Charles the First’s third Parliament met on March 17, 1628. It opened its proceedings with a debate on the grievances of the nation, and almost the first speech Cromwell heard in the House must have been Eliot’s appeal to his brother members to remember the greatness of the issue before them. “Upon this dispute,” said the spokesman of the Commons, “not alone our goods and lands are engaged, but all that we call ours. Those rights, those privileges that made our fathers freemen are in question. If they be not now the more carefully preserved, they will render us to posterity less free, less worthy than our fathers.” The House voted the King supplies, but made their grant dependent on the redress of grievances. Then followed the drawing up of the Petition of Right, declaring arbitrary imprisonment and taxation without the consent of Parliament henceforth illegal, and at last the Commons, by the threat of impeaching Buckingham again, wrung the acceptance of their petition from the reluctant King.
In the interval between the first and second session of the third Parliament, Buckingham died by Felton’s hand, but his death did not put an end to the quarrel. Charles became his own prime minister, and made evident to all men that the King’s will, not the favourite’s influence, was the source of the policy against which the Commons protested. The beginning of the second session, in January, 1629, was marked by a new dispute about taxation. The Commons asserted that the levy of tonnage and poundage without its grant, and the continued collection of the new customs duties imposed by James I., were contrary to the Petition of Right. The King declared that these were rights he had never meant to part with, and persisted in exacting them despite the votes of the House. Louder still grew the cry against the High Church clergy and the ecclesiastical policy of the King. It was not only of sermons in favour of absolute monarchy or innovations in ritual that the Puritan leaders complained. The dispute about ceremonies had now developed into a dispute about doctrine too. The milder theories about justification and election—known as Arminianism and favoured by the High Church clergy—seemed to Puritans to be sapping the foundations of Protestantism and paving the way for Popery. The King endeavoured to put an end to doctrinal disputes by silencing controversial preaching; the Commons demanded the suppression of Arminianism, and the punishment of all who propagated views deviating from what they regarded as Protestant orthodoxy.
It was during these religious disputes that Cromwell first took part in the debates of the Commons. Inheriting the traditions of a family that owed everything to the Reformation, trained by a Puritan schoolmaster and at a Puritan college, he could take only one side, and he raised his voice to swell the attack upon the friends of Popery in the Church. The House was discussing some charges against Dr. Neile, the Bishop of Winchester, when Cromwell intervened with a story showing that prelate’s leaning to popish tenets. A certain Dr. Alablaster, said Cromwell, had “preached flat Popery” in a sermon before the Lord Mayor, and when Dr. Beard, the next preacher there, came in turn to deliver his sermon, Neile sent for Beard, and “did charge him as his diocesan not to preach any doctrine contrary to that which Dr. Alablaster had delivered.” Beard nevertheless persisted in refuting his predecessor, and was reprimanded by Neile for his disobedience.
Before the charges against Neile and other like-minded prelates were brought to a conclusion, and before the remonstrance of the Commons against the King’s ecclesiastical policy was perfected, Charles put an end to the sitting of Parliament.
Ere it separated, the House of Commons, at Eliot’s bidding, affirmed once more the principles for which it was fighting. Cromwell was one of the defiant crowd who refused to obey the King’s orders for adjournment till they had passed by acclamation Eliot’s three resolutions. Whoever, it was declared, should bring in innovations in religion, or seek to introduce Popery, Arminianism, or any opinion disagreeing from the true and orthodox Church, should be reported a capital enemy to this kingdom and commonwealth. Whoever counselled the levying of tonnage and poundage without a parliamentary grant should also be held an enemy to his country and an innovator in the government; and whoever willingly paid those taxes was proclaimed to be a betrayer of the liberties of England. The significance of the resolutions lay not merely in their challenge to the King, but in the union of political and religious discontents which they indicated. Elizabeth’s policy had called into being a religious opposition. James had created a constitutional opposition. Under Charles the two had combined, and from their alliance sprang the Civil War.
To themselves the parliamentary leaders seemed defenders of the existing constitution in Church and State against the revolutionary changes of the King. In reality the greatest innovation of all lay in the claim of the Commons that Church and State should be controlled by the representatives of the people, not by the will of the King. When that claim was once made, the struggle for sovereignty was an inevitable and irrepressible conflict.
CHAPTER II
THE PREPARATION FOR THE CIVIL WAR
1629–1640
For the next eleven years Charles ruled without a Parliament. “Remember,” he had warned the Commons in 1626, “that Parliaments are altogether in my power for their calling, sitting and dissolution; therefore as I find the fruits of them good or evil, they are to continue, or not to be.” He now announced that their fruits were evil, and that henceforth it would be accounted presumption for anyone to prescribe to him a time for the calling of another. Henceforth he would govern by the authority which God had put into his hands, and so order the state that his people should confess that they lived more happily and freely than any subjects in the Christian world.
Taxation without parliamentary grant became thereafter the regular practice. Tonnage and poundage were levied from the merchants as if the right had never been disputed, and new impositions on trade were added to the old. Obsolete laws were revived and rigorously executed. In 1630, the law which required every person possessing an estate worth £40 a year to take up the honour of knighthood was put in force, and fines to the amount of £170,000 were levied on those who had omitted to comply with it. In 1634, the ancient forest laws were revived. Lands were now declared to be part of the royal forests which for three hundred years had been outside their boundaries, and landowners were heavily fined for encroachments.