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[ NOTE ZZ, p. 420. It may not be unworthy of observation, that James, in a book called The true Laws of free Monarchies, which he published a little before his accession to the crown of England, affirmed, “That a good king, although he be above the law, will subject and frame his actions thereto, for example’s sake to his subjects, and of his own free will, but not as subject or bound thereto.” In another passage, “According to the fundamental law already alleged, we daily see, that in the parliament, (which is nothing else but the head court of the king and his vassals,) the laws are but craved by his subjects, and only made by him at their rogation, and with their advice. For albeit the king make daily statutes and ordinances, enjoining such pains thereto as he thinks meet, without any advice of parliament or estates, yet it lies in the power of no parliament to make any kind of law or statute, without his sceptre be to it, for giving it the force of a law.” King James’s Works, p. 202. It is not to be supposed that, at such a critical juncture, James had so little sense as directly, in so material a point, to have openly shocked what were the universal established principles of that age: on the contrary, we are told by historians, that nothing tended more to facilitate his accession, than the good opinion entertained of him by the English on account of his learned, and judicious writings. The question, however, with regard to the royal power, was at this time become a very dangerous point; and without employing ambiguous, insignificant terms, which determined nothing, it was impossible to please both king and parliament. Dr. Cowell, who had magnified the prerogative in words too intelligible, fell this session under the indignation of the commons. Parliament. Hist vol. v. p. 221. The king himself after all his magnificent boasts, was obliged to make his escape through a distinction which he framed between a king in abstracto and a king in concreto: an abstract king, he said, had all power; but a concrete king was bound to observe the laws of the country which he governed. King James’s Works, p. 533. But how bound? by conscience only? or might his subjects resist him, and defend their privileges? This he thought not fit to explain. And so difficult is it to explain that point, that to this day, whatever liberties may be used by private inquirers, the laws have very prudently thought proper to maintain a total silence with regard to it.]
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[ NOTE AAA, p. 434. Parliament. Hist. vol. v. p. 290. So little fixed at this time were the rules of parliament, that the commons complained to the peers of a speech made in the upper house by the bishop of Lincoln; which it belonged only to that house to censure, and which the other could not regularly be supposed to be acquainted with. These at least are the rules established since the parliament became a real seat of power and scene of business: neither the king must take notice of what passes in either house, nor either house of what passes in the other, till regularly informed of it. The commons, in their famous protestation 1621, fixed this rule with regard to the king, though at present they would not bind themselves by it. But as liberty was yet new, those maxims which guard and regulate it were unknown and unpractised.]
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[ NOTE BBB, p. 452. Some of the facts in this narrative, which seem to condemn Raleigh, are taken from the king’s declaration, which, being published by authority when the facts were recent, being extracted from examinations before the privy council, and subscribed by six privy councillors, among whom was Abbot, archbishop of Canterbury, a prelate nowise complaisant to the court, must be allowed to have great weight, or rather to be of undoubted credit. Yet the most material facts are confirmed either by the nature and reason of the thing, or by Sir Walter’s own apology and his letters. The king’s declaration is in the Harleian Miscellany, vol. iii. No. 2.
1. There seems to be an improbability that the Spaniards, who knew nothing of Raleigh’s pretended mine, should have built a town, in so wide a coast, within three miles of it. The chances are extremely against such a supposition; and it is more natural to think that the view of plundering the town led him thither, than that of working a mine. 2. No such mine is there found to this day. 3. Raleigh in fact found no mine, and in fact he plundered and burned a Spanish town. Is it not more probable, therefore, that the latter was his intention? How can the secrets of his breast be rendered so visible as to counterpoise certain facts? 4. He confesses, in his letter to Lord Carew, that though he knew it, yet he concealed from the king the settlement of the Spaniards on that coast. Does not this fact alone render him sufficiently criminal? 5. His commission empowers him only to settle on a coast possessed by savage and barbarous inhabitants. Was it not the most evident breach of orders to disembark on a coast possessed by Spaniards? 6. His orders to Keymis, when he sent him up the river, are contained in his own apology; and from them it appears that he knew (what was unavoidable) that the Spaniards would resist, and would oppose the English landing and taking possession of the country. His intentions, therefore, were hostile from the beginning. 7. Without provocation, and even when at a distance, he gave Keymis orders to dislodge the Spaniards from their own town. Could any enterprise be more hostile? And, considering the Spaniards as allies to the nation, could any enterprise be more criminal? Was he not the aggressor, even though it should be true that the Spaniards fired upon his men at landing? It is said he killed three or four hundred of them. Is that so light a matter? 