Baby Charles became KING CHARLES THE
FIRST, in the twenty-fifth year of his age.
Unlike his father, he was usually amiable in his private
character, and grave and dignified in his bearing;
but, like his father, he had monstrously exaggerated
notions of the rights of a king, and was evasive,
and not to be trusted. If his word could have
been relied upon, his history might have had a different
end.
His first care was to send over that
insolent upstart, Buckingham, to bring Henrietta Maria
from Paris to be his Queen; upon which occasion Buckingham with
his usual audacity made love to the young
Queen of Austria, and was very indignant indeed with
CARDINAL RICHELIEU, the French Minister, for thwarting
his intentions. The English people were very
well disposed to like their new Queen, and to receive
her with great favour when she came among them as
a stranger. But, she held the Protestant religion
in great dislike, and brought over a crowd of unpleasant
priests, who made her do some very ridiculous things,
and forced themselves upon the public notice in many
disagreeable ways. Hence, the people soon came
to dislike her, and she soon came to dislike them;
and she did so much all through this reign in setting
the King (who was dotingly fond of her) against his
subjects, that it would have been better for him if
she had never been born.
Now, you are to understand that King
Charles the First of his own determination
to be a high and mighty King not to be called to account
by anybody, and urged on by his Queen besides deliberately
set himself to put his Parliament down and to put
himself up. You are also to understand, that
even in pursuit of this wrong idea (enough in itself
to have ruined any king) he never took a straight
course, but always took a crooked one.
He was bent upon war with Spain, though
neither the House of Commons nor the people were quite
clear as to the justice of that war, now that they
began to think a little more about the story of the
Spanish match. But the King rushed into it hotly,
raised money by illegal means to meet its expenses,
and encountered a miserable failure at Cadiz, in the
very first year of his reign. An expedition
to Cadiz had been made in the hope of plunder, but
as it was not successful, it was necessary to get a
grant of money from the Parliament; and when they
met, in no very complying humour, the King told them,
’to make haste to let him have it, or it would
be the worse for themselves.’ Not put in
a more complying humour by this, they impeached the
King’s favourite, the Duke of Buckingham, as
the cause (which he undoubtedly was) of many great
public grievances and wrongs. The King, to save
him, dissolved the Parliament without getting the
money he wanted; and when the Lords implored him to
consider and grant a little delay, he replied, ‘No,
not one minute.’ He then began to raise
money for himself by the following means among others.
He levied certain duties called tonnage
and poundage which had not been granted by the Parliament,
and could lawfully be levied by no other power; he
called upon the seaport towns to furnish, and to pay
all the cost for three months of, a fleet of armed
ships; and he required the people to unite in lending
him large sums of money, the repayment of which was
very doubtful. If the poor people refused, they
were pressed as soldiers or sailors; if the gentry
refused, they were sent to prison. Five gentlemen,
named SIR THOMAS DARNEL, JOHN CORBET, WALTER EARL,
JOHN HEVENINGHAM, and EVERARD HAMPDEN, for refusing
were taken up by a warrant of the King’s privy
council, and were sent to prison without any cause
but the King’s pleasure being stated for their
imprisonment. Then the question came to be solemnly
tried, whether this was not a violation of Magna Charta,
and an encroachment by the King on the highest rights
of the English people. His lawyers contended
No, because to encroach upon the rights of the English
people would be to do wrong, and the King could do
no wrong. The accommodating judges decided in
favour of this wicked nonsense; and here was a fatal
division between the King and the people.
For all this, it became necessary
to call another Parliament. The people, sensible
of the danger in which their liberties were, chose
for it those who were best known for their determined
opposition to the King; but still the King, quite
blinded by his determination to carry everything before
him, addressed them when they met, in a contemptuous
manner, and just told them in so many words that he
had only called them together because he wanted money.
