitation--that is to say, a visitation which he conducted by the Metropolitan or Archbishop--either in person or by deputy--to enquire into the condition of the clergy and churches of the Province of Canterbury; a similar visitation being held in the Province of York by the authority of the Archbishop of York. Every clergyman who refused to conform to the Prayer Book, who resisted the removal of the Communion table to the east end of the chancel, or who objected to bow when the sacred name of Jesus was p.r.o.nounced, was called in question, and if obstinate, was brought before the High Commission and suspended from the exercise of his functions or deprived of his living. Laud wanted to reach unity through uniformity, and made the canons of the Church his standard of uniformity. Even moderate men suspected that he sought to subject England again to the Pope. The queen, too, entertained a Papal agent at her Court, and a few successful conversions, brought about by Con, who at one time resided with her in that capacity, frightened the country into the belief that a plot existed to overthrow Protestantism. Some of Laud's clerical supporters favoured this idea, by talking about such topics as altars and the invocation of the saints, which had hitherto been held to have no place in Protestant teaching. The result was that moderate Protestants now joined the Puritans in opposing Laud.

2. =Prynne, Bastwick, and Burton. 1637.=--Laud had little hope of being able to abate the storm. One of his best qualities was that he was no respecter of persons, and he had roused animosity in the upper cla.s.ses by punishing gentlemen guilty of immorality or of breaches of church discipline as freely as he punished more lowly offenders. In =1637= he characteristically attempted to defend himself from the charge of being a Papist and an innovator in religion by bringing three of his most virulent a.s.sailants--Prynne, Bastwick, and Burton--before the Star Chamber. The trial afforded him the opportunity of making a speech in his own defence, to which n.o.body paid the least attention. As a matter of course the accused were heavily punished, being sentenced to lose their ears in the pillory, to pay a fine of 5,000_l._, and to imprisonment for life.

It was not now as it had been in =1634=, when Prynne stood alone in the pillory, no man regarding him. The three victims had a triumphal reception on their way to the pillory. Flowers and sweet herbs were strewed in their path. The crowd applauded them whilst they suffered. On their way to their several prisons in distant parts of the country men flocked to greet them as martyrs.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The 'Sovereign of the Seas,' built for the Royal Navy in 1637: from a contemporary engraving by John Payne.]

3. =Financial Pressure. 1635-1637.=--Revolutions are never successful without the guidance of men devoted to ideas; but on the other hand they are not caused only by grievances felt by religious or high-minded people. To stir large ma.s.ses of men to resistance, their pockets must be touched as well as their souls. In =1635= Weston, who had been created Earl of Portland, died, and a body of Commissioners of the Treasury, who succeeded him, laid additional impositions on commerce and established corporations for exercising various manufactures under the protection of monopolies. This proceeding was according to the letter of the law, as corporations had been exempted from the act in restraint of monopolies which had been pa.s.sed in =1624= (see p. 501). So, too, was a claim put forward by Charles in =1637= to levy fines from those who had encroached on the old boundaries of the forests. It is true that, in the teeth of the opposition roused, Charles exacted but a small part of the fines imposed, but he incurred almost as much obloquy as if he had taken the whole of the money.

4. =Ship-money. 1634-1637.=--More important was Charles's effort to provide himself with a fleet. As the Dutch navy was powerful, and the French navy was rapidly growing in strength, Charles, not unnaturally, thought that England ought to be able to meet their combined forces at sea. In =1634=, by the advice of Attorney-General Noy, he issued writs to the port towns, to furnish him with ships.

He took care to ask for ships larger than any port--except London--had got, and then offered to supply ships of his own, on condition that the port towns should equip and man them. In =1635=--Noy having died in the meantime--Charles asked for ships not merely from the ports, but from the inland as well as from the maritime counties. Again London alone provided ships; in all the rest of England money had to be found to pay for the equipment and manning of ships belonging to the king. In this way Charles got a strong navy which he manned with sailors in the habit of managing ships of war, and entirely at his own orders. The experience of the Cadiz voyage had shown him that merchant-sailors, such as those who had done good service against the Armada, were not to be trusted to fight in enterprises in which they took no interest, and it is from the ship-money fleet that the separation of the naval and mercantile marine dates. Necessarily, however, Englishmen began to complain, not that they had a navy, but that the money needed for the navy was taken from them without a Parliamentary grant. Year after year ship-money was levied, and the murmurs against it increased. In February, =1637=, Charles consulted the judges, and ten out of the twelve judges declared that the king had a right to do what was necessary for the defence of the realm in time of danger, and that the king was the sole judge of the existence of danger.