8. In his letter to the king, and in his apology, he grounds his defence on former hostilities exercised by the Spaniards against other companies of Englishmen. These are accounted for by the ambiguity of the treaty between the nations. And it is plain, that though these might possibly be reasons for the king’s declaring war against that nation, they could never entitle Raleigh to declare war, and, without any commission, or contrary to his commission, to invade the Spanish settlements. He pretends indeed that peace was never made with Spain in the Indies; a most absurd notion! The chief hurt which the Spaniards could receive from England was in the Indies; and they never would have made peace at all, if hostilities had been still to be continued on these settlements. By secret agreement, the English were still allowed to support the Dutch, even after the treaty of peace. If they had also been allowed to invade the Spanish settlements, the treaty had been a full peace to England, while the Spaniards were still exposed to the full effects of war. 9. If the claim to the property of that country, as first discoverers, was good, in opposition to present settlement, as Raleigh pretends, why was it not laid before the king, with all its circumstances, and submitted to his judgment? 10. Raleigh’s force is acknowledged by himself to have been insufficient to support him in the possession of St. Thomas, against the power of which Spain was master on that coast; yet it was sufficient as he owns, to take by surprise and plunder twenty towns. It was not therefore his design to settle, but to plunder. By these confessions, which I have here brought together, he plainly betrays himself. 11. Why did he not stay and work his mine, as at first he projected? He apprehended that the Spaniards would be upon him with a greater force. But before he left England, he knew that this must be the case, if he invaded any part of the Spanish colonies. His intention therefore never was to settle, but only to plunder. 12. He acknowledges that he knew neither the depth nor riches of the mine, but only that there was some ore there. Would he have ventured all his fortune and credit on so precarious a foundation? 13. Would the other adventurers, if made acquainted with this, have risked every thing to attend him? Ought a fleet to have been equipped for an experiment? Was there not plainly an imposture in the management of this affair? 14. He says to Keymis, in his orders, “Bring but a basket full of ore, and it will satisfy the king that my project was not imaginary.” This was easily done from the Spanish mines, and he seems to have been chiefly displeased at Keymis for not attempting it. Such a view was a premeditated apology to cover his cheat. 15. The king in his declaration imputes it to Raleigh, that as soon as he was at sea, he immediately fell into such uncertain and doubtful talk of his* mine, and said that it would be sufficient if he brought home a basket full of ore. From the circumstance last mentioned, it appears that this imputation was not without reason. 16. There are many other circumstances of great weight in the king’s declaration: that Raleigh, when he fell down to Plymouth, took no pioneers with him, which he always declared to be his intention; that he was nowise provided with instruments for working a mine, but had a sufficient stock of warlike stores; that young Raleigh, in attacking the Spaniards, employed the words, which, in the narration, I have put in his mouth; that the mine was movable, and shifted as he saw convenient; not to mention many other public facts, which prove him to have been highly criminal against his companions as well as his country. Howel, in his letters, says, that there lived in London, in 1645, an officer, a man of honor, who asserted that he heard young Raleigh speak these words, (vol. ii. letter 63.) That was a time when there was no interest in maintaining such a fact. 17. Raleigh’s account of his first voyage to Guiana proves him to have been a man capable of the most extravagant credulity or most impudent imposture. So ridiculous are the stories which he tells of the Inca’s chimerical empire in the midst of Guiana; the rich city of El Dorado, or Manao, two days’ journey in length, and shining with gold and silver; the old Peruvian prophecies in favor of the English, who, he says, were expressly named as the deliverers of that country, long before any European had ever touched there; the Amazons, or republic of women; and in general, the vast and incredible riches which he saw on that continent, where nobody has yet found any treasures. This whole narrative is a proof that he was extremely defective either in solid understanding, or morals, or both. No man’s character indeed seems ever to have been carried to such extremes as Raleigh’s, by the opposite passions of envy and pity. In the former part of his life, when he was active and lived in the world, and was probably best known, he was the object of universal hatred and detestation throughout England; in the latter part, when shut up in prison, he became, much more unreasonably, the object of great love and admiration.
As to the circumstances of the narrative, that Raleigh’s pardon was refused him, that his former sentence was purposely kept in force against him, and that he went out under these express conditions, they may be supported by the following authorities: 1. The king’s word, and that of six privy counsellors, who affirm it for fact. 2. The nature of the thing. If no suspicion had been entertained of his intentions, a pardon would never have been refused to a man to whom authority was intrusted. 3. The words of the commission itself where he is simply styled Sir Walter Raleigh, and not faithful and not beloved, according to the usual and never-failing style on such occasions. 4. In all the letters which he wrote home to Sir Ralph Winwood and to his own wife, he always considers himself as a person unpardoned and liable to the law. He seems, indeed, immediately upon the failure of his enterprise, to have become desperate, and so have expected the fate which he met with.
