Cassell's History of England, Vol. 2 (of 8) / From the Wars of the Roses to the Great Rebellion

by Anonymous

YORK HOUSE (THE DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM'S MANSION).

On the 29th of March he repeated the menace; but the Commons went on preparing their charges against Buckingham, declaring that it was the undoubted right of Parliament to inquire into the proceedings of persons of any estate whatever, who had been found dangerous to the Commonwealth, and had abused the confidence reposed in them by the Crown.

Seeing them bent on proceeding, Charles sent down to the House the Lord Keeper to acquaint them with his majesty's express command that they should cease this inquiry, or that he would dissolve them; and Sir Dudley Carleton, who had been much employed as ambassador to foreign states, and had recently returned from France, warned them not to make the king out of love with parliaments, and then drew a most deplorable picture of the state of those countries where such had come to be the case. In all Christian countries, he said, there were formerly parliaments; but the monarchs, weary of their turbulence, had broken them up, except in this kingdom; and now he represented the miserable subjects as resembling spectres rather than men, miserably clad, meagre of body, and wearing wooden shoes.

This caricature of foreigners, had it been true, was the very thing to make the Commons cling to their freedom, and keep their affairs in their own hands; and as such arguments had no effect. Charles summoned the House to the bar of the Lords, and there addressed to them a most royal reproof, letting them know that it depended entirely on him whether he would call and when he would dismiss Parliament, and, therefore, as they conducted themselves so should he act. Their very existence depended, he assured them, on his will.

This was language which might have done in the mouth of Henry VIII., who by the possession of the vast plunder of the Church had made himself independent of parliaments and trod on them at his pleasure; but the times and circumstances were entirely changed. The Commons had learned their power and the king's weakness, and would no longer tolerate the insolence of despotism. They returned to their own House, and, to show that they were about to discuss the king's speech in a spirit which admitted of no interruption or interference, they locked the door and put the key in the hands of Sir John Finch, their Speaker. This ominous proceeding struck terror into the king, and a conference with the Upper House was proposed and accepted. There Buckingham endeavoured to smooth down the royal speeches and messages into something like a bearable and constitutional shape, and to defend his own conduct. But by this time the Committee of Evils, Causes and Remedies, had come to the conclusion that the only mode of preventing the recurrence of such mal-administration as Buckingham had been guilty of was to impeach and punish him. The House accordingly passed a resolution to that effect on the 8th of May.

As if Charles were actually inspired by madness, at this moment, when he needed all the assistance of the Peers to screen his favourite from the impeachment of the Commons, he made a direct attack on their privileges. Lord Arundel, the Earl Marshal, had given some offence to Buckingham, and was well known to be decidedly hostile to him. As he possessed six proxies, it was thought a grand stroke of policy to get him out of the House at the approaching impeachment; and a plea was not long wanting. Arundel's son, Lord Maltravers, had married a daughter of the Duke of Lennox without consent of the king, and as Lennox was of blood-royal, this was deemed offence enough to involve Arundel himself. He was charged with not having prevented it, but he replied that the match had been made unknown to him; that it had been secretly planned between the mothers of the young people. This was not admitted, and Arundel was arrested by a royal warrant and lodged in the Tower. The real offender, if real offence there were, was Maltravers, but it was Arundel's absence which was wanted. The Lords, however, took up the matter as an infringement of their privileges; they passed a resolution that "no lord of Parliament, the Parliament sitting, or within the usual times of privilege of Parliament, is to be imprisoned or restrained, without sentence or order of the House, unless it be for treason or felony, or for refusing to give surety for the peace."

They sent an address to Charles demanding Arundel's immediate liberation; he returned an evasive answer: they sent a second address; Charles then ordered the Attorney-General to plead the royal prerogative, and to declare the Earl Marshal as personally offensive to the king and as dangerous to the State. The Peers would not admit the plea, but passed a resolution to suspend business till their colleague was set at large; and after a contest of three months the king was forced to yield, and the Earl Marshal resumed his seat in the House amid cheers and acclamations.

But this most imprudent conflict with the Peers had another and still more damaging result. The Earl of Bristol, who had been so unjustly and ungraciously received, or rather, not received, on his return from his Spanish embassy, to enable Buckingham and Charles to maintain their charge against Spain, had remained an exile from Court and Parliament, but not without keeping a watchful eye on the progress of events. He was not a man to sit down quietly under misrepresentation and injury; and now, seeing that the Peers had roused themselves from their subserviency, and were prepared to take vengeance on the common enemy, he complained to the House of Peers that, as one of their order and possessed of all their privileges, his writ of summons to Parliament had been wrongfully withheld. To have withstood this demand at this moment might have led to a dangerous excitement. The writ was therefore immediately issued, but Bristol at the same time received a private letter, charging him on pain of the king's high displeasure not to attempt to take his place. The earl at once forwarded the letter to the Peers, requesting their advice upon it, on the ground that it affected their rights, being a case which might reach any other of them, and demanding that he might be permitted to take his seat in order to accuse the man who, to screen his own high crimes and misdemeanours, had for years deprived a peer of the realm of his liberty and right.