5. =Hampden's Case. 1637-1638.=--It was admitted that, in accordance with the Pet.i.tion of Right, Charles could not levy a tax without a Parliamentary grant. Charles, however, held that ship-money was not a tax, but money paid in commutation of the duty of all Englishmen to defend their country. Common sense held that, whether ship-money was a tax or not, it had been levied without consulting Parliament, simply because the king shrank from consulting Parliament; or, in other words, because he was afraid that Parliament would ask him to put an end to Laud's system of managing the Church. Charles was ready, as he said, to allow to Parliament liberty of counsel, but not of control. The sense of irritation was now so great that the nation wanted to control the Government, and knew that it would never be able to do so if Charles could, by a subterfuge, take what money he needed without summoning Parliament. Of this feeling John Hampden, a Buckinghamshire squire, became the mouthpiece. He refused to pay 20_s._ levied on his estate for ship-money. His case was argued before the twelve judges sitting in the Exchequer Chamber. In =1638= two p.r.o.nounced distinctly in his favour, three supported him on technical grounds, and seven p.r.o.nounced for the king. Charles continued to levy ship-money, but the arguments of Hampden's lawyers were circulated in the country, and the judgment of the majority on the Bench was ascribed to cowardice or obsequiousness. Their decision ranged against the king all who cared about preserving their property, as the Metropolitical visitation had ranged against him all who cared for religion in a distinctly Protestant form. Yet, even now, the Tudor monarchy had done its work too thoroughly, and had filled the minds of men too completely with the belief that armed resistance to a king was unjustifiable, to make Englishmen ripe for rebellion. They preferred to wait till some opportunity should arrive which would enable them to express their disgust in a const.i.tutional way.

6. =Scottish Episcopacy. 1572-1612.=--The social condition of Scotland was very different from that of England. The n.o.bles there had never been crushed as they had been in England, and they had tried to make the reformation conduce to their own profit. In =1572= they obtained the appointment of what were known as Tulchan bishops, who, performing no episcopal function, received the revenues of their sees and then handed them over to certain n.o.bles.[21] The Presbyterian clergy, however, represented the popular element in the nation--and that element, though it had hitherto been weak, was growing strong through the discipline which it received in consequence of the leading share a.s.signed to the middle and lower cla.s.ses in the Church Courts (see p. 434). The disagreement between these cla.s.ses and the n.o.bles gave to James the part of arbitrator, and thus conferred on him a power which no Scottish king had had before. After much vacillation, he consented, in =1592=, to an act fully re-establishing the Presbyterian system. It was not long before he repented. The Presbyterian clergy attacked his actions from the pulpit, and one of them, Andrew Melville, plucking him by the sleeve, called him 'G.o.d's silly va.s.sal.' The n.o.bles, too, were angry because the clergy a.s.sailed their vices, and tried to subject them to the discipline of the Church. Though their ancestors had, at almost all times, been the adversaries of the kings, they now made common cause with James. Gradually episcopacy was restored. Bishops were re-appointed in =1599=. Step by step episcopal authority was regained for them. In =1610= three of their number were consecrated in England, and in =1612= the Scottish Parliament ratified all that had been done.

[Footnote 21: A Tulchan was a stuffed calf's skin set by a cow to induce her to give her milk freely.]

7. =The Scottish Bishops and Clergy. 1612-1637.=--In England bishops had a party (lay and clerical) behind them. In Scotland they were mere instruments of the king and the n.o.bles to keep the clergy quiet. In =1618=, James, supported by the bishops and the n.o.bles, forced upon a general a.s.sembly the acceptance of the Five Articles of Perth, the most important of which was a direction that the Communion should be received in a kneeling posture. Yet, in spite of all that James had done, the local popular Church courts still existed, and the worship of the Church remained still distinctly Calvinistic and Puritan. Charles was more eager than his father to alter the worship of the Scottish Church, and, in =1637=, at his command, certain Scottish bishops--often referring for advice to Laud--completed a new Prayer Book, not unlike that in use in England, but differing from it, for the most part, in a sense adverse to Puritanism. The clergy declared against it, and this time the clergy had on their side the n.o.bles, who not only feared lest Charles should take from them the Church lands appropriated by their fathers, but were also irritated at the promotion of some bishops to high offices which they claimed for themselves.

