the House as "overthrowing the Parliaments throughout Christendom," and reducing their subjects by arbitrary taxation to "wear only wooden shoes on their feet." "England," cried the member for Somerset, "is the last monarchy that yet retains her liberties. Let them not perish now!" The Commons therefore knew that they must look, not to the "rights of nations" or to any theories of government prevalent in that age, but to definite laws and customs peculiar to England. As historians they unearthed a period in English history from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century, when Parliament had controlled the counsels of the crown; and as lawyers they pleaded statutes of the same period, which forbade the encroachments of royal power in specific matters, such as the imposition of particular kinds of taxation. Thus an antiquarian revival, instituted by several hundred of the most hard-headed men in the country, decided the future of our island. The partisans of absolutism pleaded the equally valid Tudor precedents, and demonstrated that even in the Middle Ages the custom of the Constitution had by no means always followed the statutes, in which the Parliaments had but recorded claims never heartily allowed by the king. 83. James I and Parliament The theoretical basis and the legal limits of Parliamentary privilege and royal prerogative, questions wisely left to sleep by the late queen and her loving subjects, occupied the full attention of James' first Parliament which, after sitting for four sessions over a space of six years, was "broken" in 1610 to make way for the first long period of unparliamentary Stuart despotism. The king was the first to open the high debate. The light head of the scholar was turned by the new wine of an absolutist theory of government, as alien to the medieval English Constitution, as were the later theories of "King Pym" and "Freeborn John Lilburne." The claim of the pope as vicar of Christ to depose sovereigns had driven the champions of Protestant monarchies to invent a rival dogma. A divine right was asserted to be inherent in kings: not acquired, as the Jesuits taught, by clerical or by popular consent, but by heredity. James, as divine hereditary sovereign, made haste to state his claims to an authority that would have flattered the pride of the Castilian monarch. The state of monarchy (he told his first Parliament) is the supremest thing upon earth; for kings are not only God's lieutenants upon earth and sit upon God's throne, but even by God Himself they are called Gods. Hence there was no place for constitutional discussion of a prerogative that had no limits. As to dispute what God may do is blasphemy, so it is sedition in subjects to dispute what a king may do in the height of his power. I will not be content that my power be disputed on. The House of Commons, so he told its members, "derived all matters of privilege from him"; it sat, not in its own right, but of his grace. The sudden challenge was taken up at once and by the whole House. There was no Royalist party in St. Stephen's before the Long Parliament; nor, beyond the king's own servants, did any section of any class in the country believe in the theory of divine right as applied by James. The members of his first House of Commons, with unanimity, recorded their solemn dissent from the royal utterances. When in the first session his Majesty asserted that Parliamentary privilege was not of right but of grace, they told him that he had been "misinformed," and when in the last he challenged their right to discuss the limits of his prerogative, they replied: We hold it an ancient, general, and undoubted right of Parliament to debate freely all matters which properly concern the subject and his right or state; which freedom of debate being once foreclosed, the essence of the liberty of Parliament is withal dissolved. The new claims of personal authority advanced by the Stuarts. were connected with new plans for national efficiency. Their best servants, Salisbury, Bacon, and Strafford, saw, like Richelieu, that a country must be equipped with the machinery of centralized government and of productive taxation if she was to keep her place in the modern world. James and Charles I aimed at union with Scotland, a good army, and a new system of finance. In every one of these objects they were defeated, partly by their own lack of economy and administrative talent, partly by the resistance of the Commons, who opposed the strengthening of the central power as dangerous to local and Parliamentary rights. That danger would pass away as soon as the central power became representative. In the reigns of William III and Anne, the Whig ministers carried out the schemes of James I,- united, taxed, and armed Great Britain, and so enabled her in the eighteenth century to take a place in the world's politics higher than that of countries which had purchased a brief period of efficiency by a lasting sacrifice of their freedom. But it was impossible to neglect for a hundred years the need for a more productive system of taxation, a problem which, after the death of the parsimonious queen, continually returned to vex and embroil kings with their Parliaments. Elizabeth had waged the most serious of England's wars with a revenue no larger than that which James exhausted in time of peace. At slight expense to herself and her subjects, she had presided over a court, corrupt indeed, but famous to all ages for wisdom in politics and for excellence in literature; James, at a vast charge to the nation, maintained a court no less corrupt, but notorious for folly and lack of taste. When the king realized that