Meanwhile Charles, who was in straits with his Parliament and subjects, was compelled to try again the more than dubious resort to Parliament for money. To prepare the way for any success with the Commons, he was obliged to do that which must certainly embroil him with his French allies, and add fresh fuel to the fire of domestic discord which consumed him. Certainly never had any man a more arduous part to play, and the king had rendered his position all the harder by the imprudence of his measures; for nothing is easier than for men, by their folly or absurd resentments, to knit themselves up into a web of difficulties. He now resolved to break his marriage oath to France, and persecute the Catholics to conciliate the Protestants. Orders were accordingly issued to all magistrates to put the penal laws in force, and a commission was appointed to levy the fines on the recusants. All Catholic priests and missionaries were warned to quit the kingdom immediately, and all parents and guardians to recall their children from Catholic schools, and young men from Catholic colleges on the Continent. But worse than all, because personally insulting and irritating to the higher classes, who constituted the House of Peers, and who hitherto had exhibited much forbearance, he accepted the advice of his Council that the Catholic aristocracy should be disarmed.
Certainly no proceedings could indispose the House of Peers to the king more than such as these; but meanwhile Charles was active in endeavouring by other measures to win a party there. The Earl of Pembroke had for some time made himself head of the Opposition, and on great occasions brought with him on a vote no less than ten proxies, Buckingham himself being only able to command thirteen. He prevailed on Pembroke to be reconciled to the favourite; and at the same time in order to punish the Lord Keeper Williams who had quarrelled with Buckingham and had told him that he should go over to Pembroke, and labour for the redress of the grievances of the people—he dismissed him and gave the Great Seal to Sir Thomas Coventry, the Attorney-General.
To manage the Commons, and to prevent the threatened impeachment of Buckingham, when the judges presented to him the lists of sheriffs Charles struck out seven names and wrote in their places seven of the most able and active of the leaders of Opposition in the Commons, the most determined enemies of the favourite:—Sir Edward Coke, Sir Thomas Wentworth, Sir Francis Seymour, Sir Robert Philips, Sir Grey Palmer, Sir William Fleetwood, and Edward Alford. As this office disqualified them from sitting in Parliament, the king thus got rid of them for that year; but Coke contended that though a sheriff could not sit for his own county he could for another, and got himself elected for the county of Norfolk, but did not venture to take his seat.
All these measures, it will be seen, were dictated not by a desire to conciliate, but to override the Parliament, and therefore could not promise much good to a mind of any depth of penetration. Parliament was summoned for the 6th of February, 1626, and the 2nd was appointed for the coronation. With the knowledge of a discontented people, Charles went to meet his Parliament, and this consciousness would, in a monarch capable of taking a solemn warning, have operated to produce conciliation, at least of tone; but Charles was one of that class of men who illustrated the striking words of the Latin fatalist "Whom God intends to destroy He first drives mad." Accordingly, he opened the sitting with a curt speech, referring them to that of the new Lord Keeper Coventry, which was in the worst possible taste. He said, "If we consider aright, and think of the incomparable distance between the supreme height and majesty of a mighty monarch, and the submissive awe and lowliness of loyal subjects, we cannot but receive exceeding comfort and contentment in the frame and constitution of this highest Court, wherein not only prelates, nobles, and grandees, but the commons of all degrees have their part; and wherein that high majesty doth descend to admit, or rather to invite, the humblest of his subjects to conference and council with him."
Of all language this was, in the temper of the Commons, the most adapted to incense them. Such talk of the condescension of the Crown, at the moment when they were entering on a desperate conflict against its abuse of the prerogative, only the more stimulated their resolution to their task. They immediately formed themselves into three committees: one of religion, a second of grievances, and a third of evils. They again, by the Committee of Religion, canvassed the subject of Popery; resolving to enact still severer laws against it, as the origin of many of the worst evils that afflicted the nation. They summoned schoolmasters from various and remote parts of the kingdom, and put searching questions to them, as to the doctrines which they held and taught to their scholars; and every member of the House was called upon in turn to denounce all persons in authority or office, known to them as holding the tenets of the ancient faith. In fact, in their vehement zeal for religious liberty, the zealots of the House were on the highway to extinguish every spark of toleration, and to convert the House of Commons into an inquisition, instead of the bulwark of popular right.
RECEPTION OF VISCOUNT WIMBLEDON AT PLYMOUTH. (See p. [515.])
They again summoned Dr. Montague to redeem his bail, and receive punishment on account of his book, in which they charged him with having admitted that the Church of Rome was the true Church, and that the articles on which the two churches did not agree were of minor importance. Laud advocated the cause of Montague at Court, for he was of precisely the same opinions, and urged the king and Buckingham to protect him. But both Charles and the favourite saw too many difficulties in their own way to care to interfere in defence of the chaplain. They left him to his fate, and he would have been no doubt severely dealt with, had not higher matters seized the attention of the House, and caused the offending Churchman to be overlooked.
This was the impeachment of Buckingham. The Committee of Grievances had drawn up, after a tedious investigation, a list of sixteen grievances, consisting of such as had so often been warmly debated in the last reign. Of these the most prominent, in their opinion, were the practice of purveyance, by which the officers of the household still collected provisions at a fixed price for sixty miles round the Court, and the illegal conduct of the Lord Treasurer, who went on collecting tonnage and poundage though unsanctioned by Parliament. They charged the maintenance of these evils to the advice and influence of a "great delinquent" at Court; who had, moreover, occasioned all the disgraces to the national flag, both by land and sea, which had for some years occurred, and who ought to be punished accordingly.
The time was now actually arriving of which James had warned his son and Buckingham, when they urged the impeachment of the Earl of Middlesex, but choosing to forget all that, Charles sent down word to the House that he did not allow any of his servants to be called in question by them, especially such as were of eminence and near unto his person. He remarked that of old the desire of subjects had been to know what they should do with him whom the king delighted to honour, but their desire now appeared to be to do what they could against him whom the king honoured. That they aimed at the Duke of Buckingham, he said, he saw clearly, and he wondered much what had produced such a change since the former Parliament; assuring them that the duke had taken no step but by his order and consent; and he concluded by requesting them to hasten the question of Supply, "or it would be worse for them."