It is pretended, that the king gave intelligence to the Spaniards of Raleigh’s project; as if he had needed to lay a plot for destroying a man whose life had been fourteen years, and still was, in his power. The Spaniards wanted no other intelligence to be on their guard, than the known and public fact of Raleigh’s armament. And there was no reason why the king should conceal from them the project of a settlement which Raleigh pretended, and the king believed, to be entirely innocent.
The king’s chief blame seems to have lain in his negligence, in allowing Raleigh to depart without a more exact scrutiny: but for this he apologizes by saying, that sureties were required for the good behavior of Raleigh and all his associates in the enterprise, but that they gave in bonds for each other: a cheat which was not perceived till they had sailed, and which increased the suspicion of bad intentions.
Perhaps the king ought also to have granted Raleigh a pardon for his old treason, and to have tried him anew for his new offences. His punishment in that case would not only have been just, but conducted in a just and unexceptionable manner. But we are told, that a ridiculous opinion at that time prevailed in the nation, (and it is plainly supposed by Sir Walter in his apology,) that, by treaty, war was allowed with the Spaniards in the Indies, though peace was made in Europe: and while that notion took place, no jury would have found Raleigh guilty. So that had not the king punished him upon the old sentence, the Spaniards would have had a just cause of complaint against the king, sufficient to have produced a war, at least to have destroyed all cordiality between the nations.
This explication I thought necessary in order to clear up the story of Raleigh; which, though very obvious, is generally mistaken in so gross a manner, that I scarcely know its parallel in the English history.]
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[ NOTE CCC, p. 458 This parliament is remarkable for being the epoch in which were first regularly formed, though without acquiring these denominations, the parties of court and country; parties which have ever since continued, and which, while they often threaten the total dissolution of the government, are the real causes of its permanent life and vigor. In the ancient feudal constitution, of which the English partook with other European nations, there was a mixture, not of authority and liberty, which we have since enjoyed in this island, and which now subsist uniformly together; but of authority and anarchy, which perpetually shocked with each other, and which took place alternately, according as circumstances were more or less favorable to either of them. A parliament composed of barbarians, summoned from their fields and forests, uninstructed by study, conversation, or travel; ignorant of their own laws and history, and unacquainted with the situation of all foreign nations; a parliament called precariously by the king, and dissolved at his pleasure; sitting a few days, debating a few points prepared for them, and whose members were impatient to return to their own castles, where alone they were great, and to the chase, which was their favorite amusement: such a parliament was very little fitted to enter into a discussion of all the questions of government, and to share, in a regular manner, the legal administration. The name, the authority of the king alone appeared, in the common course of government; in extraordinary emergencies, he assumed, with still better reason, the sole direction; the imperfect and unformed laws left in every thing a latitude of interpretation; and when the ends pursued by the monarch were in general agreeable to his subjects, little scruple or jealousy was entertained with regard to the regularity of the means. During the reign of an able, fortunate, or popular prince, no member of either house, much less of the lower, durst think of entering into a formed party in opposition to the court; since the dissolution of the parliament must in a few days leave him unprotected to the vengeance of his sovereign, and to those stretches of prerogative which were then so easily made in order to punish an obnoxious subject. During an unpopular and weak reign, the current commonly ran so strong against the monarch, that none durst enlist themselves in the court party; or if the prince was able to engage any considerable barons on his side, the question was decided with arms in the field, not by debates or arguments in a senate or assembly. And upon the whole, the chief circumstance which, during ancient times, retained the prince in any legal form of administration, was, that the sword, by the nature of the feudal tenures, remained still in the hands of his subjects; and this irregular and dangerous check had much more influence than the regular and methodical limits of the laws and constitution. As the nation could not be compelled, it was necessary that every public measure of consequence, particularly that of levying new taxes, should seem to be adopted by common consent and approbation.
The princes of the house of Tudor, partly by the vigor of their administration, partly by the concurrence of favorable circumstances, had been able to establish a more regular system of government; but they drew the constitution so near to despotism, as diminished extremely the authority of the parliament. The senate became in a great degree the organ of royal will and pleasure: opposition would have been regarded as a species of rebellion: and even religion, the most dangerous article in which innovations could be introduced, had admitted, in the course of a few years, four several alterations, from the authority alone of the sovereign. The parliament was not then the road to honor and preferment: the talents of popular intrigue and eloquence were uncultivated and unknown: and though that assembly still preserved authority, and retained the privilege of making laws and bestowing public money, the members acquired not upon that account, either with prince or people, much more weight and consideration. What powers were necessary for conducting the machine of government, the king was accustomed of himself to assume. His own revenues supplied him with money sufficient for his ordinary expenses. And when extraordinary emergencies occurred, the prince needed not to solicit votes in parliament, either for making laws or imposing taxes, both of which were now became requisite for public interest and preservation.
