Another invention of the king was the celebrated Ship-Money. In ancient times sea-coast districts had been wont to pay a special contribution in time of war, to provide vessels for the royal navy. Charles, in full time of peace, proposed to raise this tax from every county in England, as an annual imposition. John Hampden, the member for Buckinghamshire in the last Parliament, refused to pay the twenty shillings at which he was assessed, and took the case before the courts. But the subservient judges decided in the king's favour, and Hampden was rigorously fined (1637).
The Repression of Puritans.—Bastwick's case.
Beside financial extortion, the king countenanced much oppression of other sorts. Laud and his spiritual courts were always at work against the Puritans. The net result of their work was that the whole Calvinistic party in the Church of England went over to Nonconformity, and became for the most part Presbyterians. Few but the "Arminian" [39] High Churchmen remained in the Establishment. It is probable that these eleven years tripled the number of schismatics in the country. To illustrate the dealings of the Government with clamorous Puritans, the case of Dr. John Bastwick may be taken as an example. He accused the bishops of a tendency to Popery in a tract called "The New Litany." For this he was sentenced to lose both his ears, to stand in the pillory, to be fined £5000, and to be imprisoned till his death (1637).
The Star Chamber.—Prynne's case.
Such sentences, however, were not uncommon in the Court of Star Chamber; nor were they reserved for offenders against spiritual peers only. A case may be quoted even more astonishing than that of Bastwick. A lawyer named William Prynne wrote a book called "Histriomastix," protesting against the growing immorality of the stage. It contained words supposed to reflect on Queen Henrietta Maria, who was very fond of plays, and had sometimes acted in masques herself. For this Prynne was condemned to the same penalty as Bastwick—the pillory, the loss of his ears, and a fine of £5000.
It is not unnatural that England grew more and more disloyal as the years went by. The whole country was seething with discontent. Yet it was not south but north of the Tweed that the first blow was to be struck; it seemed that English wrath needed a Parliament to make its voice articulate. The Scots, on the other hand, found their centre of resistance in the strong local organization of their Kirk.
Attempt to force Episcopacy on Scotland.
The cause of the Scottish outbreak was the king's attempt to force Episcopal government and High Church doctrine on the Kirk of Scotland, which was deeply attached to its Presbyterian constitution, and wholly committed to Calvinistic theology. Both James I. and Charles in his earlier years had made spasmodic attempts to bring the northern Church up to the same level of faith and ritual as that which prevailed in the south. They had been sturdily resisted, but the struggle had not grown quite desperate till 1637, when Charles and Laud seriously took in hand the conversion of Scotland. The first grievance was the issue, by royal authority alone, of a set of "canons"—or Church rules—drawn up by Laud (1636). They were universally disregarded, but in the following year matters came to a head when the king ordered a new Book of Common Prayer, drawn up on an Anglican model, to be taken into use in all the churches of Scotland. The attempt to introduce it led to the celebrated riot in St. Giles's, Edinburgh, where (as the story goes) the turmoil was started by an old woman hurling her stool at the dean's head, with the war-cry, "Will you say the Mass in my lug?" (ear). All the clergy who attempted to use the new Service-book were hustled and driven away (July, 1637).
The National Covenant.
It was evident that Charles would bitterly resent this national outburst, and in self-defence the Scots—nobles, ministers, and burgesses alike—entered into the "National Covenant," a solemn sworn agreement to stand by each other to resist tyranny and Popery. Soon after, the General Assembly of the Kirk met at Glasgow, declared the Scottish bishops tainted with Romanism, condemned the king's new canons and Book of Prayer, and proclaimed that Episcopacy was altogether opposed to the rules of faith.