he was spending at the rate of from £500,000 to £600,000 a year, and thereby incurring an annual deficit of from £50,000 to £150,000, he was the more willing to exert to the utmost all the prerogative rights of the crown which could bring in a revenue. The regulation of trade with foreign countries, by impositions of duties at the ports, and by the grant or sale of trading monopolies, was a power that rested, by the custom of the Tudor queens, not with Parliament, but with the crown. It had hitherto been regarded rather as an administrative function than as a financial advantage, but the increasing volume of English trade enabled the needy James to find in it a source of large and independent revenue. The Book of Rates which he issued was an attempt to systematize the import duties on many various articles; and the commercial and financial policy involved in the tariff was determined by the Privy Council Commissioners of Trade, afterward turned by Charles I into a council of trade. In 1606 the resistance of a merchant named Bate to a new form of these duties brought the whole question of impositions before the judges, who decided that the king had acted within his legal rights. The Commons, not yet aware of all the points at issue between themselves and the crown, paid no attention to the matter in the following session of 1608; but in the two sessions of 1610 they realized that the power of the purse, the chief safeguard of their liberties, would slip from them as trade increased, unless this right to lay impositions was at once challenged. A vigorous controversy ensued. Statutes of Edward I, clearly prohibiting the levy of duties without consent of Parliament, were quoted in the House; while the crown lawyers advanced Tudor precedent, and Tudor statutes that implied the existence of the right. The question, still undecided, became merged in all the other questions at issue between Parliament and king. Side by side with the controversy over impositions, a friendly negotiation was being conducted to put the whole financial system on a new footing. The Great Contract, which Salisbury attempted to make with Parliament, was to commute the antiquated and vexatious feudal rights of the crown for a permanent settlement of £200,000 a year, which, together with the other sources of income, should have met the annual expenditure of £600,000. Both sides were desirous of coming to such terms as would at once supply the financial needs of England, and put an end to the use of prerogative powers to raise money without Parliament; for James would on these terms forego his right to impositions. - But at the last moment religious and political misunderstanding prevented financial agreement. As early as 1604 the Commons had protested against the deprivation of their favorite clergy, the three hundred silenced Puritan pastors. As the sessions came and went, the complaints on this head were strengthened by others, touching all points of the religious question, the imperfect enforcement of the penal laws; non-residence, so common with the inefficient type of incumbents favored by the bishops; and the swelling pride shown by those prelates to all classes of men in their ecclesiastical courts. James, always in arms to defend the episcopal power, was still more indignant to find his Parliaments seeking to interfere in his own management of the Church. The Great Contract was broken off through mutual suspicion, the dispute on impositions was left undecided, and finally, in February, 1611, the Houses were dissolved. The king determined henceforth to carry on affairs free from the vexatious cavilling of a Parliament. BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE Gardiner, History of England, 1603-1642, Vols. I and II, consult table of contents. Ranke, History of England, Vol. I, pp. 359 ff. Hallam, Constitutional History of England, Vol. I, chap. vi. For documents and illustrative materials, consult Prothero, Statutes and Constitutional Documents. CHAPTER II THE PARLIAMENTARY CRISIS OF 1629 THE Constitutional conflict initiated during the reign of James I was renewed under his son Charles I. Parliament opposed the counsellors whom he chose as his advisers, resented his favor to Catholics, and refused to grant the sums he demanded without redress of grievances. After two unsuccessful attempts at securing the desired grants, Charles resorted to forced loans, to billeting soldiers on householders without their consent, and to other irritating practices. Still in need of money, he gave way to his Parliament in 1628 and signed the Petition of Right. This concession did not settle the dispute, however, for the question as to whether tonnage and poundage could be levied without specific grant led to further troubles in Parliament which were complicated by religious difficulties. The stout resistance of Parliament induced the king to order an adjournment in March, 1629, and shortly afterward a dissolution. Then began the eleven years of government without Parliament, which paved the way for the revolution. § 1. Contest over the Right of Adjournment 1 As was expected, when the morning of March 2 came, the speaker, Sir John Finch, declared the king's pleasure that the House should be adjourned to the 10th. He then put the formal question to which, under such circumstances, a negative had never been returned. Shouts of "No!" "No!" rose on every side. Eliot rose, as if to speak to the question of adjournment. Finch did his best to check him. He had, he said, an absolute command 1 Gardiner, History of England, 1603-1642, Vol. VII, pp. 67 ff. By permission of Messrs. Longmans, Green, & Company, Publishers. |