ASSASSINATION OF THE DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM. (See p. [535].)
The danger which was obviously approaching Buckingham in the proceedings of this Committee alarmed the king; and the same day, the 7th of June, he commanded the Commons to meet him in the House of Lords, and then observing that he thought he had given a full and specific answer to their Petition of Right, but as they were not satisfied, he desired them to read the Petition again, and he would give them an answer which should satisfy them. Taking his seat on the throne, this was done, and he then ordered the former answer to be cut off, and the following, in the established form, to be inscribed—"Let right be done as is desired." "Now," he added, "I have performed my part; wherefore, if this Parliament have not a happy issue, the sin is yours. I am free of it."
Thus was passed the Petition of Right, the most important document since the acquirement of Magna Charta. The rejoicing for this conquest, this assurance of quieter days and secure firesides, sped through the City, and thence over the kingdom, and was everywhere demonstrated by acclamations, ringing of bells, and bonfires. On the 10th of June, three days afterwards, the king, as if pleased with this public expression of satisfaction, sent Sir Humphrey May to inform the House of Commons that he was graciously pleased that their Petition of Right, with his answer, should be recorded not only on the journals of Parliament, but in those of the courts of Westminster, and should, moreover, be printed for his honour and the content of the people. On the 12th the Commons showed their content by voting the king the five subsidies, and hastening to pass the Bill for five other subsidies granted by the clergy.
But the exultation over this great triumph did not prevent the Commons from pursuing their labours of inquiry into abuses. They obtained a judgment from the Lords against Dr. Mainwaring for his encouragement of kingly absolutism in his sermons, and censured Laud and Neale of Winchester, for licensing similar sermons; they then came to Buckingham himself, and voted a strong remonstrance against his undue influence and unconstitutional doings, which was presented by the Speaker to the king. The House felt itself highly aggrieved by a speech which the favourite was reported to have made at his own table—"Tush! it makes no matter what the Commons or Parliament doth; for without my leave and authority, they shall not be able to touch the hair of a dog." Buckingham protested that he had never uttered such words, and called upon the House of Lords to demand that the members of the Commons who had thus reported it should be called in to prove it; but the duke was forced to content himself with entering his protest on the journals of the Lords.
The Commons not having voted the tonnage and poundage, calculated that the king would not hastily dissolve the House, and therefore prayed him to remove Buckingham from his counsels, as the author of so many calamities; and they took the opportunity to remind him that tonnage and poundage could not be collected without their consent, as the king's concession of the Petition of Right testified. This called forth Charles again as hotly as ever. Though he had admitted, in granting this Petition, that no kind of duty could be imposed without consent of Parliament, he now sought to except the tonnage and poundage from this condition. He therefore, on the 26th of June, suddenly went to the House of Lords, and summoned the attendance of the Commons. The action had been so impromptu, that the Lords had no notice of it, and neither he nor they had time to robe themselves, when the Commons at nine o'clock in the morning made their appearance. All unrobed as he was, Charles seated himself on the throne, and lectured the Commons on their already beginning to put false constructions on his passing the Petition of Right. "As for the tonnage and poundage, it is a thing I cannot want, and was never intended by you to ask, nor meant by me, I am sure, to grant." And he called on them, but more especially the Lords, who were the judges, to take notice of what he declared his meaning to be when he granted the Petition.
The mischief had been done by former Parliaments granting this impost, now called customs duties, for life; and though Parliament had never altogether surrendered the power of voting it, nor had voted it for life to Charles, he had come to consider it as merged into a matter of prerogative, and not to be affected by his general concession just made. The Commons, however, meant nothing less than that this, as well as every other grant of taxes on the subject, should be void without their assent. Here, therefore, as so often afterwards, they found themselves just where they were with the king as matter of dispute, though they had settled the question as matter of right. No man was ever so hard as Charles I. to be made to see what he did not like. He therefore gave his assent to the subsidies, and prorogued the Parliament till October; and, as if to mark how far he was from intending to submit to what he had thus so solemnly in the face of the whole nation bound himself to, he proceeded to reward the men who had so shamefully advocated absolute power in him. He made bishops of both Montague and Mainwaring, and promoted Sibthorpe to coveted livings.
The king's attention was soon drawn from the battle with the Commons to the demands of the unfortunate people of La Rochelle upon him. He had solemnly pledged his honour to assist them, and they now sorely needed it. Since Buckingham left them to their fate, La Rochelle had been invested by the French army under the king and Richelieu, and the besieged loudly called on the King of England to succour them according to his promise. The Earl of Denbigh was despatched thither with a numerous fleet, yet had done nothing; but having shown himself before the town for seven days, returned, to the great mortification of the Rochellais. Denbigh had been raised to his rank and title simply for marrying a sister of Buckingham's, and the people murmured loudly at the fleet being put into such incompetent hands. The hatred of the duke rose higher and higher, and on the same day that he was pronounced by the Commons the cause of all these national calamities, his physician, Dr. Lambe, was murdered by a mob in London, and a placard was affixed on the walls in these words:—"Who rules the kingdom?—The king. Who rules the king?—The duke. Who rules the duke?—The devil. Let the duke look to it, or he will be served as his doctor was served." A doggerel rhyme was in the mouths of the common people:—
"Let Charles and George do what they can,