8. =The Riot at Edinburgh and the Covenant. 1637-1638.=--On July 23, =1637=, an attempt was made to read the new service in St. Giles's, at Edinburgh. The women present burst into a riot, and one of them threw her stool at the head of the officiating minister, fortunately missing him. All Scotland took part with the rioters. The new Prayer Book was hated, not only because it was said to be Popish, but also because it was English. In November four committees, known as the Tables, practically a.s.sumed the government of Scotland. In February, =1638=, all good Scots were signing a National Covenant. Nothing was said in it about episcopacy, but those who signed it bound themselves to labour, by all means lawful, to recover the purity and liberty of the Gospel, as it was established and professed before the recent innovations.

9. =The a.s.sembly of Glasgow, and the Abolition of Episcopacy.

1638.=--The greater part of =1638= was pa.s.sed by Charles in an endeavour to come to an understanding with the Scots. On September 2 he revoked the Prayer Book, and offered to limit the powers of the bishops. On November 21 a general a.s.sembly met at Glasgow, in which ninety-six lay members--for the most part n.o.blemen--sat with 144 clergymen, and which may therefore be regarded as a sort of Ecclesiastical Parliament in which the clergy predominated as the n.o.bles predominated in the single house which made up the real Parliament. The a.s.sembly claimed to judge the bishops, on which the king's commissioner, the Marquis of Hamilton, dissolved the a.s.sembly rather than admit its claim. The a.s.sembly, however, on the ground that it possessed a Divine right to settle all affairs relating to the Church independently of the King, sat on, as if nothing had happened, deposed the bishops, and re-established the Presbyterian system.

10. =The First Bishops' War. 1639.=--In refusing to obey the order for dissolution, the Scottish General a.s.sembly had practically made itself independent of the king, and Charles was driven--unless he cared to allow the establishment of a precedent, which might some day be quoted against him in England--to make war upon the Scots.

Yet he dared not summon the English Parliament, lest it should follow their example, and he had to set forth on what came to be known as the First Bishops' War--because it was waged in the cause of the bishops--with no more money than he could get from a voluntary contribution, not much exceeding 50,000_l._ Soon after he reached Berwick with his army, he found that the Scots had, on Dunse Law,[22] an army almost equal to his own in numbers, commanded by Alexander Leslie, an old soldier who had fought in the German wars, and mainly composed of veterans, who had seen much service on the Continent, whilst his own men were raw recruits. His money soon came to an end, and it was then found impossible to keep the army together. The war was one in which there was no fighting, and in which only one man was killed, and he by an accident. On June 24 Charles signed the Treaty of Berwick. Both sides pa.s.sed over in silence the deeds of the Glasgow a.s.sembly, but a promise was given that all affairs civil and ecclesiastical should be settled in an a.s.sembly and Parliament. a.s.sembly and Parliament met at Edinburgh, and declared in favour of the abolition of episcopacy; but Charles, who could not, even now, make up his mind to submit, ordered the adjournment of the Parliament, and prepared for a new attack on Scotland.

[Footnote 22: 'Law,' in the Lowlands of Scotland, means a solitary hill.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Soldier armed with a pike: from a broadside, printed _circa_ 1630.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Soldier with musket and crutch: from a broadside printed about 1630.]

11. =Wentworth in Ireland. 1633-1639.=--In preparing for a new war, Charles had Wentworth by his side. Wentworth, who was by far the ablest of his advisers, after ruling the north of England (see p.

514) in a high-handed fashion, had, in =1632=, been appointed Lord Deputy of Ireland. In =1634= he summoned an Irish Parliament, taking care that the English Protestant settlers and the Irish Catholics should be so evenly balanced that he could do what he would with it.

He carried through it admirable laws and a vote of money which enabled him to be independent of Parliament for some time to come.

