It was in religious matters, naturally, that this spirit of opposition first revealed itself. Henry VIII. had separated the English from the Catholic Church, not in order to alter its doctrine, but in order to make himself its master. The doctrinal change which Thomas Cromwell had prematurely attempted, Somerset and Northumberland carried out in the reign of Henry’s son. The only result of the reaction under Mary was to inspire most Englishmen with a passionate hostility to the faith in whose name the Queen’s bonfires had been kindled. Elizabeth restored Protestantism, and re-established the control of the State over the Church. She called herself “Supreme Governor” instead of “Head of the Church,” but kept all the essentials of the supremacy which her father had established. To conciliate the English Catholics she made the doctrine and ritual of the National Church less offensively Protestant, but to impose her compromise she was obliged to use force. Year after year the penalties inflicted upon Catholics who refused to conform became heavier, and their lot was made harder, but thousands remained invincibly constant, and preferred to suffer rather than deny their faith.
Not only did the enforcement of the Elizabethan compromise fail to suppress Catholicism, but it created Puritanism and Protestant Nonconformity. Puritanism represented from the first “the Protestantism of the Protestant religion.” The aim of those who called themselves Puritans was to restore the Church to what they thought its original purity in doctrine, worship, and government. Some remained within its pale, content to accept the rule of bishops and the supremacy of the Crown so long as doctrine and ritual were to their liking. Others, who desired a simpler ceremonial and a more democratic form of government, sought to transform the Anglican Church to the model of that of Scotland or Geneva, and were the predecessors of the Presbyterian party of Charles the First’s time. A small band of extremists separated altogether from the National Church, and founded self-governing congregations, which defined their own creed and chose their own ministers. But though Independency sprang up first in England it made few converts, and never throve till it was transplanted to Holland or New England.
Elizabeth suppressed nascent Presbyterianism, and persecuted with equal vigour Catholic recusant and Protestant separatist. But within the National Church, in spite of repressive measures, the Puritan party grew continually stronger, while Parliament became more aggressively Protestant, and more eager for Church reform. While the Queen lived, no change in the ecclesiastical system was possible. When she died, wise men counselled her successor to adopt a different policy: to try comprehension instead of compulsion, and to make concessions to Puritanism. James refused. “I shall make them conform themselves,” was his answer, “or I shall harry them out of the land.” He began his reign by authorising new canons which enforced more rigid uniformity, and by driving three hundred ministers from their livings. The main cause of his breach with his first Parliament was his refusal to restrict the authority or to reform the abuses of the ecclesiastical courts.
The Church policy of James aggravated the divisions he should have tried to heal; his foreign policy ran counter to the national traditions of his subjects as well as their religious prejudices. It was an axiom with Englishmen that England’s natural allies were the Protestant states of Europe, and that it was her duty when occasion demanded to come forward as the champion of Protestantism against the Catholic powers. But for more than ten years James made a close alliance with Spain his chief object in European politics, partly with the laudable aim of putting an end to religious wars, partly in the hope of paying his debts with the dowry of the Spanish Infanta. For the sake of this alliance he sent Raleigh to the block, declined to help the German Protestants, offered to suspend the penal laws against the Catholics, and forbade Parliament to discuss foreign affairs. The general joy which hailed the breaking off of the Spanish match revealed the depth of the hostility which the King’s schemes had excited.
During the same years, the King’s attitude towards English institutions called into life a constitutional opposition. His theory of monarchy found expression in persistent attempts to extend the power of the Crown and diminish the rights of Parliament. Backed by a judicial decision that the right to tax imports and exports was a part of the royal prerogative, James imposed new customs duties by his own authority, and dissolved his second Parliament when it voted them illegal. Members were imprisoned for their utterances in the House of Commons, and Parliament was forbidden to debate mysteries of State or matters touching the King’s government. When the House asserted its right to freedom of speech James replied that its privileges were derived from the grace and favour of his ancestors, and erased the protest, which claimed that the liberties of Parliament were “the undoubted birthright and inheritance of the subjects of England.”
Such a policy seemed to proceed from a formed design to destroy English freedom. Throughout Europe, absolute monarchies had risen on the ruins of national liberties, and now the same fate threatened England. When Charles I. succeeded his father, he found the nation he had to govern not only discontented, but also full of suspicion. “We are the last monarchy in Christendom that maintains its rights,” said a parliamentary orator in 1625, and the distrust and fear created by the pretensions of James flung their shadows across the path of his son.
Charles I., with his royal bearing and his kingly graces, seemed fitter to win back the hearts of his subjects than James, who lacked both majesty and manners. But he was as devoid of sympathy for the nation he governed as his father had been; as prone to cherish chimerical schemes, and as blind to facts. James had left him a courtier instead of a statesman to be his guide, and Charles gave Buckingham as complete trust as if he had possessed the experience of Burleigh or the wisdom of Bacon.
At the moment when the new reign opened, the rupture with Spain had given both Charles and his minister a factitious popularity. But on both foreign and domestic affairs King and Parliament speedily disagreed. Parliament was eager for war with Spain, but not ready either to furnish funds for a European coalition against the House of Hapsburg, or to buy the alliance of France by repealing the penal laws against English Catholics. It granted the King money to fit out a fleet, but its refusal of a more liberal supply, and its open declaration of want of confidence in the King’s minister, brought the session to a sudden close.
Buckingham hoped to justify himself by success, and launched forth on the sea of European politics with all the boldness of an adventurer. He sent an expedition to sack Cadiz and to capture the Spanish plate-fleet. He promised subsidies to the King of Denmark for his campaigns in Germany. He courted popularity with the Puritans by repudiating the engagements made to France in the King’s marriage treaty, and endeavouring to pose as the protector of the Huguenots. But when a second Parliament met there was nothing but a record of failure to lay before it. The expedition to Cadiz had ended in disaster and disgrace. “Our honour is ruined,” cried Sir John Eliot to the Commons, “our ships are sunk, our men perished, not by the sword, not by the enemy, not by chance, but by those we trusted.” All blame fell on the man who had monopolised power, but the King forbade Parliament to call his servant to account, and put a stop to Buckingham’s impeachment by a second dissolution.
During the next two years Charles tried the “new ways” he had threatened to adopt if Parliament declined to supply his necessities. A forced loan of £300,000 was levied, and those who refused payment were, if rich, imprisoned; if poor, impressed. There were schemes for raising an excise to support a standing army, and Ship-money to maintain a fleet. Judges were dismissed for denying the legality of the forced loan, and divines promoted for declaring it sinful to refuse payment. But abroad failure still dogged the King’s foreign policy. In Germany the King of Denmark was crushed because Charles could not pay the promised subsidies. The French alliance ended in quarrels which grew into a war with France. Buckingham’s expedition to the Isle of Rhé ended in a more ruinous failure than the expedition to Cadiz. “Since England was England,” wrote Denzil Holles, “it received not so dishonourable a blow.” Unable to continue the fight with France and Spain without money, Charles was forced once more to appeal to the nation.