The Parliament, strong enough and resolute enough
to know that they would lower his tone, cared little
for what he said, and laid before him one of the great
documents of history, which is called the PETITION
OF RIGHT, requiring that the free men of England should
no longer be called upon to lend the King money, and
should no longer be pressed or imprisoned for refusing
to do so; further, that the free men of England should
no longer be seized by the King’s special mandate
or warrant, it being contrary to their rights and
liberties and the laws of their country. At first
the King returned an answer to this petition, in which
he tried to shirk it altogether; but, the House of
Commons then showing their determination to go on with
the impeachment of Buckingham, the King in alarm returned
an answer, giving his consent to all that was required
of him. He not only afterwards departed from
his word and honour on these points, over and over
again, but, at this very time, he did the mean and
dissembling act of publishing his first answer and
not his second merely that the people might
suppose that the Parliament had not got the better
of him.
That pestilent Buckingham, to gratify
his own wounded vanity, had by this time involved
the country in war with France, as well as with Spain.
For such miserable causes and such miserable creatures
are wars sometimes made! But he was destined
to do little more mischief in this world. One
morning, as he was going out of his house to his carriage,
he turned to speak to a certain Colonel FRYER who
was with him; and he was violently stabbed with a
knife, which the murderer left sticking in his heart.
This happened in his hall. He had had angry
words up-stairs, just before, with some French gentlemen,
who were immediately suspected by his servants, and
had a close escape from being set upon and killed.
In the midst of the noise, the real murderer, who
had gone to the kitchen and might easily have got
away, drew his sword and cried out, ‘I am the
man!’ His name was JOHN FELTON, a Protestant
and a retired officer in the army. He said he
had had no personal ill-will to the Duke, but had killed
him as a curse to the country. He had aimed
his blow well, for Buckingham had only had time to
cry out, ‘Villain!’ and then he drew out
the knife, fell against a table, and died.
The council made a mighty business
of examining John Felton about this murder, though
it was a plain case enough, one would think.
He had come seventy miles to do it, he told them,
and he did it for the reason he had declared; if they
put him upon the rack, as that noble MARQUIS OF DORSET
whom he saw before him, had the goodness to threaten,
he gave that marquis warning, that he would accuse
him as his accomplice! The King was unpleasantly
anxious to have him racked, nevertheless; but as the
judges now found out that torture was contrary to the
law of England it is a pity they did not
make the discovery a little sooner John
Felton was simply executed for the murder he had done.
A murder it undoubtedly was, and not in the least
to be defended: though he had freed England from
one of the most profligate, contemptible, and base
court favourites to whom it has ever yielded.
A very different man now arose.
This was SIR THOMAS WENTWORTH, a Yorkshire gentleman,
who had sat in Parliament for a long time, and who
had favoured arbitrary and haughty principles, but
who had gone over to the people’s side on receiving
offence from Buckingham. The King, much wanting
such a man for, besides being naturally
favourable to the King’s cause, he had great
abilities made him first a Baron, and then
a Viscount, and gave him high employment, and won
him most completely.
A Parliament, however, was still in
existence, and was not to be won. On the
twentieth of January, one thousand six hundred and
twenty-nine, SIR JOHN ELIOT, a great man who had been
active in the Petition of Right, brought forward other
strong resolutions against the King’s chief
instruments, and called upon the Speaker to put them
to the vote. To this the Speaker answered, ‘he
was commanded otherwise by the King,’ and got
up to leave the chair which, according to
the rules of the House of Commons would have obliged
it to adjourn without doing anything more when
two members, named Mr. HOLLIS and Mr. VALENTINE, held
him down. A scene of great confusion arose among
the members; and while many swords were drawn and
flashing about, the King, who was kept informed of
all that was going on, told the captain of his guard
to go down to the House and force the doors.
The resolutions were by that time, however, voted,
and the House adjourned. Sir John Eliot and
those two members who had held the Speaker down, were
quickly summoned before the council. As they
claimed it to be their privilege not to answer out
of Parliament for anything they had said in it, they
were committed to the Tower. The King then went
down and dissolved the Parliament, in a speech wherein
he made mention of these gentlemen as ’Vipers’ which
did not do him much good that ever I have heard of.