As far as its material interests were concerned, Ireland had never been so prosperous. Trade grew, and the flax industry of the North sprang into existence under Wentworth's protection. Churches which had lain in ruins since the desolating wars of Elizabeth's reign were rebuilt, and able and active ministers were invited from England. The Earl of Cork, who had illegally seized Church property to his own use, was heavily fined, and Lord Mountnorris, a self-seeking official, who refused to resign his office, was brought before a court-martial and condemned to death; though Wentworth let him know that his life was in no danger, and that all that was wanted of him was the resignation of an office which he was unfitted to fill. Wentworth required all the officers of the Crown to live up to the motto of 'Thorough,' which he had adopted for himself, by which he meant a 'thorough' devotion to the service of the king and the State, without regard for private interests.

12. =The Proposed Plantation of Connaught.=--Wentworth gave great offence to the English officials and settlers by the harsh and overbearing way in which he kept them in order. His conduct to the Celtic population was less violent than that of some other lord deputies, but he had no more idea than his predecessors of leaving the Irish permanently to their own customs and religion. He believed that, both for their own good and for the safety of the English Crown, they must be made as like Englishmen as possible, and that, to effect this, it would be necessary to settle more Englishmen in Ireland to overawe them. Accordingly, in =1635=, he visited Connaught, where he raked up an old claim of the king's to the whole land of the province, though Charles had promised not to put forward any such claim at all. In every county of Connaught except Galway, a jury was found to give a verdict in favour of the king's claim. The jury in County Galway refused to do his bidding, and Wentworth had the jurymen fined, and the land of the county seized by the order of the Irish Court of Exchequer, which p.r.o.nounced judgment without a jury. He then invited English settlers to Connaught; but he found that few English settlers would go to such a distance from their homes. Perhaps many refused to come because they distrusted Wentworth. Yet, for the moment, his government appeared successful.

In =1639= he visited England, and Charles, who needed an able counsellor, made him Earl of Strafford, and from that time took him for his chief adviser.

13. =The Short Parliament. 1640.=--Strafford's advice was that Charles should summon an English Parliament, whilst he himself held a Parliament in Dublin, which might show an example of loyalty. The Irish Parliament did all that was expected of it, the Catholic members being especially forward in voting supplies in the hope that, if they helped Charles to conquer the Scots, he would allow freedom of religion in Ireland. In England, Parliament met on April 13. Pym at once laid before the Commons a statement of the grievances of the nation, after which the House resolved to ask for redress of these grievances before granting supply. Charles offered to abandon ship-money if the Commons would give him twelve subsidies equal to about 960,000_l._ The Commons hesitated about granting so much, and wished the king to yield on other points as well as upon ship-money. In the end they prepared to advise Charles to abandon the war with Scotland altogether, and, to avoid this, he dissolved Parliament on May 5. As it had sat for scarcely more than three weeks, it is known as the Short Parliament.

14. =The Second Bishops' War. 1640.=--In spite of the failure of the Parliament, Charles gathered an army by pressing men from all parts of England, and found money to pay them for a time by buying a large quant.i.ty of pepper on credit and selling it at once for less than it was worth. The soldiers, as they marched northwards, broke into the churches, burnt the Communion rails, and removed the Communion tables to the middle of the building. There was no wish amongst Englishmen to see the Scots beaten. The Scots, knowing this, crossed the Tweed, and, on August 28, routed a part of the English army at Newburn on the Tyne. Even Strafford did not venture to advise a prolongation of the war. Negotiations were opened at Ripon, and Northumberland and Durham were left in the hands of the Scots as a pledge for the payment of 850_l._ a day for the maintenance of their army, till a permanent treaty could be arranged. Charles, whose money was already exhausted, summoned a Great Council, consisting of Peers alone, to meet at York. All that the Great Council could do was to advise him to summon another Parliament, and that advice he was obliged to take.

15. =The Meeting of the Long Parliament. 1640.=--On November 3, =1640=, the new Parliament, which was to be known as the Long Parliament, met. Pym once more took the lead, and proposed the impeachment of Strafford, as the king's chief adviser in the attempt to carry on war in defiance of Parliament. Strafford had also collected an Irish army for an attack on Scotland, and it was strongly believed that he had advised the king to use that army to reduce England as well as Scotland under arbitrary government. The mere suspicion that he had threatened to bring an Irish army into England roused more than ordinary indignation, as, in those days, Irishmen were both detested and despised in England. Strafford was therefore impeached, and sent to the Tower. Laud was also imprisoned in the Tower, whilst other officials escaped to the Continent to avoid a similar fate. The Houses then proceeded to pa.s.s a Triennial Bill, directing that Parliament should meet every three years, even if the king did not summon it, and to this, with some hesitation, Charles a.s.sented. He could not, in fact, refuse anything which Parliament asked, because, if he had done so, Parliament would give him no money to satisfy the Scots, and if the Scots were not satisfied, they would recommence the war.