The security of individuals, so necessary to the liberty of popular councils, was totally unknown in that age. And as no despotic princes, scarcely even the Eastern tyrants, rule entirely without the concurrence of some assemblies, which supply both advice and authority, little but a mercenary force seems then to have been wanting towards the establishment of a simple monarchy in England. The militia, though more favorable to regal authority than the feudal institutions, was much inferior in this respect to disciplined armies; and if it did not preserve liberty to the people, it preserved at least the power, if ever the inclination should arise, of recovering it.
But so low at that time ran the inclination towards liberty, that Elizabeth, the last of that arbitrary line, herself no less arbitrary, was yet the most renowned and most popular of all the sovereigns that had filled the throne of England. It was natural for James to take the government as he found it, and to pursue her measures, which he heard so much applauded; nor did his penetration extend so far as to discover, that neither his circumstances nor his character could support so extensive an authority. His narrow revenues and little frugality began now to render him dependent on his people, even in the ordinary course of administration: their increasing knowledge discovered to them that advantage which they had obtained; and made them sensible of the inestimable value of civil liberty. And as he possessed too little dignity to command respect, and too much good nature to impress fear, a new spirit discovered itself every day in the parliament; and a party, watchful of a free constitution, was regularly formed in the house of commons.
But notwithstanding these advantages acquired to liberty, so extensive was royal authority, and so firmly established in all its parts, that it is probable the patriots of that age would have despaired of ever resisting it, had they not been stimulated by religious motives, which inspire a courage unsurmountable by any human obstacle.
The same alliance which has ever prevailed between kingly power and ecclesiastical authority, was now fully established in England; and while the prince assisted the clergy in suppressing schismatics and innovators, the clergy, in return, inculcated the doctrine of an unreserved submission and obedience to the civil magistrate. The genius of the church of England, so kindly to monarchy, forwarded the confederacy; its submission to episcopal jurisdiction; its attachment to ceremonies, to order, and to a decent pomp and splendor of worship; and, in a word, its affinity to the tame superstition of the Catholics, rather than to the wild fanaticism of the Puritans.
On the other hand, opposition to the church, and the persecutions under which they labored, were sufficient to throw the Puritans into the country party, and to beget political principles little favorable to the high pretensions of the sovereign. The spirit too of enthusiasm; bold, daring, and uncontrolled; strongly disposed their minds to adopt republican tenets; and inclined them to arrogate, in their actions and conduct, the same liberty which they assumed in their rapturous flights and ecstasies. Ever since the first origin of that sect, through the whole reign of Elizabeth as well as of James, Puritanical principles had been understood in a double sense, and expressed the opinions favorable both to political and to ecclesiastical liberty. And as the court, in order to discredit all parliamentary opposition, affixed the denomination of Puritans to its antagonists, the religious Puritans willingly adopted this idea, which was so advantageous to them, and which confounded their cause with that of the patriots or country party. Thus were the civil and ecclesiastical factions regularly formed; and the humor of the nation, during that age, running strongly towards fanatical extravagancies, the spirit of civil liberty gradually revived from its lethargy, and by means of its religious associate, from which it reaped more advantage than honor, it secretly enlarged its dominion over the greater part of the kingdom.
This note was in the first editions a part of the text; but the author omitted it, in order to avoid as much as possible the style of dissertation in the body of his History. The passage, however, contains views so important, that he thought it might be admitted as a footnote]
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[ NOTE DDD, p. 465. This protestation is so remarkable, that it may not be improper to give it in its own words. “The commons now assembled in parliament, being justly occasioned thereunto, concerning sundry liberties, franchises, and privileges of parliament, amongst others here mentioned, do make this protestation following: That the liberties, franchises, and jurisdictions of parliament are the ancient and undoubted birthright and inheritance of the subjects of England; and that the urgent and arduous affairs concerning the king, state, and defence of the realm and of the church of England, and the maintenance and making of laws, and redress of mischiefs and grievances which daily happen within this realm, are proper subjects and matter of counsel and debate in parliament; and that, in the handling and proceeding of those businesses, every member of the house of parliament hath, and of right ought to have, freedom of speech to propound, treat, reason, and bring to conclusion the same; and that the commons in parliament have like liberty and freedom to treat of these matters, in such order as in their judgment shall seem fittest; and that every member of the said house hath like freedom from all impeachment, imprisonment, and molestation, (other than by censure of the house itself,) for or concerning any speaking, reasoning, or declaring of any matter or matters touching the parliament or parliament business. And that if any of the said members be complained of or questioned for any thing done or said in parliament, the same is to be shown to the king by the advice and assent of all the commons assembled in parliament, before the king give credence to any private information.” Franklyn, p. 65. Rush, vol. i p. 53. Kennet, p. 747. Coke, p. 77.]