As they refused to gain their liberty
by saying they were sorry for what they had done,
the King, always remarkably unforgiving, never overlooked
their offence. When they demanded to be brought
up before the court of King’s Bench, he even
resorted to the meanness of having them moved about
from prison to prison, so that the writs issued for
that purpose should not legally find them. At
last they came before the court and were sentenced
to heavy fines, and to be imprisoned during the King’s
pleasure. When Sir John Eliot’s health
had quite given way, and he so longed for change of
air and scene as to petition for his release, the
King sent back the answer (worthy of his Sowship himself)
that the petition was not humble enough. When
he sent another petition by his young son, in which
he pathetically offered to go back to prison when his
health was restored, if he might be released for its
recovery, the King still disregarded it. When
he died in the Tower, and his children petitioned
to be allowed to take his body down to Cornwall, there
to lay it among the ashes of his forefathers, the
King returned for answer, ’Let Sir John Eliot’s
body be buried in the church of that parish where he
died.’ All this was like a very little
King indeed, I think.
And now, for twelve long years, steadily
pursuing his design of setting himself up and putting
the people down, the King called no Parliament; but
ruled without one. If twelve thousand volumes
were written in his praise (as a good many have been)
it would still remain a fact, impossible to be denied,
that for twelve years King Charles the First reigned
in England unlawfully and despotically, seized upon
his subjects’ goods and money at his pleasure,
and punished according to his unbridled will all who
ventured to oppose him. It is a fashion with
some people to think that this King’s career
was cut short; but I must say myself that I think
he ran a pretty long one.
WILLIAM LAUD, Archbishop of Canterbury,
was the King’s right-hand man in the religious
part of the putting down of the people’s liberties.
Laud, who was a sincere man, of large learning but
small sense for the two things sometimes
go together in very different quantities though
a Protestant, held opinions so near those of the Catholics,
that the Pope wanted to make a Cardinal of him, if
he would have accepted that favour. He looked
upon vows, robes, lighted candles, images, and so forth,
as amazingly important in religious ceremonies; and
he brought in an immensity of bowing and candle-snuffing.
He also regarded archbishops and bishops as a sort
of miraculous persons, and was inveterate in the last
degree against any who thought otherwise. Accordingly,
he offered up thanks to Heaven, and was in a state
of much pious pleasure, when a Scotch clergyman, named
LEIGHTON, was pilloried, whipped, branded in the cheek,
and had one of his ears cut off and one of his nostrils
slit, for calling bishops trumpery and the inventions
of men. He originated on a Sunday morning the
prosecution of WILLIAM PRYNNE, a barrister who was
of similar opinions, and who was fined a thousand
pounds; who was pilloried; who had his ears cut off
on two occasions one ear at a time and
who was imprisoned for life. He highly approved
of the punishment of DOCTOR BASTWICK, a physician;
who was also fined a thousand pounds; and who afterwards
had his ears cut off, and was imprisoned for
life. These were gentle methods of persuasion,
some will tell you: I think, they were rather
calculated to be alarming to the people.
In the money part of the putting down
of the people’s liberties, the King was equally
gentle, as some will tell you: as I think, equally
alarming. He levied those duties of tonnage and
poundage, and increased them as he thought fit.
He granted monopolies to companies of merchants on
their paying him for them, notwithstanding the great
complaints that had, for years and years, been made
on the subject of monopolies. He fined the people
for disobeying proclamations issued by his Sowship
in direct violation of law. He revived the detested
Forest laws, and took private property to himself
as his forest right. Above all, he determined
to have what was called Ship Money; that is to say,
money for the support of the fleet not
only from the seaports, but from all the counties of
England: having found out that, in some ancient
time or other, all the counties paid it. The
grievance of this ship money being somewhat too strong,
JOHN CHAMBERS, a citizen of London, refused to pay
his part of it. For this the Lord Mayor ordered
John Chambers to prison, and for that John Chambers
brought a suit against the Lord Mayor. LORD SAY,
also, behaved like a real nobleman, and declared he
would not pay. But, the sturdiest and best opponent
of the ship money was JOHN HAMPDEN, a gentleman of
Buckinghamshire, who had sat among the ‘vipers’
in the House of Commons when there was such a thing,
and who had been the bosom friend of Sir John Eliot.