16. =The Impeachment of Strafford. 1641.=--On March 22, =1641=, Strafford's trial was opened in Westminster Hall. All his overbearing actions were set forth at length, but, after all had been said, a doubt remained whether they const.i.tuted high treason, that crime having been strictly defined by a statute of Edward III.

(see p. 250). Young Sir Henry Vane, son of one of the Secretaries of State, found amongst his father's papers a note of a speech delivered by Strafford in a Committee of the Privy Council just after the breaking up of the Short Parliament, in which he had spoken of the king as loose and absolved from all rules of government. "You have an army in Ireland," Strafford was reported to have said, "you may employ here to reduce this kingdom, for I am confident as anything under heaven, Scotland shall not hold out five months." The Commons were convinced that 'this kingdom' meant England and not Scotland; but there were signs that the lords would be likely to differ from them, and the Commons accordingly abandoned the impeachment in which the lords sat as judges, and introduced a Bill of Attainder (see p. 401, note), to which, after the Commons had accepted it, the lords would have to give their consent if it was to become law, as in the case of any ordinary Bill.

17. =Strafford's Attainder and Execution.=--Pym would have preferred to go on with the impeachment, because he believed that Strafford was really guilty of high treason. He held that treason was not an offence against the king's private person, but against the king as a const.i.tutional ruler, and that Strafford had actually diminished the king's authority by attempting to make him an absolute ruler, and thereby to weaken Charles's hold upon the goodwill of the people.

This argument, however, did not break down the scruples of the Peers, and if Charles had kept quiet, he would have had them at least on his side. Neither he nor the queen could keep quiet.

Before the end of =1640= she had urged the Pope to send her money and soldiers, and now she had a plan for bringing the defeated English army from Yorkshire to Westminster to overpower Parliament.

Then came an attempt of Charles to get possession of the Tower, that he might liberate Strafford by force. Pym, who had learnt the secret of the queen's army-plot, disclosed it, and the peers, frightened at their danger, pa.s.sed the Bill of Attainder. A mob gathered round Whitehall and howled for the execution of the sentence. Charles, fearing lest the mob should take vengeance on his wife, weakly signed a commission appointing commissioners to give the royal a.s.sent to the Bill, though he had promised Strafford that not a hair of his head should be touched. With the words, "Put not your trust in princes" on his lips, the great royalist statesman prepared for the scaffold. On May 12 he was beheaded, rather because men feared his ability than because his offences were legally punishable with death.

18. =Const.i.tutional Reforms. 1641.=--Englishmen would not have feared Strafford if they could have been sure that the king could be trusted to govern according to law, without employing force to settle matters in his own way. Yet, though the army-plot had made it difficult to feel confidence in Charles, Parliament was at first content to rely on const.i.tutional reforms. On the day on which Charles a.s.sented to the bill for Strafford's execution he a.s.sented to another bill declaring that the existing Parliament should not be dissolved without its own consent, a stipulation which made the House of Commons legally irresponsible either to the king or to its const.i.tuents, and which could only be justified by the danger of an attack by an armed force at the bidding of the king. Acts were pa.s.sed abolishing the Courts of Star Chamber and the High Commission, declaring ship-money to be illegal, limiting the king's claims on forests, prohibiting fines for not taking up knighthood, and preventing the king from levying Tonnage and Poundage or impositions without a Parliamentary grant. Taking these acts as a whole, they stripped the Crown of the extraordinary powers which it had acquired in Tudor times, and made it impossible for Charles, legally, to obtain money to carry on the government without the goodwill of Parliament, or to punish offenders without the goodwill of juries. All that was needed in the way of const.i.tutional reform was thus accomplished. As far as law could do it, the system of personal government which Charles had in part inherited from his predecessors and in part had built up for himself, was brought to an end.