1635.
Charles had imitated the example of Elizabeth and James, and had issued proclamations forbidding the landed gentlemen and the nobility to live idly in London, and ordering them to retire to their country seats.[**] For disobedience to this edict, many were indicted by the attorney-general, and were fined in the star chamber.[***] This occasioned discontents; and the sentences were complained of as illegal. But if proclamations had authority, of which nobody pretended to doubt, must they not be put in execution? In no instance I must confess, does it more evidently appear, what confused and uncertain ideas were during that age entertained concerning the English constitution.
Ray, having exported fuller’s earth, contrary to the king’s proclamation, was, besides the pillory, condemned in the star chamber to a fine of two thousand pounds.[****] Like fines were levied on Terry, Eman, and others, for disobeying a proclamation which forbade the exportation of gold.[v] In order to account for the subsequent convulsions, even these incidents are not to be overlooked as frivolous or contemptible. Such severities were afterwards magnified into the greatest enormities.
There remains a proclamation of this year, prohibiting hackney coaches from standing in the street.[v*] We are told, that there were not above twenty coaches of that kind in London. There are at present near eight hundred.
* Lord Lansdown, p. 515. This story is told differently in
Hobart’s Reports, p. 120. It there appears, that Markham was
fined only five hundred pounds, and very deservedly; for he
gave the lie and wrote a challenge to Lord Darcy. James was
anxious to discourage the practice of duelling, which was
then very prevalent.
** Rush. vol. ii. p. 144.
*** Rush. vol. ii, p. 288.
**** Rush. vol. ii. p. 348.
v Rush. vol. ii. p. 360.
v* Rush. vol. ii. p. 316.
1636.
The effects of ship money began now to appear. A formidable fleet of sixty sail, the greatest that England had ever known, was equipped under the earl of Northumberland, who had orders to attack the herring busses of the Dutch, which fished in what were called the British seas. The Dutch were content to pay thirty thousand pounds for a license during this year. They openly denied, however, the claim of dominion in the seas beyond the friths, bays, and shores; and it may be questioned whether the laws of nations warrant any further pretensions.
This year, the king sent a squadron against Sallee; and, with the assistance of the emperor of Morocco, destroyed that receptacle of pirates, by whom the English commerce, and even the English coasts, had long been infested.
1637.
Burton, a divine, and Bastwick, a physician, were tried in the star chamber for seditious and schismatical libels, and were condemned to the same punishment that had been inflicted on Prynne. Prynne himself was tried for a new offence; and, together with another fine of five thousand pounds, was condemned to lose what remained of his ears. Besides that these writers had attacked with great severity, and even an intemperate zeal, the ceremonies, rites, and government of the church, the very answers which they gave in to the court were so full of contumacy and of invectives against the prelates, that no lawyer could be prevailed on to sign them.[*] The rigors, however, which they underwent, being so unworthy men of their profession, gave general offence; and the patience, or rather alacrity, with which they suffered, increased still further the indignation of the public.[**]