This case was tried before the twelve judges in the
Court of Exchequer, and again the King’s lawyers
said it was impossible that ship money could be wrong,
because the King could do no wrong, however hard he
tried and he really did try very hard during
these twelve years. Seven of the judges said
that was quite true, and Mr. Hampden was bound to
pay: five of the judges said that was quite false,
and Mr. Hampden was not bound to pay. So, the
King triumphed (as he thought), by making Hampden
the most popular man in England; where matters were
getting to that height now, that many honest Englishmen
could not endure their country, and sailed away across
the seas to found a colony in Massachusetts Bay in
America. It is said that Hampden himself and
his relation OLIVER CROMWELL were going with a company
of such voyagers, and were actually on board ship,
when they were stopped by a proclamation, prohibiting
sea captains to carry out such passengers without
the royal license. But O! it would have been
well for the King if he had let them go! This
was the state of England. If Laud had been a
madman just broke loose, he could not have done more
mischief than he did in Scotland. In his endeavours
(in which he was seconded by the King, then in person
in that part of his dominions) to force his own ideas
of bishops, and his own religious forms and ceremonies
upon the Scotch, he roused that nation to a perfect
frenzy. They formed a solemn league, which they
called The Covenant, for the preservation of their
own religious forms; they rose in arms throughout
the whole country; they summoned all their men to
prayers and sermons twice a day by beat of drum; they
sang psalms, in which they compared their enemies to
all the evil spirits that ever were heard of; and
they solemnly vowed to smite them with the sword.
At first the King tried force, then treaty, then a
Scottish Parliament which did not answer at all.
Then he tried the EARL OF STRAFFORD, formerly Sir
Thomas Wentworth; who, as LORD WENTWORTH, had been
governing Ireland. He, too, had carried it with
a very high hand there, though to the benefit and
prosperity of that country.
Strafford and Laud were for conquering
the Scottish people by force of arms. Other
lords who were taken into council, recommended that
a Parliament should at last be called; to which the
King unwillingly consented. So, on the thirteenth
of April, one thousand six hundred and forty, that
then strange sight, a Parliament, was seen at Westminster.
It is called the Short Parliament, for it lasted
a very little while. While the members were
all looking at one another, doubtful who would dare
to speak, MR. PYM arose and set forth all that the
King had done unlawfully during the past twelve years,
and what was the position to which England was reduced.
This great example set, other members took courage
and spoke the truth freely, though with great patience
and moderation. The King, a little frightened,
sent to say that if they would grant him a certain
sum on certain terms, no more ship money should be
raised. They debated the matter for two days;
and then, as they would not give him all he asked
without promise or inquiry, he dissolved them.
But they knew very well that he must
have a Parliament now; and he began to make that discovery
too, though rather late in the day. Wherefore,
on the twenty-fourth of September, being then at York
with an army collected against the Scottish people,
but his own men sullen and discontented like the rest
of the nation, the King told the great council of the
Lords, whom he had called to meet him there, that
he would summon another Parliament to assemble on
the third of November. The soldiers of the Covenant
had now forced their way into England and had taken
possession of the northern counties, where the coals
are got. As it would never do to be without
coals, and as the King’s troops could make no
head against the Covenanters so full of gloomy zeal,
a truce was made, and a treaty with Scotland was taken
into consideration. Meanwhile the northern counties
paid the Covenanters to leave the coals alone, and
keep quiet.
We have now disposed of the Short
Parliament. We have next to see what memorable
things were done by the Long one.