* To our apprehension, Haywarde’s book seems rather to have
a contrary tendency. For he has there preserved the famous
speech of the bishop of Carlisle, which contains, in the
most express terms, the doctrine of passive obedience. But
Queen Elizabeth was very difficult to please on this head.
** Cabala, p. 81. anciently common of fining, imprisoning,
or otherwise punishing the jurors, merely at the discretion
of the court, for finding a verdict contrary to the
direction of these dependent judges, it is obvious that
juries were then no manner of security to the liberty of the
subject.
The queen’s menace of trying and punishing Haywarde for treason could easily have been executed, let his book have been ever so innocent. While so many terrors hung over the people, no jury durst have acquitted a man when the court was resolved to have him condemned. The practice, also, of not confronting witnesses with the prisoner, gave the crown lawyers all imaginable advantage against him. And indeed there scarcely occurs an instance during all these reigns, that the sovereign or the ministers were ever disappointed in the issue of a prosecution. Timid juries, and judges who held their offices during pleasure, never failed to second all the views of the crown.
The power of pressing, both for sea and land service, and obliging any person to accept of any office, however mean or unfit for him, was another prerogative totally incompatible with freedom. Osborne gives the following account of Elizabeth’s method of employing this prerogative: “In case she found any likely to interrupt her occasions,” says he, “she did seasonably prevent him by a chargeable employment abroad, or putting him upon some service at home, which she knew least grateful to the people; contrary to a false maxim, since practised with far worse success, by such princes as thought it better husbandry to buy off enemies than reward friends.”[*] The practice with which Osborne reproaches the two immediate successors of Elizabeth, proceeded partly from the extreme difficulty of their situation, partly from the greater lenity of their disposition. The power of pressing, as may naturally be imagined, was often abused, in other respects, by men of inferior rank; and officers often exacted money for freeing persons from the service.[**]
* Page 392.
* Murden, p. 181.
The government of England during that age, however different in other particulars, bore in this respect some resemblance to that of Turkey at present: the sovereign possessed every power, except that of imposing taxes; and in both countries, this limitation, unsupported by other privileges, appears rather prejudicial to the people. In Turkey, it obliges the sultan to permit the extortion of the pashas and governors of provinces, from whom he afterwards squeezes presents or takes forfeitures: in England, it engaged the queen to erect monopolies, and grant patents for exclusive trade; an invention so pernicious, that had she gone on during a tract of years at her own rate, England, the seat of riches, and arts, and commerce, would have contained at present as little industry as Morocco or the coast of Barbary.
We may further observe that this valuable privilege, valuable only because it proved afterwards the means by which the parliament extorted all their other privileges, was very much encroached on, in an indirect manner, during the reign of Elizabeth, as well as of her predecessors. She often exacted loans from her people; an arbitrary and unequal kind of imposition, and which individuals felt severely; for though the money had been regularly repaid, which was seldom the case,[*] it lay in the prince’s hands without interest, which was a sensible loss to the persons from whom the money was borrowed.[**]
There remains a proposal, made by Lord Burleigh, for levying a general loan on the people, equivalent to a subsidy;[***] a scheme which would have laid the burden more equally, but which was, in different words, a taxation imposed without consent of parliament. It is remarkable, that the scheme thus proposed, without any visible necessity, by that wise minister, is the very same which Henry VIII. executed, and which Charles I., enraged by ill usage from his parliament, and reduced to the greatest difficulties, put afterwards in practice, to the great discontent of the nation.
The demand of benevolence was another invention of that age for taxing the people. This practice was so little conceived to be irregular, that the commons in 1585 offered the queen a benevolence; which she very generously refused, as having no occasion at that time for money.[****] Queen Mary, also, by an order of council, increased the customs in some branches; and her sister imitated the example.[v] There was a species of ship money imposed at the time of the Spanish invasion: the several ports were required to equip a certain number of vessels at their own charge: and such was the alacrity of the people for the public defence, that some of the ports, particularly London, sent double the number demanded of them.[v*]
* Bacon, vol. iv. p. 362.
** In the second of Richard II., it was enacted that in
loans which the king shall require of his subjects, upon
letters of privy seal, such as have “reasonable” excuse of
not lending, may there be received without further summons,
travel, or grief. See Cotton’s Abridg. p. 170. By this law,
the king’s prerogative of exacting loans was ratified; and
what ought to be deemed a “reasonable” excuse was still left
in his own breast to determine.
*** Haynes, p. 518, 519.
**** D’Ewes, p. 494.
v Bacon, vol. iv p. 362.
v* Monson, p 267.
When any levies were made for Ireland, France, or the Low Countries, the queen obliged the counties to levy the soldiers, to arm and clothe them, and carry them to the seaports at their own charge. New-year’s gifts were at that time expected from the nobility, and from the more considerable gentry.[*]